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Title: The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494, 3rd Ed.
Author: Lodge, R. B. (Reginald B.)
Language: English
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The Close of the Middle Ages
_In Eight Volumes. Crown 8vo. With Maps, etc._
_Six Shillings net each Volume._
_The Complete Set £2, 8s. net._
PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY
General Editor—ARTHUR HASSALL, M.A.,
Student of Christ Church, Oxford.
The object of this series is to present in separate Volumes a
comprehensive and trustworthy account of the general development of
European History, and to deal fully and carefully with the more
prominent events in each century.
The Volumes embody the results of the latest investigations, and contain
references to and notes upon original and other sources of information.
No such attempt to place the History of Europe in a comprehensive,
detailed, and readable form before the English Public has previously
been made, and the Series forms a valuable continuous History of
Mediæval and Modern Europe.
=Period I.—The Dark Ages.= 476-918.
By C. W. C. OMAN, M.A., Chichele Professor of Modern History in the
University of Oxford. _6s. net._
=Period II.—The Empire and the Papacy.= 918-1273.
By T. F. TOUT, M.A., Professor of Mediæval and Modern History at the
Owens College, Victoria University, Manchester. _6s. net._
=Period III.—The Close of the Middle Ages.= 1272-1494.
By R. LODGE, M.A., Professor of History at the University of
Edinburgh. _6s. net._
=Period IV.—Europe in the 16th Century.= 1494-1598.
By A. H. JOHNSON, M.A., Historical Lecturer to Merton, Trinity, and
University Colleges, Oxford. _6s. net._
=Period V.—The Ascendancy of France.= 1598-1715.
By H. O. WAKEMAN, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
_6s. net._
=Period VI.—The Balance of Power.= 1715-1789.
By A. HASSALL, M.A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford. _6s. net._
=Period VII.—Revolutionary Europe.= 1789-1815.
By H. MORSE STEPHENS, M.A., Professor of History at Cornell
University, Ithaca, U.S.A. _6s. net._
=Period VIII—Modern Europe.= 1815-1899.
By W. ALISON PHILLIPS, M.A., formerly Senior Scholar of St. John’s
College, Oxford. _6s. net._
THE DARK AGES, 476-918
By C. W. C. OMAN, M.A., Chichele Professor of Modern History in the
University of Oxford.
Forming Volume I. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘A thorough master of his subject, and possessed of a gift for clear
expositions, he has supplied the student with a most valuable and
helpful book.’—_Spectator._
‘No better exponent of this era, so full of difficulties and
complications, could have been chosen.’—_Journal of Education._
‘Mr. Oman has done his work well. His narrative is clear and
interesting, and takes full account of recent research.’—_English
Historical Review._
‘This volume will be valued by all historical students as supplying a
real want in our historical literature, and supplying it well.... His
touch is sure and his insight keen. For the accuracy of his facts his
historical reputation is a sufficient guarantee.’—_Times._
THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY, 918-1273
By T. F. TOUT, M.A., Professor of Mediæval and Modern History at the
Owens College, Victoria University, Manchester.
Forming Volume II. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘This admirable and impartial work.... A more trustworthy historical
treatise on the period and subject has not hitherto appeared.’—_Morning
Post._
‘One of the best of the many good historical textbooks which have come
out of our universities in recent years.’—_Times._
‘Altogether Professor Tout has given us a most trustworthy adjunct to
the study of mediæval times, which all who may be called upon to
interpret those times to others may safely recommend and themselves
profit by.’—_English Historical Review._
THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 1273-1494
By R. LODGE, M.A., Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh.
Forming Volume III. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘The book is admirably written, it contains maps and genealogical
tables, an exhaustive index, and a bibliography which students will
value as an aid to the interpretation of the whole period as well as a
clue to any part of it.’—_Standard._
‘We are exceedingly thankful for the Series, and as we have already
said, to Prof. Lodge. There is no longer any excuse for English-speaking
teachers to be wholly ignorant of the history of Europe. The obligation
lies on them to purchase these volumes, and then read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest them, so that they can supplement their teaching with
intelligible comment.’—_School World._
‘The book must be regarded as quite indispensable to all English
students of the late Middle Ages.’—_University Correspondent._
‘Professor Lodge’s book has the supreme merit of clearness, not less
than that of conciseness.’—_Pall Mall Gazette._
‘A work of great value on one of the most difficult and at the same time
one of the most important periods of European history. The book is a
monument of skill and labour.’—_Aberdeen Journal._
EUROPE IN THE 16th CENTURY, 1494-1598
By A. H. JOHNSON, M.A., Historical Lecturer at Merton, Trinity, and
University Colleges, Oxford.
Forming Volume IV. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘A singularly clear, thorough, and consistent account of the great
movements and great events of the time, and the volume may be accepted
as one of the best extant handbooks to a period as complex as it is
important.’—_Times._
‘In the present volume Mr. A. H. Johnson has made a useful and
unpretentious contribution to a Series of which it can be said more
truly than of most series that it supplies a real want. Mr. Johnson is
well known as one of the most experienced and successful teachers of
history at Oxford, and the book has all the merits which the fact of
being written by a good teacher can give it. It is clear, sensible, and
accurate, and commendably free from fads or bias.’—_Manchester
Guardian._
‘There is certainly no other single book in English which covers the
ground so adequately.’—_University Correspondent._
‘Mr. Johnson’s narrative is clear and accurate, and his grasp of the
history of his period wonderfully strong and comprehensive.’—_Journal of
Education._
THE ASCENDANCY OF FRANCE, 1598-1715
By H. O. WAKEMAN, M.A., Late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Forming Volume V. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘His story is no dry compendium, but a drama, each act and scene of
which has its individual interest.’—_Guardian._
‘Mr. Wakeman has produced an excellent sketch, both clear and
concise.’—_Oxford Magazine._
‘Mr. Wakeman’s book is a sound, able, and useful one, which will alike
give help to the student, and attract the cultivated general
reader.’—_Manchester Guardian._
‘A thoroughly scholarly and satisfactory monograph.’—_Leeds Mercury._
THE BALANCE OF POWER, 1715-1789
By A. HASSALL, M. A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford.
Forming Volume VI. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘Although it contains more than 400 pages, we felt as we read its last
page that it was too short. It is not, however, too short to prevent its
author dealing adequately with his subject according to the scheme of
the whole Series. There is little detail in it, and but little
theorising, and what it contains are clear statements of masterly
summaries.... We may cordially recommend this interesting and
well-written volume.’—_Birmingham Daily Gazette._
‘Treated with much accuracy, patience, and vigour.’—_Educational Times._
‘The author has struggled manfully with the difficulties of his
subject, and not without a distinct measure of success. He has availed
himself of the latest researches on the period, and his narrative is
well ordered and illustrated by excellent maps and some useful
appendices.’—_Manchester Guardian._
REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE, 1789-1815
By H. MORSE STEPHENS, M.A., Professor of History at Cornell University,
Ithaca, U.S.A.
Forming Volume VII. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘As a piece of literary workmanship can hardly be surpassed.... The
result is a boon to students, and a serviceable book of reference for
the general reader.’—_Daily News._
‘Mr. Stephens has written a very valuable and meritorious book, which
ought to be widely used.’—_Manchester Guardian._
‘An admirable, nay, a masterly work.’—_Academy._
‘To say that Mr. Morse Stephens has compiled the best English textbook
on the subject would be faint praise.’—_Journal of Education._
‘We are happy to extend a hearty welcome to this much-needed Series,
which, if it throughout keeps on the same high level of this volume,
will fill up a painful gap in our accessible historical
literature.’—_Educational Times._
‘The volume contains one of the clearest accounts of the French
Revolution and the rise of the First Napoleon ever written. In fact, it
is the work of a real historian. The style of the book is strong and
picturesque.’—_Western Morning News._
MODERN EUROPE, 1815-1899
By W. ALISON PHILLIPS, M.A., formerly Senior Scholar of St. John’s
College, Oxford.
Forming Volume VIII. of PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY.
‘An exceedingly difficult task has been accomplished, we may say without
hesitation, to admiration. We have read the book with the keenest and
quite unflagging enjoyment, and we welcome it as one of the very best
histories that have been written within the last few years.’—_Guardian._
‘It has achieved, with a remarkable success, the difficult task of
compressing into a compact space the long history of a time of
extraordinary complications and entanglements; but—much more
important—it has never lost vigour and interest throughout the whole
survey.... The completeness of the book is really extraordinary....
The book is by far the best and handiest account of the
international politics of the nineteenth century that we possess....
Should give Mr. Alison Phillips distinct rank among historians of
the day.’—_Literature._
‘Altogether, the book offers a most luminous and quite adequate
treatment of its subject, and makes a worthy conclusion of a Series that
well deserves to be popular.’—_Glasgow Herald._
‘He presents his materials with model clearness and arrangement, and
with a sound literary style, which will make the book attractive to the
general reader as well as useful to the student.’—_Scotsman._
‘Mr. Phillips shows decided literary power in the handling of a not too
manageable period, and few readers with any appreciation of the march of
history, having once commenced the book, will be content to lay it aside
until the last page is reached.’—_Manchester Guardian._
‘This thoughtful volume will give the intelligent reader both profit and
pleasure.’—_Spectator._
THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
1272-1494
BY
R. LODGE, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
_PERIOD III_
RIVINGTONS
_34 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN_
LONDON
1906
_Third Edition. Fourth Impression_
PREFACE
The period treated in this volume is one of unique interest and
significance in the history of Europe. Within these two centuries the
political and social conditions of the so-called Middle Ages came to an
end, and the states system of Modern Europe took its rise. But the
importance of the period is more than equalled by the almost superhuman
difficulty of narrating its events in anything like orderly and
intelligible sequence. Such unity as had been given to Western Europe by
the mediæval Empire and Papacy disappeared with the Great Interregnum in
the middle of the thirteenth century; and such unity as was afterwards
supplied by the growth of formal international relations cannot be said
to begin before the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII. of France at the
end of the fifteenth century. In the interval between these two dates
there is apparent chaos, and only the closest attention can detect the
germs of future order in the midst of the struggle of dying and nascent
forces. It is easy to find evidence of astounding intellectual activity
and instances of brilliant political and military achievement, but the
dominant characteristic of the age is its diversity, and it is hard to
find any principle of co-ordination. A cursory glance over some of the
most striking episodes of the period will serve to illustrate the
multiplicity of its interests. The hundred years’ war between England
and France; the rise and fall of the House of Burgundy; the struggle of
old and new conceptions of ecclesiastical polity in the Papal schism, in
the Councils of Constance and Basel, and in the Hussite movement; the
marvellous achievements of the republic of Venice, and of Florence under
both republican and Medicean rule; the revival of art and letters, not
only in one or two great centres, but in numerous petty states which
would otherwise be wholly obscure; the growth and decline of unique
corporations, such as the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Order; the
extension and gradual union of the Christian states of Spain at the
expense of Mohammedanism, and at the same time the gloomy story of the
conquest of the Eastern Empire by the Turks;—all these episodes might
well be treated in a volume apiece, but it is difficult to arrange them
within the compass of a book which should deal with the general
development of Europe. No doubt it may be held that some of these events
are of more permanent importance than others, and that the essential
fact to grasp in the period is the rise of great and coherent states
like France, Spain, and England. But it is equally true that the
important events are unintelligible without some knowledge of the less
important events with which they are connected; that in this period
Germany and Italy are more prominent than Spain and England, or even
than France; and that Germany and Italy are not coherent states at all.
The former is a bundle of states, and the latter can hardly be said to
be as much. And it may be urged with some force that German history in
the fourteenth century cannot be studied without some attention being
paid to Poland, Hungary, and Denmark; that the history of Venice and
Florence cannot be isolated from that of Genoa and Pisa; and that even
in tracing the growth of states which achieved some measure of unity it
is necessary to note the absorption of the formerly distinct and
independent provinces.
I have stated the difficulty, which is indeed sufficiently obvious, but
I cannot claim to have found a thoroughly satisfactory solution. My
endeavour has been to make the narrative as clear and intelligible as
the conflicting needs of conciseness and of frequent transitions will
admit. I may perhaps point out to my readers that in an age in which
dynastic interests and claims become of greater and greater importance,
in which royal marriages are a prominent factor in international
politics and vitally affect the growth of the greatest states, a careful
study of genealogy is imperatively necessary. This will explain and
justify the insertion of a number of genealogical tables in the
Appendix, which the student of the period may find not the least useful
part of the volume.
R. LODGE.
EDINBURGH, _April 1901_.
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE x
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xii
I. GERMANY AND THE EMPIRE AFTER THE 1
INTERREGNUM, 1273-1313
II. ITALY AND THE PAPACY, 1273-1313 20
III. FRANCE UNDER THE LATER CAPETS, 43
1270-1328
IV. FRANCE UNDER THE EARLY VALOIS, 66
1328-1380
V. LEWIS THE BAVARIAN AND THE AVIGNON 98
POPES, 1314-1347
VI. CHARLES IV. AND THE GOLDEN BULL 109
VII. RISE OF THE SWISS CONFEDERATION 124
VIII. ITALY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, 139
1313-1402
IX. THE SCHISMS IN THE PAPACY AND 182
EMPIRE, 1378-1414
X. THE HUSSITE MOVEMENT AND THE COUNCIL 206
OF CONSTANCE, 1409-1418
XI. THE HUSSITE WARS AND THE COUNCIL OF 222
BASEL, 1419-1449
XII. MILAN AND VENICE IN THE FIFTEENTH 243
CENTURY, 1402-1494
XIII. NAPLES AND THE PAPAL STATES IN THE 265
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
XIV. FLORENCE UNDER THE MEDICI 288
XV. BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS IN FRANCE, 315
1380-1435
XVI. REVIVAL OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY, 349
1435-1494
XVII. GERMANY AND THE HAPSBURG EMPERORS, 394
1437-1493
XVIII. THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE AND THE 419
SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOM
XIX. THE TEUTONIC ORDER AND POLAND 451
XX. THE CHRISTIAN STATES OF SPAIN 468
XXI. THE GREEK EMPIRE AND THE OTTOMAN 494
TURKS
XXII. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 515
APPENDIX—GENEALOGICAL TABLES—
A—The Succession in Bohemia 535
B—The Succession in Tyrol 535
C—The House of Hapsburg 536
D—The House of Wittelsbach 537
E—The House of Luxemburg 538
F—The Later Capets in France 539
G—The House of Valois 540
H—The Duchy and County of Burgundy 541
I—The First House of Anjou in Naples and 542
Hungary
K—The Second House of Anjou in Naples 543
L—The House of Aragon in Sicily and 544
Naples
M—The Houses of Visconti and Sforza in 545
Milan
N—The Medici in Florence 546
O—The Union of Kalmar 546
P—The Palæologi 547
Q—Castile 548
R—Aragon 549
S—Navarre 550
T—Some European Connections of the House 551
of Portugal
INDEX 553
LIST OF MAPS
_At end of Book_
1. FRANCE, TO SHOW THE ADDITIONST TO THE MONARCHY BETWEEN 1273 AND 1494.
2. POSSESSIONS AND CLAIMS OF CHARLES THE BOLD, DUKE OF BURGUNDY,
1467-1477.
3. ITALY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
4. THE SWISS CONFEDERATION.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
[The following list has no pretensions to be an exhaustive bibliography
of the period, nor does it profess to include all the authorities
consulted by the author. It is merely compiled with the object of
offering suggestions to any student who wishes to read more widely,
either on the whole period, or on any part of it. Those books which
cannot be classed under any of the great European states are placed
under the head of ‘General.’]
GENERAL—
Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Générale du IV^e. Siècle à nos jours_,
Tome III.
Creighton, _History of the Papacy during the Reformation, Vols.
I.-III._
Froissart, _Chroniques_. [A popular and useful selection from the
translation of Lord Berners has been published by Messrs. Macmillan
and Co. in the ‘Globe’ Series. The most complete edition is that by
Kervyn de Lettenhove.]
Leroux, _Recherches Critiques sur les relations politiques de la
France avec l’Allemagne_.
Fournier, _Le Royaume d`Arles_.
Oman, _History of War in the Middle Ages_.
H. C. Lea, _History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages_.
R. L. Poole, _Illustrations of Medieval Thought_.
GERMANY—
Nitzsch, _Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes_.
Lorenz, _Deutsche Geschichte im 13-14 Jahrhunderte_.
Zeller, _Histoire de l’Allemagne_.
Droysen, _Geschichte der preussischen Politik, Vols. I. and II._
Dierauer, _Geschichte der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_.
Palacky, _Geschichte von Böhmen_.
Loserth, _Hus und Wiclif_ (translated).
Sartorius, _Geschichte des Ursprunges der Deutschen Hanse_.
Schäfer, _die Hansestädte und König Waldemar von Dänemark_.
Treitschke, _Das Deutsche Ordensland Preussen, Historische und
politische Aufsätze, Vol. II._
ITALY—
Villani, _Croniche_.
Sismondi, _Histoire des Républiques italiennes du moyen âge_.
Cipolla, _Storia delle Signorie Italiane, dal 1313 al 1530_.
Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter_ (translated).
Romanin, _Storia documentata di Venezia_.
H. F. Brown, _Venice, an Historical Sketch_.
Machiavelli, _Storia Fiorentina_.
Perrens, _Histoire de Florence_.
Guido Capponi, _Storia della republica di Firenze_.
Napier, _Florentine History_.
Villari, _Machiavelli_ (translated), _Vol. I._
Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de’ Medici_ (translated).
Armstrong, _Lorenzo de’ Medici_.
J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_.
FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS—
Martin, _Histoire de France_.
Michelet, _Histoire de France_.
Langlois, _Le règne de Philippe le Hardi_.
Boutaric, _La France sous Philippe le Bel_.
Perrens, _Étienne Marcel_.
S. Luce, _Histoire de la Jacquerie_.
Vanderkindere, _Le siècle des Arteveldes_.
Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII._
Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII._
Cosneau, _Le Connétable de Richemont_.
P. Clément, _Jacques Cœur et Charles VII._
Philippe de Commines, _Mémoires_.
Barante, _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_.
Kirk, _History of Charles the Bold_.
Clamageran, _Histoire de l’Impôt en France_.
Gasquet, _Précis des Institutions Politiques et Sociales de
l’ancienne France_.
SPAIN—
Lafuente, _Historia general de España_.
Burke, _History of Spain, 2 vols._
Schäfer und Schirrmacher, _Geschichte von Spanien_.
Prescott, _Ferdinand and Isabella_.
FALL OF THE GREEK EMPIRE—
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_.
Finlay, _Byzantine and Greek Empires_
La Jonquière, _Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman_.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
[This table has been drawn up in order to bring together in their
chronological sequence those events in different parts of Europe which
are necessarily treated in the text under the head of different states.
The chief events in English History are inserted to serve as
guide-posts, even though in some cases no direct reference may be made
to them in the following pages.]
1273. Election of Rudolf of Hapsburg as King of 8
the Romans. Crowned at Aachen, October 24
1274. Death of Henry, King of Navarre and Count of 48
Champagne and Brie. Philip III. of France annexes
Champagne and Brie, and assumes the government of
Navarre
1276. First war between Rudolf I. and Ottokar of 9
Bohemia
“ Death of Pope Gregory X. 27
“ Death of James I. (the Conqueror) of Aragon. 479
Accession of Peter III.
1277. Election of Pope Nicolas III. 27
“ Archbishop Otto Visconti obtains the lordship 36
of Milan
1278. Ottokar of Bohemia killed in the battle of 10
Marchfeld (August 26). Accession of Wenzel II.
1280. The Teutonic Knights complete the conquest 456
of Prussia
“ Death of Pope Nicolas III. 27
1281. Election of Pope Martin IV. 28
1282. The Sicilian Vespers (March 30) lead to the 25
transfer of Sicily from the house of Anjou to
Peter III. of Aragon
“ Constitutional changes in Florence 32
“ Austria, Styria, and Carniola acquired by 10
house of Hapsburg, and Carinthia given to Meinhard
of Tyrol
“ Death of the Greek Emperor Michael VIII., and 497
accession of Andronicus II.
“ Edward I. of England conquers Wales 155
1283. Peter III. of Aragon issues the ‘General 481
Privilege’
1284. Battle of Meloria. The Pisans, defeated by 31
the Genoese, lose their maritime importance
“ Death of Alfonso X. (the Wise) of Castile. 48,
Accession of Sancho IV. 470
“ Charles of Valois accepts the crown of Aragon 49
from the Pope. War between France and Aragon
1285. Death of Charles I., King of Naples (January 25
7). Accession of Charles II.
“ Death of Pope Martin IV. (March 12). Election 28
of Honorius IV.
“ Death of Philip III. of France (October 5). 49
Accession of Philip IV.
“ Death of Peter III. of Aragon (November 11). 25,
Accession of Alfonso III. in Aragon and of James 480
in Sicily
1286. Accession of Eric Menved in Denmark 430
“ Death of Alexander III. of Scotland 157
1287. Alfonso III. of Aragon issues the ‘Privilege 481
of Union’
1288. Death of Pope Honorius IV. Election of 28
Nicolas IV.
1291. Death of Rudolf I. (July 15) 11
“ Formation of League between Uri, Schwyz, and 127
Unterwalden (origin of Swiss Confederation)
“ Fall of Acre puts an end to Christian dominion 456
in the East
“ Death of Alfonso III. of Aragon. Succeeded by 26,
his brother, James II. 480
1292. Election of Adolf of Nassau as King of the 11
Romans (May 5)
“ Death of Nicolas IV., followed by two years’ 28
interregnum in the Papacy
“ Edward I. awards the Scottish crown to John 157
Balliol
1293. ‘Ordinances of Justice’ in Florence 32
1294. Election of Pope Celestine IV. 28
“ Abdication of Celestine. Election of Boniface 28
VIII.
“ Outbreak of war between England and France 51
1295. John Balliol joins France against Edward I. 52
“ Death of Archbishop Otto Visconti. Succeeded 36
by his nephew Matteo
“ Death of Sancho IV. of Castile. Accession of 470
Ferdinand IV.
1296. Edward I. deposes John Balliol and conquers 52
Scotland
“ Boniface VIII. issues the bull _Clericis 29,
laicos_ 52
1297. Rising in Scotland under Wallace 160
“ Closing of the Great Council in Venice 38
1298. Peace between England and France negotiated 52
by Boniface VIII.
1298. Death of Adolf of Nassau. Election of Albert 13
I.
1302. Settlement of the long Sicilian wars. 26
Frederick, brother of James II. of Aragon,
recognised as King of Sicily
“ Defeat of French army by the Flemings at 53
Courtrai (July 11)
“ First meeting of the States-General in France 60
“ Matteo Visconti driven from Milan 36
1303. Outrage at Anagni, and death of Boniface 29
VIII.
“ Andronicus II. invites the ‘Grand Company of 497
the Catalans’ into Greece
1304. Election (February 25) and death (July 27) 29
of Benedict XI.
1305. Election of Clement VII., who remains in 30
France
“ Death of Wenzel II. of Bohemia. Election of 15
Wenzel III.
1306. Death of Wenzel III. of Bohemia. Albert I. 15
procures the crown for his son Rudolf
1307. Death of Rudolf of Bohemia. Accession of 16
Henry of Carinthia
“ Break-up of Seljuk Empire on death of Aladdin 299
III.
1308. Murder of Albert I. Election of Henry VII. 17
(of Luxemburg)
1309. Charles Robert, grandson of Charles II. of 15
Naples, recognised as King of Hungary
“ Headquarters of the Teutonic Order transferred 457
from Venice to Marienburg
“ Clement V. fixes his residence in Avignon 30
“ Death of Charles II. of Naples. Accession of 26
Robert
1310. Origin of the Council of Ten in Venice 39
“ Henry VII. sets out on an expedition to Italy 17,
39
“ Henry of Carinthia driven from Bohemia, and 18
the crown given to Henry VII.’s son John
1311. Henry VII. restores Matteo Visconti in 40
Milan, and appoints him imperial vicar
“ The Teutonic Knights acquire Pomerellen 458
1312. Suppression of the Templars 55
“ Annexation of Lyons by Philip IV. of France 56
“ Henry VII. crowned Emperor in St. John Lateran 41
“ Death of Ferdinand IV. of Castile. Accession 470
of Alfonso XI.
1313. Death of Henry VII. near Siena 18,
42
1314. Battle of Bannockburn (June 24) 168
“ Double election in Germany of Lewis the 98
Bavarian and Frederick of Hapsburg
“ Death of Philip IV. of France (November 29). 62
Accession of Louis X.
“ Death of Clement V., and papal interregnum for 98
two years
1315. Swiss victory at the battle of Morgarten 129
1316. Election of Pope John XXII. 99
“ Death of Louis X. of France. Exclusion of his 64
daughter Jeanne in favour of her uncle, Philip V.
(so-called Salic Law)
1319. Death of Eric Menved, and accession of 431
Christopher II. in Denmark
1322. Defeat and capture of Frederick of Hapsburg 99
at Mühldorf
“ Death of Philip V. of France. Accession of 65
Charles IV.
“ Galeazzo Visconti succeeds his father Matteo 174
in Milan
1323. Lewis the Bavarian protests against the 99
intervention of John XXII. Beginning of quarrel
between Empire and Papacy
“ Death of Waldemar, the last Ascanian Margrave 107
of Brandenburg. Lewis the Bavarian gives
Brandenburg to his eldest son Lewis
1326. Orchan succeeds Othman as leader of the 499
Ottoman Turks
1327. Lewis the Bavarian enters Italy and is 105
crowned in Milan
1328. Lewis crowned Emperor in Rome 105
“ Deposition of John XXII., and election of 105
anti-pope
“ Scottish independence recognised by treaty of 68
Northampton
“ Death of Charles IV. of France. Accession of 65
Philip VI. (of Valois)
“ Separation of France and Navarre: the latter 66
goes to Jeanne, daughter of Louis X.
“ Philip VI. defeats the Flemings at Cassel 70
“ Andronicus II. deposed in favour of his 498
grandson, Andronicus III.
“ Death of Castruccio Castracani, Lord of Lucca 105,
143
“ Death of Galeazzo Visconti 174
1329. Orchan defeats the forces of Andronicus III. 499
at Pelekanon
“ Mastino della Scala succeeds Cangrande in 143
Verona
“ Azzo Visconti becomes imperial vicar in Milan 143,
174
1330. Death of Frederick of Hapsburg 105
“ Lewis the Bavarian returns to Germany 105
“ Luzern joins the league of the Swiss cantons 130
“ John of Bohemia enters Italy and occupies 144
Brescia
1332. League of Italian states against John of 145
Bohemia
“ Edward Balliol obtains the Scottish crown, and 68
does homage to Edward III.
“ Death of Christopher II. followed by eight 432
years’ interregnum in Denmark
1333. John of Bohemia abandons Italy 146
“ Edward III. wins battle of Halidon Hill, takes 68
Berwick, and restores Edward Balliol
“ David Bruce escapes to France, and French 68
intervention in Scotland
1334. Death of John XXII., and election of 102
Benedict XII.
1335. Death of Henry, Duke of Carinthia and Count 106
of Tyrol
“ Carinthia acquired by Hapsburgs, while Tyrol 107
goes to Margaret Maultasch, wife of John Henry of
Moravia
1336. Rudolf Brun effects a revolution in Zürich 131
“ Rising in Ghent under Jacob van Artevelde 71
“ Death of James III. of Aragon, and accession 481
of Peter IV.
1337. Edward III. claims the French crown and 71
seeks allies in Flanders and Germany
1338. Electoral meeting at Rense, and diet at 102
Frankfurt to protest against papal pretensions in
Germany
“ Meeting of Lewis the Bavarian and Edward III. 72
at Coblentz
“ League against Mastino della Scala. Verona 147
loses its ascendency in northern Italy
1339. Edward III. invades France from Flanders. 72
Beginning of Hundred Years’ War. Unsuccessful
campaign in Picardy
“ Death of Azzo Visconti. Succeeded by his uncle 175
Lucchino
1340. Naval victory of the English at Sluys 72
“ Edward repulsed from Tournay, concludes truce 72
with Philip VI.
“ Succession dispute in Brittany on death of 73
John III.
“ Alfonso XI. of Castile defeats the Moors in 471
battle of the Salado
“ Waldemar III. restores monarchical power in 433
Denmark
1341. Lewis the Bavarian divorces Margaret of 107
Maultasch from John Henry of Moravia, and marries
her to his son, Lewis of Brandenburg
“ Death of Andronicus III., and accession of 500
John V.
1342. Edward III. supports John de Montfort in 73
Brittany
“ Death of Carobert of Hungary, and accession of 152
Lewis the Great
“ Death of Benedict XII., and election of 106
Clement VI.
1343. Death of Robert of Naples, and accession of 152
Joanna I.
“ Expulsion of Walter de Brienne, and 148
constitutional changes in Florence
“ Treaty of Kalisch between Poland and the 458
Teutonic Order
1345. Murder of Andrew of Hungary, husband of 152
Joanna of Naples
1345. Assassination of Jacob van Artevelde 74
“ Death of William IV. of Holland, Hainault, and 75,
Zealand. His territories pass to a son of Lewis 108
the Bavarian
1346. Opposition in Germany to Lewis the Bavarian. 108
Election of Charles IV. as King of the Romans
“ Battle of Crécy 76
“ Death of John of Bohemia 108
“ Defeat of the Scots at Nevill’s Cross 77
“ Esthonia handed over by Denmark to the 458
Teutonic Order
1347. Lewis the Great of Hungary attacks Naples. 153
Joanna flies to Provence
“ Triumph of Rienzi in Rome 157
“ Edward III. takes Calais (August 4) 77
“ Death of Lewis the Bavarian (October 11) 108
“ Abdication of Rienzi (December 15) 159
“ John Cantacuzenos recognised as joint emperor 501
in Constantinople
1348. Outbreak of the Black Death in Europe 78
“ Battle of Epila. Peter IV. of Aragon revokes 482
the ‘Privilege of Union’
“ Lewis de Mâle recovers his authority as Count 78
of Flanders
“ Foundation of the University of Prague by 113
Charles IV.
“ Joanna of Naples sells Avignon to Pope Clement 153
VI.
1349. Death of Lucchino Visconti. Succeeded by 175
Giovanni, Archbishop of Milan
“ Annexation of Dauphiné to France 78
“ Death of Jeanne of Navarre, and accession of 79
Charles the Bad
“ Charles IV. succeeds in overcoming opposition 111
in Germany
1350. Death of Philip VI. of France (August 22), 79
and accession of John
“ Death of Eudes IV., Duke and Count of 79
Burgundy. Succeeded by Philip de Rouvre
“ Death of Alfonso XI. of Castile, and accession 471
of Peter the Cruel
“ Giovanni Visconti obtains Bologna 160,
175
“ Outbreak of war between Venice and Genoa 170
1351. Zürich joins the Swiss League 132
“ Peace between Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of 153
Naples
1352. Albert II. of Austria attacks Zürich. Glarus 134
and Zug join the Confederation
“ Death of Pope Clement VI., and election of 160
Innocent VI.
1353. The accession of Bern completes the eight 135
old cantons of the Swiss Confederation
“ Innocent VI. sends Cardinal Albornoz to 160
recover the Papal States, almost lost during the
residence in Avignon
“ Genoa, defeated in naval war with Venice, 170
submits to Milan
1354. Rienzi’s return to Rome and his death 161
“ Genoese victory in the battle of Sapienza 171
“ Death of Giovanni Visconti. Milanese dominions 175
divided between his three nephews
“ John Cantacuzenos compelled to abdicate 502
“ Turks seize Gallipoli, their first possession 502
on European soil
1355. Renewal of English invasion of France 80
“ Charles IV. crowned Emperor in Rome 114
“ Important meeting of States-General in France 81
“ Conspiracy and death of Marin Falier in Venice 169
“ Peace between Venice and Genoa 171
“ Assassination of Matteo Visconti. Partition of 176
Milanese territories between Bernabo and Galeazzo
“ Death of Stephen Dushan, King of Servia 501
1356. Battle of Poitiers, and capture of John of 81
France
“ States-General under the guidance of Etienne 83
Marcel
“ Charles IV. issues the Golden Bull 115
“ Genoa repudiates Milanese suzerainty 171,
176
1358. Rising of the Jacquerie in France 87
“ Assassination of Marcel, and restoration of 88
order and royal authority by Charles, Duke of
Normandy, acting as regent during his father’s
captivity
“ Death of Albert II. of Austria, leaving his 136
territories to the joint rule of four sons
1359. Death of Orchan. Succeeded by Amurath or 502
Murad I.
1360. Treaty of Bretigni (May 8) ends first period 89
of the Hundred Years’ War
“ Cardinal Albornoz recovers Bologna from the 161,
Visconti 177
1361. Death of Philip de Rouvre. Duchy of Burgundy 90
granted by John of France to his fourth son,
Philip
“ Sack of Wisby by Waldemar III. Beginning of 433
war between Denmark and the Hanseatic League
“ Amurath I. seizes Adrianople, which becomes 502
the European capital of the Turks till 1453
1362. Death of Pope Innocent VI., and election of 161
Urban V.
“ Defeat of the Hanseatic League by Danish fleet 434
1363. Death of Meinhard, Duke of Upper Bavaria and 120
Count of Tyrol. Upper Bavaria united with Lower
Bavaria: Tyrol acquired by the Hapsburgs
“ Marriage of Margaret of Denmark to Hakon of 435
Norway
1364. John of France returns to England and dies 188
there. Accession of Charles V.
“ Treaty of mutual inheritance between the 120
houses of Luxemburg and Hapsburg
“ Charles of Blois killed at battle of Aurai 92
“ Deposition of Magnus of Sweden in favour of 436
Albert of Mecklenburg
1365. Death of Rudolf of Hapsburg 137
“ Settlement of Breton war by the recognition of 92
John de Montfort
“ Treaty of Wordingborg between Waldemar III. 436
and Hanse towns
1366. Peter the Cruel, driven from Castile by 93,
Henry of Trastamara, flies to the Black Prince at 473
Bordeaux
1367. The Black Prince wins the battle of Najara, 93,
and restores Peter the Cruel in Castile 473
“ Urban V. returns from Avignon to Rome 162
“ Meeting of Hanseatic League at Cologne 437
declares war against Denmark
1368. Charles IV. visits Urban V. in Rome 162
“ Death of Cardinal Albornoz 162,
177
“ Triumph of the Hanseatic fleet: capture of 438
Copenhagen
1369. Battle of Montiel. Death of Peter the Cruel. 94,
Accession of Henry of Trastamara (Henry II.) in 474
Castile
“ Renewal of war between France and England 94
“ The eastern Emperor John V. visits Rome, and 503
agrees to a union between the Greek and Latin
Churches
1370. Partition of Hapsburg territories between 137,
Albert III. and Leopold 398
“ Massacre at Limoges by order of the Black 95
Prince
“ Urban V. returns from Rome to Avignon 162
“ Treaty of Stralsund. Hanseatic League at the 438
zenith of its power
“ Death of Casimir the Great of Poland. 459
Succeeded by Lewis of Hungary
1372. Defeat of the English fleet by Spaniards and 95
French off La Rochelle
1373. Disastrous expedition of John of Gaunt to 95
France
“ The Emperor Charles IV. acquires Brandenburg 441
1375. Truce between England and France, leaving 96
England in occupation of Calais, Bordeaux, and
Bayonne
“ Death of Waldemar III. of Denmark. Accession 442
of Olaf
1376. Death of the Black Prince (June 8) 96
“ Election of Wenzel as King of the Romans 121
1377. Death of Edward III. of England. Accession 96
of Richard II.
“ Gregory XI. leaves Avignon for Rome 162,
185
1378. Death of Gregory XI. in Rome. Election of 162,
Urban VI. 185
“ Rising of the ‘Ciompi’ in Florence 164
“ Outbreak of war between Venice and Genoa 172
“ Galeazzo Visconti dies and is succeeded by 177
Gian Galeazzo
“ Election of anti-pope Clement VII. (Sept. 20). 122,
Beginning of the great schism 162,
186
“ Death of the Emperor Charles IV. (Nov. 29). 123
Partition of his dominions
1379. The Genoese seize Chioggia and blockade 172
Venice
“ Death of Henry II. of Castile, and accession 474
of John I.
1380. Death of Charles V. of France, and accession 97,
of Charles VI. 315
“ Death of Hakon of Norway. Union of Norway and 442
Denmark under Olaf
“ The Genoese are forced to capitulate at 173
Chioggia. Triumph of Venice
“ Death of Lewis the Great, King of Hungary and 190,
Poland 459
1381. Rising of the lower classes in England 316
1382. Counter-revolution in Florence establishes 166
oligarchy
“ Rising of the _Maillotins_ in Paris 317
“ Rising of the Flemings under Philip van 317
Artevelde
“ French defeat of the Flemings at Roosebek 318
“ Suppression of the _Maillotins_ in Paris 318
“ Death of Joanna I. of Naples. Accession of 154
Charles III.
1383. Death of Lewis de Mâle. His son-in-law, 320
Philip of Burgundy, acquires Flanders, Artois,
Nevers, Rethel, and Franche-Comté
1385. Gian Galeazzo Visconti imprisons his uncle, 177
Bernabo, and reunites the Milanese dominions
“ Charles III. of Naples claims crown of Hungary 191
“ Portuguese victory at Aljubarrota over 474
Castilians
“ Death of Louis of Anjou, who had obtained 154
Provence but had been defeated by Charles III. as
a claimant to Naples
1386. Jagello of Lithuania marries Hedwig, younger 191,
daughter of Lewis the Great, becomes a Christian, 459
and is crowned King of Poland
1386. Valentina Visconti married to Louis of 178,
Orleans 321
“ Charles III. of Naples assassinated in Hungary 155,
191
“ Swiss victory at Sempach. Defeat and death of 138
Leopold of Hapsburg
“ John of Gaunt advances the claim of his wife, 474
Constance, in Castile
“ Schleswig ceded by Denmark to Count of 442
Holstein
1387. Sigismund of Luxemburg crowned King of 192
Hungary
“ Outbreak of town-war in Germany 189
“ Death of Peter IV. of Aragon. Accession of 482
John I.
“ John of Gaunt withdraws his wife’s claim and 475
makes peace with John I. of Castile
“ Gian Galeazzo seizes Verona and Vicenza, and 179
ruins the house of Scala
“ Death of Olaf of Denmark and Norway. Succeeded 443
by his mother, Margaret
1388. Padua subjected by Gian Galeazzo Visconti 179
“ Albert of Sweden deposed; crown offered to 443
Margaret of Denmark and Norway
1389. Peace of Eger closes the town-war in Germany 190
“ Hapsburgs recognise by treaty the independence 138
of the Swiss Confederation
“ Turkish victory at Kossova 503
“ Amurath I. succeeded by Bajazet I. 503
“ Death of Urban VI. Election of Boniface IX. 187
1390. Death of John I. of Castile, and accession 475
of Henry III.
1391. Mary of Sicily marries Martin the Younger, 482
son of Martin I. of Aragon
“ Death of Greek emperor, John V., and accession 504
of Manuel II.
1392. Charles VI. becomes insane. The Dukes of 319
Burgundy and Orleans dispute for the government of
France
1394. Death of Avignon Pope, Clement VII. Election 187
of Benedict XIII.
1395. Wenzel creates Gian Galeazzo Duke of Milan 178
1396. Genoa submits to France through fear of 180
Milan
“ Battle of Nicopolis 193,
322,
504
1397. The three Scandinavian kingdoms accept the 443
Union of Kalmar
1398. Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI. of France 194
at Rheims
1399. Gian Galeazzo obtains rule in Pisa and Siena 181
“ Ladislas, son of Charles III., finally secures 155,
crown of Naples against Louis II. of Anjou 266
1399. Revolution in England. Accession of Henry 325
IV. (of Lancaster)
1400. A party of German princes depose Wenzel and 181,
elect a rival King of the Romans, Rupert III. 195
1401. Battle of Brescia (Oct. 24): Milanese troops 181,
rout the forces of Rupert III. 196
1402. Death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti (Sept. 3) 181,
241
“ Battle of Angora: Timour defeats the Turks and 505
captures Bajazet I. Constantinople saved for the
time
1404. Death of Philip the Bold of Burgundy. 322
Succeeded by John the Fearless
“ Death of Boniface IX. Election of Innocent 187
VII.
“ Venice allied with Milan against Francesco 245
Carrara
1405. Death of Innocent VII. Election of Gregory 187
XII.
“ Venice acquires Verona and Padua 245
“ Death of Timour or Tamerlane, the Tartar 505
leader
1406. Pisa subjected to Florence (Oct. 9) 244
“ Death of Henry III. of Castile, and accession 475
of John II.
1407. Assassination of Louis of Orleans in Paris 322
1408. Ladislas of Naples occupies Rome 266
1409. Council of Pisa. Election of a third Pope, 199
Alexander V.
“ Exodus of Germans from Prague 210
“ Death of Martin the Younger. Sicily passes to 482
his father, Martin I. of Aragon
1410. Outbreak of civil war between Burgundians 326
and Armagnacs in France
“ Death of Pope Alexander V. Election of John 201
XXIII.
“ Death of Rupert III., King of the Romans 201
“ Double election of Sigismund (Sept.) and Jobst 203
(Oct.)
“ Recovery of Rome from Ladislas of Naples 267
“ Battle of Tannenberg: defeat of the Teutonic 460
knights by the Poles
“ Death of Martin I., King of Aragon and Sicily. 483
Disputed succession
1411. Death of Jobst of Moravia (Jan. 12) 203
“ Sigismund again elected King of the Romans 204
“ The _Cabochiens_ supreme in Paris 327
“ Ladislas defeated by papal and Angevin forces 267
at Rocca-Secca
“ Peace of Thorn between Poland and the Teutonic 461
Order
1412. Assassination of Gian Maria Visconti. 246
Filippo Maria rules in Milan
1412. Death of Margaret, ‘the Union Queen.’ 444
Accession of Eric of Pomerania, in the
Scandinavian kingdoms
“ Crowns of Aragon and Sicily given to Ferdinand 483
I. (of Castilian house of Trastamara)
1413. The Armagnacs seize Paris and put down the 327
_Cabochiens_
“ Ladislas of Naples drives John XXIII. from 267
Rome
“ Mohammed I. reunites the Ottoman dominions 505
1414. Defeat of the Burgundians. Treaty of Arras 327
“ Death of Ladislas of Naples. Accession of 205,
Joanna II. 267
“ Meeting of the Council of Constance 205,
211
1415. Henry V. invades France. Capture of Harfleur 328
(Sept. 22). Battle of Agincourt
“ Deposition of John XXIII. at Constance (May 216
29)
“ Sigismund gives Brandenburg to Frederick of 216
Hohenzollern
“ John Hus put to death at Constance (July 6) 217
“ Sigismund leaves Constance to travel through 217
Europe
“ Spanish kings abandon Benedict XIII. and 218
adhere to the Council of Constance
1416. Death of Ferdinand I. of Aragon and Sicily. 484
Succeeded by Alfonso V.
1417. Sigismund returns to Constance 219
“ Election of Pope Martin V. ends the schism 220
“ Death of Louis II. of Anjou, unsuccessful 269
claimant to Naples
“ Death of Maso degli Albizzi, leader of the 289
Florentine oligarchs
“ Henry V. renews the invasion of Normandy 331
1418. Dissolution of the Council of Constance 220
“ Burgundians seize Paris from the Armagnacs 331
1419. Death of Wenzel. Vacancy of Bohemian throne 224
“ Fall of Rouen completes the English conquest 331
of Normandy
“ Assassination of John the Fearless at 332
Montereau (Sept. 10)
“ Philip the Good, who succeeds to the 332
Burgundian dominions, allies himself closely with
England
1420. Martin V. publishes a crusade against the 225
Hussites
“ Treaty of Troyes (May 21) gives the regency 332
and the succession in France to Henry V.
“ The Hussites in Bohemia formulate the ‘four 223
articles of Prag’
1421. Martin V. re-enters Rome with the help of 221
the Colonnas
“ Battle of Baugé: defeat and death of Thomas of 333
Clarence
“ Death of Mohammed I. Succeeded by Amurath II. 506
1422. Death of Albert III., the last Ascanian 226
Elector of Saxony
“ Establishment of the house of Wettin in Saxony 226
“ Death of Henry V. of England (Aug. 31), and 333
accession of Henry VI.
“ Death of Charles VI. of France. Succeeded in 333
the north by Henry VI., in the south by Charles
VII.
“ Attempted reform of military and financial 227
system in Germany
1423. English and Burgundian victory at Crevant 337
“ Francesco Foscari becomes Doge of Venice 249
1424. John, Duke of Bedford, defeats French and 337
Scots at Verneuil
“ Gloucester marries Jacqueline of Hainault and 337
quarrels with Philip of Burgundy
“ Death of the Hussite leader, John Ziska 225
1425. Death of Manuel II., and accession of John 506
VI. in Constantinople
“ Bedford recalled to England by quarrel of 338
Gloucester and Beaufort
“ League of Florence and Venice against Filippo 249
Maria Visconti
1426. Venice acquires Brescia from Milan 249
1427. Defeat of fourth crusade against the 227
Hussites. Proposed constitutional reforms in
Germany
1428. Siege of Orleans by English and Burgundians 340
“ Venice acquires Bergamo from Milan 249
1429. Jeanne Darc raises siege of Orleans (April 341
19)
“ Charles VI. crowned at Rheims 341
1430. Jeanne Darc captured at Compiègne 344
1431. Trial and execution (May 28) of Jeanne Darc 345
“ Death of Martin V., and election of Eugenius 229
IV.
“ Meeting of the Council of Basel 229
“ Utter failure of the fifth crusade against the 228
Hussites
“ Venetian reverses in the war with Milan 250
1432. Death of Bedford’s wife, Anne of Burgundy 346
“ Trial and execution of Carmagnola 250
“ Bedford marries Jacquetta of Luxemburg 346
“ Quarrel between Eugenius IV. and Council of 230
Basel
“ Sigismund crowned Emperor in Rome 230
1433. Eugenius IV., driven from Rome to Florence, 231
is compelled to recognise the Council of Basel
“ The _Compactata_ arranged between the Hussites 231
and the Council
1433. Exile of Cosimo de’ Medici from Florence 293
1434. Defeat of the Taborites at the battle of 233
Lipan
“ Fall of the Albizzi in Florence. Recall of 294
Cosimo de’ Medici, and establishment of Medicean
ascendency
1435. Treaty of Arras between Philip the Good and 347
Charles VII.
“ Death of Bedford 348
“ Death of Joanna II. of Naples. Disputed 271
succession between Alfonso V. of Aragon and Réné
of Provence
1436. Loss of Paris by the English 350
“ Sigismund at last obtains the Bohemian crown 233
1437. Renewed quarrel between Eugenius IV. and the 235
Council of Basel
“ Death of Sigismund. Albert V. of Austria 398
succeeds in Hungary and Bohemia
1438. Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges 237
“ Election of Albert II. (Albert V. of Austria) 399
as King of the Romans
“ Council at Ferrara, transferred to Florence 236
1439. States-General of Orleans issue the 352
_Ordonnance sur la Gendarmerie_
“ Pragmatic Sanction of Mainz 237
“ Death of Albert II. (Oct. 27) 401
“ Union of Greek and Latin Churches agreed to at 236
Florence
“ Deposition of Eugenius IV. by the Council of 238
Basel
“ Election of anti-pope Felix V. 238
1440. The _Praguerie_ in France 354
“ Election of Frederick III. as King of the 402
Romans
“ Ladislas Postumus becomes Duke of Austria and 409
King of Bohemia
“ The Hungarians elect Ladislas III. of Poland 409
“ ‘Prussian League’ formed in opposition to the 463
Teutonic Order
1441. Peace between Milan and Venice. Venice keeps 251
Brescia and Bergamo
“ Venice acquires possession of Ravenna 251
1442. Alfonso V. of Aragon finally secures the 271
crown of Naples
“ Death of Blanche of Navarre. Her husband, John 485
of Aragon, keeps the crown, excluding his son,
Charles of Viana
1443. Eugenius IV. returns to Rome 239
1444. Battle of Varna. Death of Ladislas of Poland 410,
and Hungary 508
1445. Organisation of standing army in France 354
“ Ladislas Postumus accepted as King of Hungary 410
“ Æneas Sylvius arranges terms between Frederick 240
III. and Eugenius IV.
“ Marriage of Henry VI. of England with Margaret 356
of Anjou
1446. Banishment of the dauphin Louis to Dauphiné 358
1447. Death of Eugenius IV. (Feb. 23), and 241,
election of Nicolas V. 272
“ Death of Filippo Maria Visconti. Republic in 252
Milan
1448. Nicolas V. approves concordat with Germany 241,
273
“ Death of John VI. Succeeded by Constantine 509
Palæologus
“ Death of Christopher vacates the three 446
Scandinavian crowns
“ Swedes elect Karl Knudson 446
“ Christian I. (of Oldenburg) becomes King of 446
Denmark
1449. Dissolution of the Council of Basel 241
“ Renewal of war in France. Invasion of Normandy 357
by the French
1450. Grand jubilee in Rome 242,
273
“ Francesco Sforza makes himself master of Milan 253
“ Disorder in England. Rising of Jack Cade 357
“ Loss of Normandy by the English 357
“ Christian I. of Denmark obtains crown of 446
Norway
1451. French conquest of Guienne 357
“ Death of Amurath II. Succeeded by Mohammed II. 508
1452. Frederick III. crowned Emperor in Rome 411
“ Ladislas Postumus released from tutelage by 411
Frederick III.
1453. Capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II. 509
(May 29)
“ Battle of Castillon (July 17). The English 358
retain only Calais
“ Civil war in Prussia leads to Polish invasion 464
1454. Peace of Lodi between Venice and Milan 253
“ Venice concludes a treaty with the Turks 254
“ Death of John II. of Castile. Succeeded by 476
Henry IV. (‘The Impotent’)
1455. Death of Nicolas V. Election of Calixtus 274
III.
“ Beginning of the Wars of the Roses in England 238
1456. Mohammed II. repulsed from Belgrade 411
“ Death of Hungarian leader, John Hunyadi 411
“ The dauphin Louis, driven from Dauphiné by his 359
father, takes refuge in the Burgundian dominions
1457. Compulsory abdication of Francesco Foscari 254
in Venice
“ Death of Ladislas Postumus. Austria passes to 414
the Styrian branch of the Hapsburgs
1457. Karl Knudson driven from Sweden. Coronation 447
of Christian I. reunites the three Scandinavian
kingdoms
1458. Death of Alfonso V. Aragon, Sicily, and 275,
Sardinia pass to his brother, John II.; Naples to 484
his natural son, Ferrante
“ Election of Mathias Corvinus in Hungary 414
“ Election of George Podiebrad in Bohemia 414
“ Death of Calixtus III. Election of Pius II. 276
“ Servia conquered by the Turks 511
1459. Futile congress at Mantua to arrange a 276
crusade against the Turks
“ Death of Adolf, Count of Holstein and Duke of 447
Schleswig
1460. John of Calabria revives the Angevin claim 277
to Naples
“ Pius II. issues the bull _Execrabilis_ 277,
407
“ Turkish conquest of the Morea 511
“ Death of Prince Henry the Navigator 491
“ Christian I., King of Denmark, etc., obtains 447
Schleswig and Holstein
1461. Death of Charles VII. of France, and 361
accession of Louis XI.
“ Death of Charles of Viana. Rising in Catalonia 486
against John II. of Aragon
“ Mohammed II. subdues the empire of Trebizond 513
“ Yorkist victory at Towton, and accession of 244
Edward IV. in England
1462. John II. of Aragon, hard pressed by 389,
Catalans, cedes Roussillon and Cerdagne to Louis 486
XI.
“ Conquest of Wallachia by the Turks 511
“ Turkish conquests in the Ægean 512
1463. Venice decides to go to war with the Turks 255,
512
1464. Genoa subjected to Milan 260
“ John of Calabria leaves Naples 278
“ Death of Pius II. at Ancona. Election of Paul 280
II.
“ Death of Cosimo de’ Medici 299
“ Conquest of Bosnia by the Turks 511
1465. War of the Public Weal in France 365
“ Louis XI. enters Paris after the battle of 366
Montlhéri
“ Conclusion of the Treaty of Conflans 367
1466. Death of Francesco Sforza. Succeeded by 261
Galeazzo Maria
“ Conspiracy in Florence against Piero de’ 300
Medici
“ Treaty of Thorn: West Prussia ceded to Poland, 465
and East Prussia retained by Teutonic Order as a
Polish fief
1467. Death of Scanderbeg, the defender of Albania 256
against the Turks
1467. Death of Philip the Good, and accession of 369
Charles the Bold
1468. Interview at Péronne between Louis XI. and 370
Charles the Bold
“ Rebellion in Liége forces Louis to make treaty 371
of Péronne
“ War between Hungary and Bohemia 415
1469. Death of Piero de’ Medici. Lorenzo becomes 302
practically lord of Florence
“ Charles the Bold acquires Alsace and the 377
Breisgau from Sigismund of Tyrol
“ Death of John of Calabria 486
“ Marriage of Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand 477
of Aragon
“ Margaret, daughter of Christian I., marries 448
James III. of Scotland
1470. Warwick and Clarence driven from England to 372
France. Reconciliation of Warwick with Margaret of
Anjou
“ Renewed war between Louis XI. and Charles the 374
Bold
1471. Edward IV. of England defeats his opponents 373
at Barnet (April 14) and Tewkesbury (May)
“ Death of George Podiebrad. Bohemians elect 416,
Ladislas, son of Casimir IV. of Poland 465
“ Death of Paul II. Election of Sixtus IV. 281
“ Constitutional changes in Florence strengthen 303
the Medici
1472. Death of Charles of Guienne (May 24) 376
“ Truce between Louis XI. and Charles the Bold 376
“ Altered policy of Charles the Bold 376
“ John II. takes Barcelona and puts down the 486
Catalan rebellion
1473. Death of Nicolas of Calabria. Charles the 378
Bold’s aggressions in Lorraine
“ Interview at Trier between Charles the Bold 378,
and Frederick III. 404
1474. Charles the Bold lays siege to Neuss 378
“ The Swiss stirred into hostility to Charles 379
the Bold
“ Death of Henry IV. of Castile. Accession of 477
Isabella
1475. Edward IV. invades France. Treaty of 381
Pecquigni
“ Charles the Bold overruns Lorraine 381
“ Execution of the Constable St. Pol 383
1476. Charles the Bold undertakes to chastise the 384
Swiss. Battles of Granson (March 2) and Morat
(June 22)
“ Murder of Gian Galeazzo Sforza in Milan 261
1477. Death of Charles the Bold before Nanci (Jan. 386
5)
“ Louis XI. occupies Burgundy, Franche-Comté and 387
Artois
1477. Mary of Burgundy married to Maximilian 388
1478. Conspiracy of the Pazzi in Florence 282,
305
“ Florence at war with Naples and the Papacy 282,
307
1479. Death of John II. of Aragon. Succeeded by 487
Ferdinand the Catholic, but Navarre passes to his
daughter Eleanor
“ Florentine reverses. Lorenzo de’ Medici goes 308
to Naples
“ Regency of Bona of Savoy in Milan overthrown 262
by Ludovico Sforza
“ Treaty of Constantinople ends the long war 256,
between Venice and the Turks 513
1480. Occupation of Otranto by the Turks 283,
310,
513
“ Florence makes peace with Naples and Sixtus 309
IV.
“ Important constitutional changes in Florence 310
“ Death of Réné le Bon, succeeded by Charles of 389
Maine
1481. Death of Mohammed II.. Evacuation of 513
Otranto. Temporary decline of Turkish power
“ Death of Charles of Maine enables Louis XI. to 389
acquire Anjou, Maine, and Provence
1482. Death of Mary of Burgundy 388
“ Treaty of Arras settles the Burgundian 388
succession
“ Venetian attack upon Ferrara 257,
283
“ Coalition of Milan, Naples, and Florence 257,
against Venice and the Papacy 283
1483. Death of Edward IV. of England 388
“ Death of Louis XI. Accession of Charles VIII. 390
Regency of Anne of Beaujeu
“ Sixtus IV. deserts Venice and joins the 284
hostile league
1484. Meeting of States-General at Tours 391
“ Treaty of Bagnolo ends the Ferrarese war 257,
284
“ Death of Sixtus IV., and election of Innocent 284
VIII.
“ War between Mathias Corvinus and Frederick 416
III.
1485. Henry VII. establishes the Tudor dynasty in 391
England
“ Rising of Neapolitan barons against Ferrante. 286
Offer of the crown to Réné of Lorraine
“ Mathias Corvinus seizes Vienna 417
1486. Bartholomew Diaz rounds the Cape of Good 492
Hope
“ Maximilian elected King of the Romans in his 417
father’s lifetime
1488. Death of Francis II. of Brittany. Succeeded 391
by daughter Anne
1490. Death of Mathias Corvinus. Succeeded by 417
Ladislas of Bohemia
1491. Anne of Brittany compelled to marry Charles 392
VIII.
“ Treaty of Pressburg, by which Maximilian 417
recovered the Austrian territories which had been
conquered by Mathias Corvinus
“ End of the regency of Anne of Beaujeu 392
1492. Columbus discovers the new world of America 492
“ Annexation of Moorish kingdom of Granada to 490
Spain
“ Death of Innocent VIII., and election of 287
Alexander VI.
“ Death of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Succeeded by 312
Piero II.
“ Henry VII. invades France, but is bought off 392
by treaty of Étaples
1493. Bull of Alexander VI. dividing the new world 493
between Spain and Portugal
“ Treaty of Barcelona restores Roussillon and 392
Cerdagne to Aragon
“ Treaty of Senlis cedes Artois and 393
Franche-Comté
“ Neapolitan exiles, advised by Venice, and 263,
supported by Ludovico Sforza, urge Charles VIII. 286,
to claim Naples as representing the house of Anjou 392
“ Death of Frederick III. Maximilian unites all 417
Hapsburg dominions
1494. Death of Ferrante of Naples. Succeeded by 287
Alfonso II.
“ Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and 493
Portugal
“ Charles VIII. sets out to assert his claim to 393
Naples
“ Expulsion of Piero de’ Medici, and restoration 314
of republican government in Florence
CHAPTER I
GERMANY AND THE EMPIRE AFTER THE INTERREGNUM, 1273-1313
The Empire—German divisions—The Interregnum—Rudolf of Hapsburg—His
War with Ottokar—Adolf of Nassau—His relations with France—His
fall—Albert I.—The Succession in Hungary and Bohemia—The Election of
Henry VII.—His Italian Expedition—His Concessions to the Princes—His
son John and the Bohemian Crown—The French seizure of Lyons—The
importance of the Period 1273-1313 in German History
Ever since A.D. 962 the German monarchy had been combined [Sidenote: The
Empire and the German monarchy.] with the Roman Empire, and the union
proved harmful to both offices. The universal authority of the Emperor
could hardly fail to become shadowy and unreal, but it was rendered more
distasteful to non-German princes and peoples by the immediate
association of the Empire with a distinct kingdom, with which they might
have causes of quarrel. And as the Empire became more and more
localised, so the German kingship became steadily weaker. The shadowy
character of the higher dignity tended to produce the same impression as
to the more real and practical office. The princes who held their lands
of the German king aimed more and more at the independence of the
external kings and rulers, who, in feudal theory, held of the Emperor.
The imperial claims brought the Empire into collision with the Papacy,
and the German monarchy suffered from the blows which the Emperor’s
power received in the great Contest of Investitures. Moreover, the
Empire carried with it the crown of Italy; and the constant waste of
money and men in the vain attempt to establish a real dominion in the
southern peninsula, not only weakened individual German rulers, but also
led to constant absences from Germany which gave occasion to their
northern vassals to acquire independence. Above all the Empire was, by
tradition and by the very conception of the office, elective. Thus the
German kings were deprived of all the advantages which normal hereditary
succession gave to the rulers of England and France. Not only did
disputed elections give rise to civil war with all its evils, but the
constant change from one family to another rendered impossible any
consistent policy of strengthening the central power. When at last the
Hapsburgs obtained quasi-hereditary possession of the imperial dignity,
disunion had made such progress that it was too late to apply a remedy.
The decline of the central power and the consequent rise [Sidenote:
German divisions.] of a large number of semi-independent political
units, each with a separate existence of its own, though held together
by certain common duties and interests, make German history in this
period peculiarly difficult and complicated. And the number of these
units was far greater in the thirteenth century than would have seemed
likely at an earlier date. The great duchies formed by the Karolings
had, by the policy of subsequent rulers, been broken up or allowed to
become extinct. The great duchy of Swabia, for instance, came to an end
with the Hohenstaufen, and was never revived. But the extinction of each
duchy brought with it an immense increase of the number of
tenants-in-chief. Every noble, town, and even village which had
previously held of the duke, now claimed to hold directly of the
Emperor; and though many of the weaker units fell victims to the greed
of powerful neighbours, yet some, like the original members of the Swiss
Confederation, succeeded in retaining the coveted position. In Germany,
too, primogeniture was in those days a rare exception, and the practice
of equal partition among brothers necessarily led to a great increase in
the number of princely tenants of the Emperor.
It is, of course, impossible in this volume to attempt to [Sidenote: The
lay princes.] trace the separate history of the various principalities
and states which fill the rather ill-defined territory known as Germany.
But it is necessary at starting to have a clear conception of some of
the chief families which play so important a part in subsequent history.
The four most prominent princely houses in the middle of the thirteenth
century were those of Ascania, Welf, Wittelsbach, and Wettin. The first
was sub-divided into two lines, descended from the two sons of Albert
the Bear. The elder son had held the marks of Brandenburg in the north,
which, since 1267, were split up among several brothers. The younger
son, Bernard, had in 1180 received from Frederick Barbarossa the
diminished duchy of Saxony, which was now held by his grandson, Albert
II. (1261-1298). The great family of Welf, so powerful in the previous
century, was now confined to the duchy of Brunswick, afterwards
sub-divided into Lüneburg (Hanover) and Wolfenbüttel (Brunswick). The
House of Wittelsbach was represented by two brothers, Lewis II., who
combined the duchy of Upper Bavaria with the Palatine county
(_Pfalzgrafschaft_) of the Rhine, and Henry, who held the duchy of Lower
Bavaria. Henry of Wettin, whose descendants acquired Saxony in the
fifteenth century and retain it to the present day, was at this time
Margrave of Meissen and Landgrave of Thuringia. But the most powerful
individual prince at this time was Ottokar, ruler of the Slav kingdom of
Bohemia, which was brought by geography and history into close
connection with Germany. To Bohemia, which he inherited in 1253 from his
father, Wenzel I., Ottokar had added by marriage and diplomacy Austria,
Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and thus held a secure predominance in
south-eastern Germany. There were also three lesser families, as yet
insignificant, and not regarded as belonging to the princely class,
which were destined within this period to rise to importance in Germany,
while two of them have taken a position among the greatest dynasties
Europe has ever seen. The House of Luxemburg, in the thirteenth century
the lords of a petty county near the western frontier, produced in the
next century four Emperors, and founded a territorial power which
survived the family which had created it. The Hapsburgs, hitherto known
only as active and successful nobles in Swabia, within this period built
up a considerable state in south-eastern Germany, and succeeded to the
position which the Luxemburgs had founded. Finally, the Hohenzollerns,
who in the thirteenth century combined scattered territories in
Franconia with the office of Burggraf of Nürnberg, acquired the
electorate of Brandenburg in the fifteenth century, and though their
power grew more slowly than that of the Luxemburgs and Hapsburgs, yet it
rested on a surer foundation, owed more to ability and policy than to
fortune, and may prove in the end both more brilliant and more durable.
Among the great territorial princes of Germany must be [Sidenote: The
Bishops.] reckoned the very numerous ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief of
the Empire. A large area of German soil, especially along the valleys of
the Rhine and the Main, was held by bishops and monasteries. Of these
clerical princes the most powerful and prominent were the Rhenish
archbishops of Mainz, Köln, and Trier. In former times the bishops had
been severed from the secular princes by class interests and traditions,
and the separation had been encouraged by many of the Emperors, whose
policy was to exalt themselves by playing one off against the other. But
after the middle of the thirteenth century this distinction tends to
become obscured. The rivalry between Emperors and Popes, though it does
not disappear, ceases to be the dominant factor in German relations; and
during the papal residence in Avignon (1305-1376) the German bishops
become to some extent alienated from the Papacy. The result is that the
German princes, both clerical and secular, come to form a fairly united
class; and the most obvious interest which binds them together is the
desire to strengthen their own independence, their ‘liberty,’ as they
call it, by weakening the central power. On the other hand, the lesser
tenants-in-chief below the princely rank, known in later history as the
_Ritterschaft_, or knights, are impelled to cling to the monarchy for
support against the constant danger of princely encroachments.
Besides the princes and knights, there is a very important [Sidenote:
The imperial cities.] body of tenants-in-chief—the _Reichstädte_, or
imperial cities. These had risen to importance, partly through the
economic conditions which gave them wealth, and partly through the
policy of several of the Emperors, who had encouraged the growth of
municipal life as a source of revenue and as a check upon the power of
the princes. German cities may be divided roughly into two great groups:
those in the south, like Augsburg, Nürnberg, Ratisbon, etc., which
obtained importance from their position on the great commercial routes
leading from Venice and Genoa to different parts of Europe; and those in
the north, on the Baltic and the German Ocean, whose function was to
carry on the trade between the east and the west of Northern Europe, and
to exchange at Bruges the products of the north for the commodities
brought by the southern merchants (see p. 422). The strength of the
towns lay in their wealth and their walls; their weakness in their
isolation and mutual jealousy. This weakness the southern cities never
overcame; their leagues for common objects were never durable, and
therefore never effectual. But the northern towns were left more to
themselves: they came into contact with less developed states, and they
were subject to the pressure of more constant and more immediate
political interests. The necessity of securing trade privileges in the
countries lying to the east and west of the Baltic, and the duty of
defending their commercial routes against the aggressive Scandinavian
state of Denmark, which commanded the outlets from the Baltic, forced
the northern towns into a semi-federal union, and the Hanseatic League
became for a time a great political power in the north. In the end the
northern cities also succumbed, owing mainly to a great change in trade
routes, and partly to the growing predominance of the princes. But at
the beginning of this period the future destiny of the German towns was
unknown, and to contemporaries it seemed quite possible that cities like
Nürnberg and Augsburg, or Lübeck and Hamburg, might obtain an
independence and a power not markedly inferior to that which was
actually acquired at this time by Venice and Florence, which were in
theory equally tenants-in-chief of the Empire, though further removed
from the exercise of imperial authority.
The decline of the German kingship had begun in the [Sidenote: The
Interregnum and its results.] eleventh century, but a partial revival
had been effected by the great Hohenstaufen Emperors, Frederick
Barbarossa, Henry VI., and Frederick II. With the fall of the
Hohenstaufen both Empire and monarchy sank lower than they had ever done
before. During the Great Interregnum (1256-1273), two rival kings, the
Englishman Richard of Cornwall, and the Castilian king, Alfonso X., had
secured the nominal adherence of conflicting parties in Germany, but
neither had attempted to rule the country. In these years not only did
the tenants-in-chief enjoy complete independence of any external
authority, but the imperial domains were either annexed by the princes,
or squandered by the two royal claimants in the attempt to purchase
adherents. This rendered it impossible to revive the old monarchy, and
produced changes which seemed to render German unity for ever hopeless.
Hitherto the elected Emperor had resigned his hereditary dominions, and
had supported himself on the domain-lands, travelling about from one
estate to another. This was no longer possible. The only way in which a
future king could hope to secure any respect or obedience was to acquire
such a territorial power as would make him formidable. Such a policy,
consistently pursued by a line of hereditary kings, might have resulted
in the gradual formation of a territorial monarchy like that of France.
But the princes made use of their right of election, at first to prevent
the kingship passing to successive members of the same family, and
always to impose conditions which should secure their own independence.
The evil results became abundantly plain in the century which followed
the Interregnum. Each successive Emperor set himself, not so much to
strengthen the monarchy, as to aggrandise his own family; and the more
successful he was, the more dangerous and objectionable did that family
become to his successor. The same conditions which produced nepotism in
the Papacy, led to the adoption of a consistent policy of dynastic
aggrandisement by all the Emperors from Rudolf of Hapsburg onwards.
In 1272 the death of Richard of Cornwall forced his [Sidenote: Election
of Rudolf I.] adherents to consider the question of a new election, and
at the same time Pope Gregory X., alarmed by the excessive power of the
House of Anjou in Italy, and afraid lest German disunion might give
occasion for French aggression north of the Alps, used all his influence
to urge on the unanimous choice of a new king in Germany. For a long
time the right of election had tended to fall into fewer hands. The
early German kings were selected by the chief men and approved by the
acclamations of a mass meeting of all freemen. Gradually the form of
popular approval disappeared, and the princely tenants-in-chief assumed
an absolute power of nomination. Since then the practice had grown up of
a preliminary choice by some of the chief princes, to be ratified by the
rest. But in the thirteenth century the idea arose that certain princes
could elect without any further ceremony. Superstition and custom seem
to have combined to suggest the number seven for these electors, as they
came to be called. But there were several contending claimants for the
right to be included in the favoured seven, and it was not till the next
century that these disputes were finally settled. On the present
occasion the lead was taken by the great Rhenish princes, the Count
Palatine with the three Archbishops. The only chance of securing a
general adhesion of the princes was to choose a king who was not so
strong as to excite either fear or jealousy. Mainly through the
exertions of Frederick III. of Hohenzollern, Burggraf of Nürnberg, the
choice of the electors fell upon his cousin Rudolf, Count of Hapsburg,
who was crowned at Aachen on October 24, 1273. It is not a little
curious that the election of the first Hapsburg was brought about by the
influence of a Hohenzollern.
Rudolf’s position was no easy one when, at the age of [Sidenote:
Rudolf’s policy.] fifty-five, he was called from his successful career
in the petty politics of Swabia[1] to assume the German kingship. He had
a large family of daughters, whose marriages served to gain him
adherents. At the coronation ceremony one had been married to Lewis of
Wittelsbach, and another to Albert of Saxony. But such a tie was
insufficient to secure the docile obedience of his sons-in-law if he
endeavoured to exercise any real authority over them. Alfonso of Castile
retained the title of king of the Romans, and though for the time he was
powerless, his pretensions might easily serve as a pretext for
malcontents. A more formidable opponent was Ottokar of Bohemia, whose
claim to a voice in the election had been disregarded, and who refused
to acknowledge the ‘pauper count’ of Hapsburg. In these circumstances
Rudolf showed all the prudence and foresight that had already won him a
reputation. He realised that it was no longer possible to revive the
pretensions of the Hohenstaufen. He could not afford to alienate the
Pope or to aim at the recovery of an Italian kingdom. He must content
himself with obtaining what reality he could for the royal power in
Germany, and must find a territorial basis for that power. The most
obvious method of doing this was the restoration of the duchy of Swabia
in his own family, which would enable him to achieve the aims which he
had hitherto pursued. But such a step would involve a quarrel with Lewis
of Wittelsbach, who claimed to be regarded the heir of the Hohenstaufen.
Rudolf could not venture on such a risk, and he fell back on the plan of
wresting from Ottokar the German fiefs in the south-east, which the
latter had seized during the Interregnum. Before attempting this, Rudolf
had to gain over the Pope, the close ally of the Bohemian king. Through
the agency of Frederick of Hohenzollern he concluded a concordat with
Gregory X., by which he confirmed all previous concessions of Italian
territory to the Papacy, and recognised the Angevin kingdom of Naples
and Sicily. These promises were subsequently confirmed in a personal
interview with Gregory at Lausanne (October, 1275). In March 1280 Rudolf
made a direct treaty with Charles of Anjou, by which he confirmed his
possession of Provence, and agreed to marry his daughter Clementia to
Charles’s grandson. Thus the policy of Frederick II. was finally
abandoned. To secure undisturbed freedom of action in Germany, Rudolf
resigned Italy to the Pope and the House of Anjou.
Rudolf’s alliance with the Pope made him strong enough [Sidenote: War
with Ottokar.] to take active measures against Ottokar, whose refusal to
recognise the election on the ground that his vote had been rejected
irritated the German princes. At successive diets, in 1274 and 1275, he
was summoned to justify his occupation of Austria, Styria, Carinthia,
and Carniola, and on his refusal was called upon to resign these fiefs.
In 1276 Rudolf collected an imperial army and advanced into Austria,
where he was welcomed by a general rising of the German nobles against
Slav rule. Vienna capitulated, and Ottokar, finding resistance hopeless,
made peace on November 21. On condition that Bohemia and Moravia should
be secured to him, he resigned the German provinces. The treaty was to
be confirmed by a double marriage of his daughter to Rudolf’s son
Hartmann, and of his son Wenzel to one of Rudolf’s numerous daughters.
Rudolf was so confident in the results of his victory, that he hastened
to disband his army. But Ottokar had no intention of carrying out the
treaty of Vienna, and he succeeded in gaining over many of the chief
German princes by representing the danger of allowing a strong Hapsburg
power to be established on the Danube. The result was a renewal of the
struggle in 1278 under widely altered conditions. The death of Gregory
X. (1276) had deprived Rudolf of much of the advantage gained by his
concordat with the Papacy. The Archbishops of Mainz and Köln turned
against him. Lewis of Wittelsbach remained obstinately neutral. Henry of
Lower Bavaria, whom Rudolf had gained over in 1276 by a politic
marriage, openly supported Ottokar, who was also aided by the Ascanian
margraves of Brandenburg. In place of the imposing army of 1276, the
only German princes who sent active aid to Rudolf were Frederick of
Hohenzollern and the Bishop of Basel. But the balance was turned in his
favour by the alliance of Ladislaus IV. of Hungary and by the support of
the Austrian and Styrian nobles, whom Ottokar had failed to conciliate.
In a great battle on the Marchfeld, the victory was decided by a charge
of the heavy-armed cavalry under Frederick of Hohenzollern, and Ottokar
himself perished on the field (August 26, 1278). His death made Rudolf’s
victory decisive. Otto of Brandenburg, who undertook the guardianship of
the young king of Bohemia, Wenzel II., negotiated a treaty in October
which renewed the stipulations of 1276 as to the cession of the Austrian
provinces and the double marriage between the Hapsburg and Bohemian
families. In December 1282 Rudolf formally invested his sons, Albert and
Rudolf, with the imperial fiefs of Austria, Styria, and Carniola. The
duchy of Carinthia was given to Meinhard, Count of Tyrol, whose daughter
was married to Albert of Austria.
The establishment of the Hapsburg dynasty in Austria is [Sidenote:
Rudolf in later years.] an important event in German history. It was the
great achievement of Rudolf’s reign, and it was his last notable
success. His later attempts to strengthen the central monarchy in
Germany were, in the main, fruitless. A series of edicts to secure the
public peace by restricting the practice of private war, gained the
grateful approval of the towns and the lesser nobles, but were rendered
ineffectual by the absence in Germany of an efficient system of
jurisdiction and police. An ordinance prohibiting the creation of any
new county (_Grafschaft_) without royal consent illustrates the general
aim of Rudolf’s government, but proved little more than a dead letter.
The recovery of the lost imperial domains, which Rudolf had pledged
himself to undertake at his election, was a task beyond his strength.
Even the towns, on whose support he reckoned, were alienated by his
attempt to raise an imperial revenue by their taxation; and the
appearance of a number of pretenders claiming to be Frederick II. showed
a tendency to contrast Rudolf’s government with that of his predecessor,
who had been enabled to spare his German subjects by the wealth which he
extracted from Italy. A still more serious difficulty was the obstinate
refusal of the electors to choose his son Albert as his successor during
his own lifetime. This was the most pressing object of Rudolf’s last
years, and it was unfulfilled when he died on July 15, 1291, at the age
of seventy-three. If he had lived two centuries earlier, he might have
ranked among the greatest of German kings; as it is, he will always be
remembered as the founder of the greatest of German dynasties.
The objection to Albert of Austria rested on the considerable [Sidenote:
Adolf of Nassau.] territories, both in the east and in Swabia, which he
inherited from his father. The same motives which had induced the
electors in 1273 to choose Rudolf, led them to look for a successor
whose position should be still more humble than Rudolf’s had been. The
influence of the Archbishop of Mainz, Gerhard von Eppenstein, secured
the election of another ‘poor count,’ Adolf of Nassau (May 5, 1292). He
had purchased votes by promises, which he could only fulfil by pawning
the scanty remnants of the imperial domains. But Adolf’s ambition was
greater than his material power, and he had no intention of reigning as
the submissive puppet of the electors. No sooner had he received the
crown at Aachen (June 24) than he led an army against Albert, and forced
him to do homage and to surrender the royal insignia which he had
retained on his father’s death. To repress the great princes, Adolf set
himself to conciliate the towns and the lesser nobles. Taking advantage
of the death of Frederick of Meissen and Thuringia, he claimed those
territories as vacant imperial fiefs, and prepared to found there a
hereditary principality as his predecessor had done on the Danube. Still
more noteworthy was the attitude which he assumed towards France. The
kingdom of Arles or Burgundy, [Sidenote: Relations with France.] founded
by Rudolf I. (888-912) and enlarged by Rudolf II. (912-937) had, after
the death of Rudolf III. (1032), fallen to the German king, Conrad II.
Since then the crown of Arles had been regarded as one of the three
crowns, with those of Germany and Italy, which passed on election to
successive kings of the Romans. But as the German monarchy declined, the
supremacy in Burgundy became more and more nominal, and many Emperors
neglected the ceremony of coronation at Arles altogether. The kingdom
split up into a number of quasi-independent provinces, of which the
chief were the free county of Burgundy (Franche-comté), Savoy, Dauphiné,
the Lyonnais, and Provence. These provinces, though in theory they were
held as fiefs of the Empire, were gradually subjected to systematic
aggressions from the side of France, and Philip IV. (1285-1314) pursued
this policy of absorption more boldly and openly than any of his
predecessors. Adolf sought to strengthen himself by posing as the
champion of the unity of the Empire, and in 1294 concluded a treaty with
Edward I. of England by which the two princes pledged themselves not to
lay down their arms until Philip had withdrawn from the territories he
was trying to wrest from both of them. But the war which followed only
brought out clearly the disunion and military impotence of Germany. The
German princes cared nothing for the border provinces as compared with
their own interests and independence. It was easy for Philip IV. to stir
up opposition to Adolf, and when peace was negotiated by Boniface VIII.
in 1298, no satisfaction was given to the imperial claims.
Meanwhile the electors and princes had been seriously [Sidenote: Adolf’s
fall.] alarmed by Adolf’s alliance with the lesser nobles and towns, and
by his temporary successes in Thuringia. To put down the prince whom
they had chosen, they turned to Albert of Austria whom they had
rejected. Albert, who had already formed a close alliance with Wenzel
II. of Bohemia, and had been in communication with the French king, was
eager to strike a blow for his father’s crown. The Archbishop of Mainz
summoned a meeting of princes to Frankfort on May 1, 1298, and Albert
set out to attend it with an army at his back. Adolf, however, collected
troops from his supporters among the lesser nobles, and prepared to
dispute his passage. By superior strategy Albert marched round his
opponent to the south, and succeeded in reaching Mainz, whither the
meeting was transferred. Here the electors formally declared Adolf’s
deposition (June 23), but the irregular proposal of Albert of Saxony to
elect Albert of Austria on the spot met with no support. The army of the
princes now advanced against the king, and after a desperate struggle
near Göllheim, Adolf was slain—struck from his horse, it was said, by
the hand of his rival (July 2). He had made a brief but creditable
attempt to rule as a German king, but was too weak to face the hostile
coalition of the princes. His schemes in Thuringia and Meissen perished
with him, and the House of Wettin recovered its territories.
After Albert’s victory as champion of the electors, the [Sidenote:
Albert I.] latter could no longer avoid choosing him to fill the vacant
throne; but they soon had ample reason to recognise the wisdom of their
previous refusal. Albert inherited his father’s policy, with more
restless energy and greater military capacity. What he might have done
for the Hapsburg dynasty and the German monarchy if his career had not
been prematurely cut short by assassination it is impossible to say, but
the ten years of his reign are full of great enterprises, most of which
promised successful results. The reputation for cruelty which he bears
in history is mainly due to the sternness of his manner and appearance,
increased by the loss of an eye, and to the fables which have grown up
round him in the more than dubious traditions of the Swiss.
To coerce Pope Boniface VIII., who refused to acknowledge [Sidenote:
Albert’s policy.] his election, Albert concluded a treaty with Philip
IV. of France, who had a quarrel of his own with the Papacy, and thus
abandoned the attempt of Adolf to defend the Burgundian frontiers. In
December, 1299, he had a personal interview with Philip, and arranged a
marriage between the French princess Blanche and his eldest son Rudolf.
In German politics he set himself to favour the towns against the
princes, and infuriated the latter by an edict abolishing all tolls on
the Rhine imposed since the death of Frederick II. in 1250. The death of
the Count of Holland and Zealand (October, 1299) gave him an opportunity
to claim these provinces as vacant imperial fiefs in opposition to John
of Hainault, who claimed the inheritance through his mother. This
scheme, however, proved a failure, and the House of Avesnes succeeded in
adding Holland and Zealand to Hainault. Encouraged by Albert’s check in
the north-west, the Rhenish archbishops and the Elector Palatine,
furious at the threatened loss of their tolls, formed a league against
the king whom they had voted for two years before. But Albert was not so
powerless as Adolf had been. Backed by the enthusiastic support of the
cities and aided by French auxiliaries, he took the aggressive against
his opponents, and compelled them not only to abolish the tolls, but to
recognise the right of the towns to receive burghers of the pale
(_Pfahlbürger_)—that is, to confer the privileges and immunities of
citizenship on residents in the suburbs outside the walls. Few German
kings since Henry III. had been so successful in coercing their powerful
vassals as was Albert in these campaigns of 1301 and 1302.
For the next few years Albert’s attention was mainly [Sidenote:
Succession in Hungary.] absorbed in eastern affairs. The death of Andrew
III., the last male of the Arpad dynasty in Hungary, left that kingdom
without any obvious heir. There were two candidates, who were descended
from the royal family through females—Otto of Lower Bavaria, and Charles
Robert or Carobert, the grandson of Charles II., the Angevin king of
Naples. But the Magyar nobles passed over both, and offered the crown to
WENZEL II. of Bohemia, who accepted it for his son Wenzel III. Such an
accession of power to the Premyslides was entirely opposed to Albert’s
interests, both as King of Germany and as Duke of Austria. As he had no
love for the Wittelsbachs in Lower Bavaria, he did not hesitate to
espouse the cause of Carobert, the son of his sister Clementia, and the
candidate supported by Boniface VIII., with whom Albert had reconciled
himself in 1302. For a time the Bohemian power proved too strong, but
the death of Wenzel II. (June, 1305) and the growing discontent in
Hungary with the conduct of the young king, enabled Carobert to secure
the crown, though his title was disputed for a time by Otto of
Wittelsbach.
In the next year (August, 1306) the murder of the young [Sidenote:
Succession in Bohemia.] Wenzel III. left the Bohemian crown itself
vacant. The sister of the late king had married Henry of Carinthia and
Tyrol, the brother of Albert’s wife.[2] In spite of this relationship
Albert claimed the kingdom as a vacant fief, and conferred it upon his
eldest son Rudolf. The consent of the Bohemian nobles was extorted or
purchased, and an agreement that Rudolf’s brothers should succeed if he
himself died childless, seemed to secure to the Hapsburgs the permanent
possession of a kingdom which, added to their Austrian territories,
would make them all-powerful on the eastern frontier of Germany. This
was the greatest of Albert’s achievements, and, if the acquisition had
been permanent, would have made his reign as important in Hapsburg
history as his father’s had been. But his last years were clouded with
disappointment. An attempt to renew his predecessor’s claims upon
Meissen and Thuringia was repulsed by Frederick of Wettin, who defeated
the royal army, under Frederick of Hohenzollern, near Altenburg (May 31,
1307). This defeat was followed by the sudden death, on July 4, of the
youthful Rudolf of Bohemia. The Bohemians had tired of Hapsburg rule,
and in spite of the agreement made at Rudolf’s election, they now
offered the crown to Henry of Carinthia. Albert had already made one
incursion into Bohemia, and was preparing another, [Sidenote: Albert’s
death.] when he was treacherously murdered by his nephew, John (May 1,
1308).
John was the son of Albert’s brother Rudolf and Agnes, daughter of
Ottokar, and seems to have resented his uncle’s refusal either to
support his candidature for the Bohemian crown, or to give him any share
of the Hapsburg territories. The assassination, therefore, was the
result of mere personal pique, but it was as important as if it had
arisen from a deep-laid political scheme. If Albert had lived longer he
would very probably have established his son Frederick in Bohemia, and
rendered his election to the German kingship inevitable. In that case
the Hapsburgs might have founded a territorial monarchy in Germany, and
the House of Luxemburg would never have risen from obscurity. The
complaint that Albert neglected to enforce imperial pretensions in Italy
is well founded, but should rather be set to the credit of his political
capacity. The Italian connection was fatal to the best interests of
Germany. A far more serious criticism is his failure to resist the
aggressions of France. He aided the House of Anjou to acquire the crown
of Hungary in addition to that of Naples, and although for the moment
Charles Robert’s candidature was opposed by Philip IV., it was certain
that in the long-run the Angevin and Capet interests would combine the
two families. He made no opposition to the transference of the papal
residence from Rome to Avignon, though the disadvantage to Germany was
obvious when Clement V. filled the Rhenish archbishoprics with partisans
of France.
It resulted from these changes that French influence was [Sidenote:
Election of Henry VII.] very prominent in the election of 1308, and was
strong enough to secure the exclusion of Albert’s heir, Frederick the
Handsome. Philip IV.’s brother, Charles of Valois, came forward as a
candidate and was openly supported by the Pope. But the secular princes
were strong enough to resist such a sacrifice of German interests to
ecclesiastical pressure, although their own interests prevented them
from supporting the Hapsburg. At this juncture, the Archbishop Baldwin
of Trier (appointed in 1307) suggested as a compromise the choice of his
brother, Henry of Luxemburg. He was the descendant of the counts of
Limburg and Arlon, who had acquired Luxemburg by marriage in 1214. His
territorial power was too small to inspire jealousy in Germany, while he
was connected with France by education and by military service in the
war against Edward I. As no other candidate had any chance of election,
Henry VII. was chosen without opposition on October 28, 1308. The
Hapsburgs found it necessary to acknowledge the new king on condition of
receiving confirmation of their fiefs.
The personal career of Henry VII. belongs rather to the [Sidenote:
Italian expedition.] history of Italy than that of Germany, and will be
considered in the following chapter. From the first he seems to have
looked on Germany as a foreigner, and abandoned the policy of his
predecessor for the wild dream of reviving the imperial power of the
Hohenstaufen in Italy at the head of the Ghibelline party. In 1310 he
set out on his southern expedition, which resulted in little beyond his
coronation in Rome (June 29, 1312). He never returned to Germany. But
before his departure he took some steps which were fraught with future
consequence. To conciliate the princes he withdrew the concessions by
which Albert had purchased the support of the towns. In 1310 [Sidenote:
Concessions to the princes.] he prohibited the creation of
_pfahlbürger_, and restored their tolls to the Rhenish princes. In the
same year he seized the opportunity to obtain a great acquisition for
his family. The Bohemians were in rebellion against Henry of Carinthia,
and offered the crown to Henry VII.’s son, John, on condition that he
should marry Elizabeth, [Sidenote: John of Bohemia.] daughter of Wenzel
II. The offer was accepted; but so little did Henry care even for his
family interests in comparison with his chimerical schemes, that he did
not delay his advance into Italy, and left the securing of his son’s
throne to the Archbishop of Mainz, Peter von Aspelt. Fortunately, the
enterprise did not require his presence. Henry of Carinthia was
expelled, and John of Luxemburg was firmly seated on the Bohemian
throne.
During the Italian expedition, which ended in Henry VII.’s [Sidenote:
France seizes Lyons.] death near Siena (August 24, 1313), the interests
of the German monarchy were neglected, the princes were left in complete
independence, and Philip IV. was enabled to carry on his aggressions
with impunity. In 1310 he took advantage of a dispute between the
archbishop and the citizens of Lyons to send French troops into the
city, and in 1312 the former was compelled to make a treaty by which he
acknowledged the suzerainty of France.
Forty years had now elapsed since the close of the Great [Sidenote:
Importance of period 1273-1313 in German history.] Interregnum. The
kingly office had been revived, and had been held by four princes, each
of whom had shown considerable vigour and capacity. But the absence of
hereditary succession had rendered impossible the pursuit of any
efficient scheme for the enforcement of central authority and the
repression of princely independence. The greatest successes in this
direction had been gained by Albert I., but they had been rendered
nugatory by his untimely death and by his successor’s absorption in
dreams of reviving the universal empire. Germany in 1313, as in 1273,
was a mere bundle of states under a nominal head, while its neighbours
England and France had been receiving a strong national organisation
under the capable rule of Edward I. and Philip IV. That Germany escaped
for a century from the worst consequences of her disunion was mainly due
to the jarring interests of the neighbouring states which led to the
Hundred Years’ War.
But it is misleading to regard the history of these forty years as a
mere chronicle of heroic efforts ending in hopeless failure. The very
divisions of Germany, while they weakened its nationality, gave greater
scope and variety to local development. From this period we date the
rise to greatness of the two vigorous dynasties of Luxemburg and
Hapsburg. To it we have also to look for the first origins of the Swiss
Confederation [see chap. vii.], for the rise of the Hanseatic League
[see chap. xviii.], and for the establishment of a great territorial
power in Prussia by the Teutonic Order [see chap. xix.]. It is necessary
to follow the fortunes of the monarchy in order to understand why German
development was so different from that of other contemporary states, but
the real interest of German history is to be found in the vigorous
growth of these political organisations on the extremities rather than
in the declining vitality of the central power.
Footnote 1:
For Rudolf’s position in Swabia see below, chap. vii.
Footnote 2:
See Genealogical Table A, in Appendix.
CHAPTER II
ITALY AND THE PAPACY, 1273-1313
Italy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries—Causes of Italian
disunion—The Guelfs and Ghibellines—The Italian towns—The House of
Anjou in Naples—The Sicilian Vespers—The Popes and their
States—Celestine V. is succeeded by Boniface VIII.—The last of the
Mediæval Popes—The difficulties of Benedict XI. and Clement V.—The
retirement of Clement V. to Avignon and beginning of the
‘Babylonish Captivity’—The condition of Tuscany—The Florentine
Constitution—Genoa and Milan—The Venetian Constitution—Henry VII.
makes an Expedition into Italy—Its failure—Death of Henry VII.
The two centuries which are treated in this volume constitute [Sidenote:
Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.] the most brilliant
period in Italian history since the age of Augustus. The absence of any
central authority, which disappeared even more completely in Italy than
in Germany, opened the way for the growth of a number of political
organisations, whose history is as fascinating as their variety is
bewildering. In addition to the great dynasties of Anjou, Visconti, and
Medici, we have to watch the fortunes of the great republics of Venice,
Florence, and Genoa, of the temporal states of the Church, and of a
number of lesser families, such as the House of Este in Ferrara, the
della Scalas in Verona, the Gonzagas in Mantua, the Montefeltri in
Urbino, whose kaleidoscopic changes are narrated with such wealth of
detail in the volumes of Sismondi. But what gives its special importance
to the history of this period is that in it Italy becomes the teacher of
Europe. It is to Italy that we trace that great movement, known as the
Renaissance, which began with the revival of classical learning, but led
on to the growth of national literatures, to the rise of a new spirit in
the arts of painting and sculpture, and to the enfranchisement of human
thought from the fetters of superstition, routine, and the formulas of
scholasticism. In the fifteenth century, Italy originated the art of
writing history as distinguished from the compilation of mediæval
chronicles. And finally, Italy instructed Europe in politics as well as
in letters and art. The foremost European rulers of the sixteenth
century learnt the maxims of government from Italian princes and Italian
writers: the great states of modern times learnt from Italy the
practices of diplomacy and the theory of the balance of power. Political
science, which had made no progress since the days of Aristotle, was
revived by the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini.
Yet Italy profited less than any other state from the lessons which she
taught. France, England, and Spain, all of them the pupils of Italy,
became strong, united, and wealthy states, while Italy herself, in the
very middle of an intellectual and artistic activity which has remained
the wonder of the world, subsided into political insignificance, and
only finds a place in subsequent history as the stage on which other
nations fight out their quarrels. The solution of this crucial problem,
the combination of intellectual progress with political decadence, can
only be found in a careful study of the conditions which [Sidenote:
Causes of Italian disunion.] prevented the people of Italy from
following the normal tendencies of the period, and becoming a nation.
The causes of disunion are too numerous and deep-seated to be summed up
in a few sentences. But it may be instructive to form a clear
conception, at starting, of some of the most notable conditions which
influenced the course of Italian history in the period which we have to
consider. In the first place, geography in Italy, as in Greece, tended
to disunion. The Apennines cut off the Lombard plain from the rest of
Italy, and divided the latter into two unequal parts which were again
split up by the lateral offshoots into divisions, not quite so small as
those of Greece, but almost equally marked off. The nominal subjection
to an elective emperor, who was also king of Germany, rendered
impossible the rise of any strong native power which could weld together
the separate political units. The influence of the Papacy, which in the
thirteenth century combined the sovereignty of an Italian state with the
spiritual headship of Latin Christendom, proved almost as great an
obstacle as the Empire to national union. The great length of Italy, by
increasing isolation, hindered the growth of common interests. The
leagues occasionally founded for common aims, such as the Lombard league
against Frederick Barbarossa and the league of Venice against Charles
VIII., were never more than temporary alliances, and fell to pieces as
soon as their immediate object was gained.
The long quarrel between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen [Sidenote:
Guelfs and Ghibellines.] Emperors bequeathed a fatal heritage to Italy
in the party feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines. These famous factions not
only set one state against another, but also gave rise to violent
discord within each state. And the parties lasted long after the
original cause of quarrel had come to an end. When the Hohenstaufen had
perished with Manfred and Conradin, when Rudolf of Hapsburg had
abandoned all imperial claims over central and southern Italy, when the
Papacy itself had quitted Italy to find a home on the further boundary
of Provence, it seemed as if party feuds must inevitably die out for
want of the fuel which had originally kindled them. But the blaze of
mutual hatred continued to rage as fiercely as ever. The famous strife
of the _Bianchi_ and _Neri_ in Florence, which drove Dante into exile
from his native city, was fought out when Albert I. and Boniface VIII.
were in close alliance. These stereotyped and quasi-hereditary feuds
were not only destructive of all sense of nationality, but they were
strong enough to overpower the far stronger and more local sentiment of
common citizenship.
Perhaps the strongest of all the disruptive forces in Italy was the
development, in the northern and central provinces, of the municipality
or commune as the normal [Sidenote: The Commune as a political unit.]
unit of political life. This applies not only to the republics proper,
but also to those cities whose liberties were overthrown by the rise of
some dominant family. The subjection of lesser cities by more powerful
neighbours did not create a state in which all subjects stood in an
equal relation of submission to a despotic government, but one in which
subject communes were enslaved by a dominant commune, and were excluded
by it from all voice in the government. The citizens of Pavia and
Cremona were not the direct subjects of the Visconti on a level with the
Milanese themselves. They were the subjects of Milan, and were ruled by
Milanese governors, just as Pisa and Pistoia were ruled by Florentines.
The absorption of the lesser cities continued, until in the fifteenth
century Italy practically consisted of five dominant states—Naples,
Milan, Venice, Florence, and the Papacy. The result was the creation of
a large subject population, deprived of that share in politics which
Italian citizens had learnt in earlier times to consider their dearest
right, and constituting a permanent and dangerous element of discontent.
It was from this population that the condottieri recruited those
mercenary armies to which Italian writers agree in attributing the
disasters that befel their country, and it was this population which
welcomed foreign invasion as a chance of escaping from domestic
oppressions. Commines tells us that the Italians ‘welcomed as saints’
the French army that followed Charles VIII. to Naples, and the phrase is
significant of the unsoundness of the political condition of Italy and
of the utter absence of any sense of nationality.
The quarrel between Frederick II. and the Popes had been embittered by
the former’s possession of Naples and Sicily, which brought him into
threatening proximity to the territories in central Italy which the
Popes claimed to rule. To drive the Hohenstaufen from Italian soil the
Popes did not hesitate to call in foreign assistance. After a vain
attempt to draw England into the quarrel, the crown of Sicily was
offered as a papal fief to [Sidenote: The House of Anjou in Naples.]
Charles of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX., and Count of Provence
through his wife Beatrix. At the battle of Grandella near Benevento
(February 26, 1266) Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick II., was
slain; and the still more famous battle of Tagliacozzo (August 23, 1268)
was followed by the capture and execution of Conradin, the last male
representative of the House of Hohenstaufen. These two victories secured
Charles’s possession of Naples and Sicily, though the marriage of
Manfred’s daughter, Constance, to Peter III. of Aragon created a rival
claim which proved a source of subsequent danger.
As the acknowledged head of the Guelf party, which was for the moment
supreme, Charles of Anjou seemed likely to establish his ascendency over
the greater part of Italy. The Pope, claiming supremacy during the
Interregnum, appointed him imperial vicar and senator of Rome, while a
number of cities in Tuscany and Lombardy acknowledged his lordship. But
his ambitious schemes were suddenly checked by the very power of which
he posed as the champion. The Papacy discovered that it had called in a
protector who might prove as dangerous a neighbour as the Hohenstaufen.
Gregory X. and Nicolas III., secured in their position by the
concessions of Rudolf of Hapsburg, did not hesitate to oppose the
further progress of the Neapolitan kings by a policy of mediation
between the Guelfs and Ghibellines. The election of Martin IV. (February
24, 1281), a creature of Charles, seemed to offer a new opportunity for
Angevin aggression. The ascendency of the Guelf faction was revived, and
Charles was planning an enterprise against Constantinople, when he was
arrested by the news of a great disaster. The [Sidenote: Sicilian
Vespers, 1282.] Sicilians had long resented the harshness of French
rule, and John of Procida, an old partisan of the Hohenstaufen, had
returned from his refuge in Aragon to encourage the malcontents and to
secure for them foreign assistance. His plans were still incomplete,
when a sudden rising at Palermo was provoked by a brutal insult offered
to a woman by a French soldier during a procession on Easter Monday
(March 30, 1282). The people rose with shouts of ‘Death to the French!’
and more than four thousand men, women, and children were massacred that
evening. The whole of Sicily joined in the rebellion, and offered the
crown to Peter III. of Aragon. When Peter arrived in August he found
that Charles, thirsting for vengeance, had already laid siege to
Messina. But the Catalan [Sidenote: House of Aragon in Sicily.] fleet
under Roger di Loria, the most distinguished naval commander of his
time, was too formidable to be faced by the mere transport vessels with
which Charles was provided. Sicily was perforce evacuated, and was never
recovered by the House of Anjou. The Sicilian Vespers gave rise to a
twenty years’ struggle, which concerns the history of France and Spain
as well as Italy. The Pope decreed Peter’s deposition, both in Sicily
and in Aragon, and offered the latter crown to Charles of Valois, the
second son of Philip the Fair. But papal bulls failed to overcome
Aragonese obstinacy and Sicilian devotion. In 1283 Charles’s son of the
same name was captured in a naval battle by Roger di Loria, and remained
a prisoner for the next five years. In 1285 Charles I. of Anjou died
(January 7), after a career which had known no failure till towards its
close. The same year witnessed the successive deaths of Pope Martin IV.
(March 12) and of Peter III. (November 11). The latter was succeeded in
Aragon by his eldest son Alfonso, and in Sicily by his second son James.
In 1288 the mediation of Edward I. of England resulted in the conclusion
of a treaty by which Charles II. of Anjou was released to take
possession of the Neapolitan crown, and Sicily was confirmed to the
House of Aragon. But the treaty was never observed. No sooner was
Charles II. free than Nicolas IV. absolved him from his obligations,
recognised him as king of the Two Sicilies on the same terms as his
father, and renewed the excommunication against James. The war continued
without a break. In 1291 Alfonso died, and James succeeded to the crown
of Aragon. Wearied of the long struggle, and anxious to free his Spanish
kingdom from the attacks of Charles of Valois, James agreed to renounce
the crown of Sicily. But the Sicilians refused to return to French rule,
and raised to the throne Frederick, the youngest son of Peter III., who
continued the struggle even in opposition to his own brother. At last,
in 1302, after an unsuccessful attack on Sicily by Charles of Valois,
peace was concluded. Frederick was to marry Charles II.’s sister
Eleanor, and to retain the kingdom of Sicily during his lifetime, but on
his death it was to revert to the House of Anjou. This last stipulation
was never fulfilled, and Sicily and Naples remained under separate
rulers till 1435, when they were reunited under an Aragonese king. The
only other notable event in the reign of Charles II. of Naples was the
acquisition of the Hungarian crown by his grandson, Carobert, which has
been already narrated (see p. 15). In 1309 Charles II. died, and the
crown of Naples passed to his second son, Robert, the superior
hereditary claims of Carobert of Hungary being passed over. For the next
thirty-four years Robert was the acknowledged head of the Guelf party in
Italy.
To the north of the kingdom of Naples lay the temporal [Sidenote: The
Papal States.] dominions which the Popes claimed by virtue of real or
pretended donations from Emperors and others. These territories had by
this time reached the boundaries which they retained to the present
century. They included the whole of Romagna, the Pentapolis, the March
of Ancona, and the Patrimony of St. Peter, with the city of Rome and the
Campagna. The concordat with Rudolf of Hapsburg abolished all imperial
suzerainty over these districts, and thus secured to the Papacy a
territorial principality which Frederick II. had threatened to
annihilate. But the victory, great as it appeared, was in reality
deceptive. It had been won with the aid of the House of Anjou, whose
protection might easily be converted into an oppressive patronage. And
the difficulties of temporal rule were a serious addition to those of
the spiritual oversight of Christendom, especially as the Popes were
usually elected in advanced years, and their tenure of office was
necessarily brief. More than two centuries elapsed before papal
suzerainty in central Italy developed into direct papal government; and
during that period the absorption in secular interests not only diverted
the attention of the Popes from their higher duties, but also tended to
lower their estimation in the eyes of Europe. The localisation of the
Papacy in central Italy, while it gave some appearance of security to
the papal power, really degraded it, just as the identification with the
German monarchy degraded the dignity of the Empire.
There is little reason to linger over the history of the [Sidenote: The
Popes, 1272-1290.] individuals who fill the papal chair from the end of
the Interregnum till the departure to Avignon. Gregory X. (1271-1276),
elected after a vacancy of nearly three years, was a man of high
character and ability, but he did not rule long enough to accomplish any
great ends. He set himself to restore order in Germany, to put an end to
party strife in Italy, and to check the arrogant ambition of Charles of
Naples. The council which he held at Lyons in 1274 is chiefly notable
for the regulations drawn up to prevent delays and external intervention
in papal elections. Ten days after the death of a Pope, the cardinals
present on the spot were to be shut up in conclave, and were to remain
excluded from intercourse with the outside world until they had agreed
on the choice of a successor. Gregory’s short-lived successors were
mainly occupied with their relations with Naples, with party struggles
in Italy, and with the growth of the noble families in Rome. Temporal
dominion, in which hereditary succession was impossible, brought with it
the vice of nepotism, the desire to make the most of a short tenure of
office for the aggrandisement of relatives. Nicolas III. (1277-1280)
bestowed lavish grants on the great House of Orsini, to which he
belonged; Martin IV. (1281-1285) was a mere puppet of Charles of Anjou,
and resided in his company at Viterbo; Honorius IV. (1285-1287) was a
Savelli, and exalted his family at the expense of the Orsini; while
Nicolas IV. (1288-1292) raised the Colonna as a counterpoise to the
other two families. From this time the history of Rome was filled with
the feuds of these great baronial houses, and they exercised a most
disastrous influence on the spiritual as well as on the temporal
position of the Popes.
On the death of Nicolas IV. these baronial factions were so [Sidenote:
Celestine V., 1294.] predominant and so evenly balanced in the conclave
that no election could take place for two years. At last, in 1294, a
sudden impulse induced the cardinals to throw aside all secular
considerations and to offer the highest ecclesiastical dignity to a man
whose only claim was his reputation for sanctity. Celestine V. had for
years lived a hermit’s life in a cave near Sulmona. His election was a
unique experiment in papal history, and it was unsuccessful. Personal
piety was no sufficient substitute for the worldly wisdom and experience
required for the occupant of the papal chair. After five months he was
persuaded to abdicate, and ultimately died (May, 1296) in a prison to
which he was consigned by his successor, Boniface VIII.
The pontificate of Boniface VIII. is by far the most important
[Sidenote: Boniface VIII., 1294-1303.] of this period. He has been
called the last of the mediæval Popes. He was certainly the last who
attempted to exercise that general authority over Christendom which
Gregory VII. had claimed and Innocent III. had acquired. His complete
failure proved how little the Papacy really profited by its victory over
the Empire. In order to weaken the authority of the Emperors, the Popes
had encouraged the growing nationality of the outlying kingdoms,
forgetful that they were forging a weapon which might be used against
themselves. Honorius III. and Innocent IV. had waged a desperate
struggle against Frederick II. But the defeat of the Hohenstaufen did
not, as they expected, leave the Papacy supreme. Boniface VIII. found
equally formidable opponents in Edward I. of England and Philip IV. of
France. The Papacy might defeat the Empire, because the latter was
opposed to all the tendencies of the age, but it was powerless against
the force of national development. To coerce the French and English
kings, who refused to submit to his arbitration, Boniface issued the
bull _Clericis laicos_ which forbade the clergy to pay taxes to the
secular power. Edward I. replied by outlawing the clergy, and forced
them to acknowledge their membership of the state and to contribute to
its support. Philip IV. retaliated by prohibiting the export of money
from France, and thus cut off French contributions to Rome. When the
Pope claimed Scotland as a papal fief and forbade any further English
invasions, Edward I. brought the bull before a parliament at Lincoln
(1301), which decreed that the king should not answer before the Pope on
any question concerning his temporal rights. Philip IV. met the
exorbitant papal pretensions by a similar protest from the national
representatives at a meeting of the States-General (1302). And the
French king did not content himself with verbal protests. Taking
advantage of the discontent of the Colonnas, French troops entered
Anagni, where Boniface was residing, and for a few days kept him a
prisoner. This insult was a terrible blow to the proud Pope, and a few
weeks later he died (October, 1303).
Benedict XI., the new Pope, had a difficult task to avoid [Sidenote:
Benedict XI., 1303-1304.] either a degrading submission to France or a
new quarrel with Philip IV. and the Colonnas. To escape intimidation he
withdrew to Perugia, and for a time succeeded in maintaining a
conciliatory but not dishonourable attitude. At last he found it
necessary to issue a bull against the chief authors of the outrage at
Anagni (June 29, 1304). Four weeks later the Pope was dead, and
contemporaries were almost unanimous in attributing his death to poison.
The posthumous reputation of Boniface VIII. was now the vital question
at issue, and the cardinals were almost evenly divided into a French
party which condemned him, and an Italian party which anathematised his
assailants. So irreconcilable were the two parties that the cardinals,
though shut up in the palace at Perugia in accordance with the
constitution of Gregory X., spent ten months in the vain attempt to
choose a new Pope. At last the deadlock was terminated by a strange
compromise. The supporters of Boniface were to name three non-Italian
prelates, and the hostile party was to choose one of them. One of the
three was the Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose diocese lay within the
dominions of Edward I. His selection was due to the belief that he was
the bitter enemy of the French king. But tradition maintained that
Philip IV. contrived to buy him over to his side, [Sidenote: Clement V.,
1305-1313.] and he was chosen Pope as Clement V. The coronation ceremony
took place at Lyons, and the new Pope never ventured into Italy. His
pontificate was one long struggle to avoid or to moderate the
concessions which Philip expected from him. The charges against Boniface
were ultimately referred to a council at Vienna, which exonerated his
memory. But on most points Clement had to follow the wishes of the
French king, especially in the condemnation of the Templars. In 1309
Clement V. fixed his residence at Avignon, which was not then a French
town, and was probably chosen partly for that reason, and partly for its
neighbourhood to the Venaissin, already a papal possession. But Avignon
was in Provence, which was held by the House of Anjou, and it was only
separated from France by the Rhone. As long as the Popes continued to
live there, they were exposed to overwhelming French influence, and
could hardly escape the charge, made both from England and Germany, that
they were mere vassals of the king of France. It says much for the
vitality of the papal system that the ‘Babylonish captivity,’ as the
next seventy years have been called, did not result in the complete
loss, not only of the Italian provinces, but of all spiritual authority
in Europe.
The district of Tuscany, which lies to the north-west of the Papal
States, had been split up since the death of the [Sidenote: Tuscany.]
Countess Matilda into a number of city states, mostly republics, but
which from time to time were subject to native or foreign despots.
Siena, which became in the fifteenth century mistress of southern
Tuscany, had not yet risen into prominence and never ranked among the
great states of Italy. Pisa, hitherto the most powerful of the Tuscan
communes and one of the greatest of Italian ports, began to decline when
the restoration of the Eastern Empire (1261) established the ascendency
of Genoa in the Levant. In the naval struggle which followed, the two
republics were fairly evenly balanced; but a great Genoese victory off
the island of Meloria (1284) inflicted a blow from which Pisa never
recovered, though she retained her independence for another century.
Lucca rose to some importance under Castruccio Castracani, and from time
to time successfully resisted the aggressions of Florence, but has no
continuous history that attracts attention. By far the most important of
the Tuscan cities was Florence, destined to be [Sidenote: Florence.] for
a brilliant period the chief home of Italian art and literature, to
acquire the supremacy over the whole of Tuscany, and to become for a few
years in the present century the capital of an Italian kingdom. It is at
the end of the thirteenth century that the foundation was laid of the
Florentine constitution, which has always attracted special attention on
account both of its own peculiarities and of the greatness of the city
in which it grew up.
No city in Italy had been more convulsed than Florence [Sidenote:
Constitution of Florence.] by the struggle between Guelfs and
Ghibellines, and these factions were the more embittered against each
other by their coincidence with class distinctions. The feudal nobles,
although by no means united, were preponderantly Ghibelline, while the
wealthy burghers were inclined to the cause of the Papacy and Charles of
Anjou. After the defeat of Manfred in 1266 the supremacy of the Guelfs
was established, and was never overthrown from that date. For some years
the government was moderate and pacific, but the news of the Sicilian
Vespers in 1282 frightened the Guelfs into an attempt to secure their
power by constitutional changes. The existing magistrates were
superseded [Sidenote: The ‘Priori.’] by the ‘_Priori delle Arti_,’ at
first three and afterwards six in number. These constituted the signory
and held the chief executive power. They were chosen from the seven
greater guilds (_arti maggiori_) and held office for two months at a
time, re-election being forbidden (_divieto_) until after an interval of
two years. The greater guilds, which had long existed as trade
corporations before their rise to political importance, consisted of the
_Calimala_, or cloth merchants, the wool-weavers, the bankers, the silk
manufacturers, physicians, furriers and lawyers. About the same time a
number of lesser guilds (_arti minori_) were organised, and their number
increased within the next sixteen years to fourteen. Henceforth we can
trace the existence of four main divisions of the people of Florence:
(1) the _grandi_, or nobles; (2) the _popolo grasso_, the members of the
seven greater guilds; (3) the _popolo minuto_, or members of the
fourteen lesser guilds; (4) the _ciompi_, though this name is of later
origin, including those citizens who had no guild organisation, and
therefore no machinery either for self-government or for influencing the
conduct of public business.
By the constitution of 1282 the nobles were not excluded from office,
but if they wished to qualify themselves for it they had to enter a
guild. Many of them fulfilled this condition, and several nobles held
the office of prior during the next ten years. But class jealousies
continued to create domestic quarrels, and in 1293 Giano della Bella,
himself of noble origin, proposed and carried the famous [Sidenote:
Ordinances of Justice, 1293.] ‘Ordinances of Justice.’ To qualify for
office a man must really practise the trade or craft to which he
belonged. The _grandi_ were not only to be excluded from any share in
the government, but they were subjected to serious social
disqualifications. In time of disorder they were confined to their
houses on penalty of exile. A noble could not accuse a citizen or bear
witness against him without the consent of the signory, and the severest
penalties were imposed on a noble who wounded or killed a citizen. The
duty of enforcing these ordinances was intrusted to a specially created
official, the gonfalonier of justice, who [Sidenote: The Gonfalonier.]
was to be appointed every two months and was to be a member of the
signory. The gonfalonier, who was intrusted with the command of a large
force of infantry, became the most dignified officer of the state,
though his actual powers were not greater than those of the priors. From
this time one of the harshest penalties was to confer nobility upon a
political offender, and the greatest reward that could be conferred upon
a deserving _grande_ was to degrade him to the rank of a citizen. To
protect the signory from attack a fortified _Palazzo Pubblico_ was built
for their reception, a building which is now famous as the _Palazzo
Vecchio_.
Although the actual government of Florence from 1293 may be considered
to be a plutocracy, in that the actual conduct of affairs was
monopolised by the wealthy burghers, yet the constitution possessed a
real democratic basis. The ultimate power of making any constitutional
change rested with the _parlamento_, a mass meeting [Sidenote: The
Parliament.] of all citizens in the great piazza. Such a meeting could
at any time appoint a _balia_, _i.e._ a committee with full powers to
alter the laws; and it was by this method that most of the revolutions
in Florentine history were accomplished.
Early in the fourteenth century the Florentine constitution assumed the
main features which it retained till the fall of the republic. In 1321 a
disastrous war with Castruccio Castracani discredited the signory, and
displayed the weakness of a government which changed every two months.
To remedy this, a council of twelve [Sidenote: The ‘Buonuomini.]
_buonuomini_ was created, two from each _sesto_ or district. They were
to hold office for six months instead of two, and the signory was to
take no important step without consulting them. Two years later a far
more important change was made, when the system of filling offices by
lot was introduced. Hitherto the members of the outgoing administration
had elected their successors. But the city was disquieted by factious
quarrels at each election, and there was no security for that equality
which was rapidly becoming a passion among the Florentines. In 1323 it
was determined to hold a _squittinio_, or scrutiny, every two [Sidenote:
The ‘Squittinio,’ 1323.] years in place of the elections every two
months. A committee was formed of the signory for the time being with
the councils of the greater guilds and other influential citizens. A
list was drawn up of all citizens qualified for office by age and by
being clear of debt to the state (_netti di specchio_). Their names were
then put up to ballot in the committee. The voting was by black and
white beans, the former being in favour of the candidate. All the names
which received not less than two-thirds of the black beans were placed
in bags (_imborsare_), and from these bags they were drawn to fill
vacancies as they arose. When the bags were empty a new _squittinio_
became necessary. It resulted from this system that qualified citizens
had a fairly equal chance of selection, but there was no security that
offices would go to the most capable, and the arrangement was liable to
serious abuses. The party which could obtain a majority in the selecting
committee (_balia_), was certain to secure most of the offices for its
own partisans for at least two years.
By 1323 the Florentine constitution had assumed a fairly definite shape.
At its head stood the gonfalonier of justice and the six priors, who had
the chief conduct of affairs and the right of initiating legislation.
Then came the twelve _buonuomini_, who were a sort of privy council to
the signory, and served as a check on its power. Next in rank were the
_capitano del popolo_, once the chief magistrate of the city, and the
sixteen gonfaloniers of companies, who were responsible for police and
military arrangements. These were known as the three greater offices (_i
tre maggiori_). In critical times special magistracies were sometimes
created for a limited time, such as the eight of war (_otto di guerra_),
or the ten of the sea (_dieci del mare_). There were two legislative
councils: the _consiglio del popolo_, three hundred in number,
containing only _popolani_; and the _consiglio del commune_, numbering
two hundred and fifty, to which nobles were also admitted. Besides the
regular municipal magistracies, there was an [Sidenote: The ‘Parte
Guelfa.’] important body, the _parte guelfa_, which exercised very great
political influence. This corporation, which had its own captains and
council, had been formed after the great Guelf victory of 1267 to
administer the confiscated property of the exiled Ghibellines. Its great
wealth and efficient organisation were employed for the assiduous
maintenance of Guelf ascendency, and in later times for resisting the
claims of the lower classes to a voice in the government.
Of the northern states only three deserve special mention [Sidenote:
Genoa.] at this time. Genoa, isolated in the north-western corner and
surrounded by mountains, plays a very slight part in the general history
of Italy, though it has some considerable importance as commanding the
direct route from Provence to the peninsula. The energies of its
citizens were mainly absorbed in the acquisition of wealth by eastern
trade, in maintaining wars with Pisa and Venice, and in the incessant
feuds of the great families of Doria and Spinola. Milan, which had long
held a predominant position among [Sidenote: Milan.] the Lombard towns,
was already beginning to lose its republican independence. There, as in
Florence, class divisions were mixed up with the quarrels of factions.
In 1259 the Guelf leader, Martino della Torre, headed the citizens in a
successful struggle against the Ghibelline nobles, and took advantage of
his victory to assume the lordship of the city. The neighbouring towns
of Lodi, Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo fell one after another under the
rule of the Della Torre. But in 1277 a revolution was effected by the
Ghibellines under the Archbishop of Milan, Otto Visconti, to whom the
lordship of the city was transferred, and from whom it passed on his
death in 1295 to his nephew Matteo Visconti, the ancestor of the later
dukes of Milan. But the Visconti dynasty was not yet permanently
established, and in 1302 a Guelf league was formed among the chief
Lombard towns which forced Matteo to withdraw, and Guido della Torre
became the ruler of Milan.
Venice, the last of the important northern states, was even [Sidenote:
Venice.] more isolated from Italy than Genoa, both by geography and by
its absorbing interests in the Levant. The overthrow of the Greek Empire
in 1204 had given Venice a commanding position in the east, but the
restoration of 1261 had raised a very formidable rival in Genoa, and for
more than a century the two republics were engaged in a series of costly
and exhausting wars. But the main interest of Venetian history at this
time lies in the building up of that oligarchical constitution which
gave to Venice a vigour and consistency of political action quite unique
in Italy, and enabled her in the fifteenth century to establish a very
formidable power on the mainland.
The institutions of Venice, though sufficiently alien from [Sidenote:
Constitution of Venice.] modern usages, were simplicity itself as
compared with those of Florence. This simplicity is due primarily to the
entire absence in Venice of a landed nobility, whose power had to be
overthrown in other Italian cities by a series of revolts on the part of
the citizens, and also to the fact that Venice remained completely
untouched by the faction fights of Guelfs and Ghibellines. At the head
of the state stood the doge, elected for life, and in early [Sidenote:
The Doge.] times possessed of almost autocratic power. But his authority
had been gradually limited by the compulsory association of councillors,
by the exaction of a solemn oath on election (_promissione ducale_), and
by the creation of new institutions. By the fourteenth century the doge
had become an ornamental sovereign, surrounded by great pomp and
ceremonial, presiding in all assemblies, but possessed of no power of
initiation and of no means of exerting more than personal influence. A
doge of strong character might still mould the destinies of Venice, but
it was by persuading his colleagues, not by the exercise of any regal
authority. The election of the doge rested originally with the whole
people. In 1172 a council, which grew into the _Maggior Consiglio_, was
intrusted with the task, which was gradually delegated to small
committees chosen in various ways. At last, in 1268, the elaborate
system was adopted which lasted till the fall of the republic. All
members of the Grand Council over thirty years of age drew balls from an
urn, and thirty of these balls were gilt. The thirty who drew the gilt
balls were reduced to nine by a second drawing of lots. The nine elected
forty, seven votes being a necessary minimum. The forty were reduced by
lot to twelve, who elected twenty-five, each receiving at least nine
votes. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, who elected
forty-five, who must each receive seven votes. The forty-five were
reduced to eleven, who chose forty-one, each to receive nine votes. The
forty-one then took an oath and proceeded to vote for the vacant office.
The voting was repeated until some candidate had received at least
twenty-five votes, and he became doge. The form of demanding popular
approval of the election did not become obsolete until the election of
Francesco Foscari in 1423.
With the doge were associated six ducal councillors, who were
necessarily consulted on every subject and without whom the doge could
do nothing. In fact, the ducal functions were really discharged, not by
the doge, but by a committee of seven of whom the doge was one. The
_Collegio_ or cabinet of ministers (_savii_), conducted the routine work
of administration, and prepared all business for the other public
bodies. The business of every department passed through the _Collegio_,
in which the six _savii grandi_ presided in weekly terms. The
_Quarantia_, or Forty, was originally created in the twelfth century to
act as a permanent senate, but it was gradually limited to judicial
functions, and became the great law-court of Venice. The functions of
the senate fell to the _Pregadi_, a body of a hundred and sixty members,
whose name was derived from the originally voluntary consultation of
prominent citizens by the doge. The _Pregadi_ became a permanent part of
the constitution in 1229. Their chief business was the first
consideration of all legislative proposals, the appointment of
ambassadors, and the general supervision of foreign affairs.
At the basis of the constitution was the _Maggior Consiglio_, [Sidenote:
The Great Council.] which had gradually taken the place of the primary
assembly of all citizens. The council was originally elective, and its
rise was a natural result of the growth of Venetian population. But in
1297 a law was carried which finally changed the government of Venice
from a democracy to a close oligarchy. A list was drawn up of all who
had sat in the Great Council for the last four years, and their names
were put up to ballot in the _Quarantia_. All who received twelve votes
were to be members of the council. Three electors were to be appointed
every year to make a list of any other candidates, and their names, if
approved by the doge and his councillors, were to be balloted by the
_Quarantia_. For a few years the addition of names was frequent, though
few candidates were successful unless their ancestors had at some time
or other had a seat in the council. But in 1315 the names of all
eligible candidates were drawn up once for all and placed in a book, and
in 1319 the three annual electors were abolished. Henceforth membership
of the Great Council became a hereditary privilege, and the admission of
a member’s son as soon as he had reached the age of twenty-five was
regarded as a matter of course. The _serrata del Maggior Consiglio_, or
closing of the Great Council, divided the Venetian population into two
sharply defined classes: the nobles, who had the privilege of
membership, and the lower classes, who were for ever excluded from any
voice in the government.
Although the abolition of popular election in 1297 was a change to which
things had long been tending, it could hardly take place without
exciting considerable discontent. Several conspiracies were formed
against the new oligarchy, and after the failure of a formidable plot
under Bajamonte Tiepolo in 1310, it was determined to devise some new
machinery for the detection and repression of future revolts. Ten
members were chosen by [Sidenote: Council of Ten, 1319.] the Great
Council to act as a sort of committee of public safety. So useful did
they prove that they were renewed year after year, and in 1335 they were
made a permanent part of the constitution. The Council really consisted
of seventeen, as the doge and his six councillors were associated with
the Ten. The latter were elected yearly, and could not hold office again
till a year had elapsed. The proper function of the Ten was to act as a
court of exceptional jurisdiction, somewhat like the Star Chamber in
England. In this capacity they served as the efficient bulwark of the
Venetian aristocracy, and coerced the inferior citizens into passive
acquiescence in the rule of their superiors. As time went on, the Ten
became more and more powerful, and began to interfere in the general
conduct of affairs. So great became the passion for secrecy in the
Venetian government, that in the sixteenth century the Ten began to
delegate their functions to a sub-committee, the three Inquisitors of
State.
For sixty years Italy had been allowed to take its own course without
any attempt at interference on the part of its nominal suzerain in
Germany. The news that Henry of [Sidenote: Henry VII. in Italy,
1310-1313.] Luxemburg, elected in 1308, was preparing to visit Italy and
to revive the imperial power, made a profound impression in the
peninsula, where the Guelf and Ghibelline parties were as active and
bellicose as ever. These party names had by this time ceased to express
any essential difference of principle. The imperial suzerainty in the
north, and the papal suzerainty in the south were equally shadowy, and
neither seemed substantial enough to fight for. The idea that the Guelfs
were the champions of republican liberty as against aggressive despots,
had ceased to have any real foundation in facts. A Della Torre was just
as dangerous to the liberties of Milan as a Visconti. Since the Popes
had called in the House of Anjou, and especially since a Pope had fixed
his residence in Avignon, it was impossible to contend that the Guelfs
were the champions of Italian independence against foreign domination.
The anomalous relations of Italian parties were reflected in the equally
anomalous position of Henry VII. A German prince elected by German
princes to the throne of the Hohenstaufen, he seemed destined to revive
the principles of Ghibellinism and to assume the headship of a revived
Ghibelline faction. On the other hand, Henry was French by education and
sympathies, he owed his election to the clerical partisans of France
acting under papal influence, and he was accompanied in his march by
legates whom the Pope had authorised to confer upon him the imperial
crown in Rome. It was no empty pretence of moderation, but the
expression of a real policy, when Henry professed that he belonged to
neither faction and intended to act as a mediator between them. And his
actions corresponded with his professions. As he passed through the
Lombard cities he insisted on the return of all political exiles,
whichever party they belonged to. In Milan, where he received the iron
crown of Lombardy (January 6, 1311), he recalled Matteo Visconti without
overthrowing the rule of Guido della Torre. But the Italians themselves
had no sympathy with his impartiality. Henry VII., like most of his
German predecessors, was in need of money, and the attempt to levy a
contribution of 100,000 ducats provoked a rising in Milan. The rising
was suppressed, but it resulted in an inevitable alliance between the
Emperor and the Ghibellines. Guido della Torre and his family were
driven into exile, and an attempted rebellion in the Guelf cities was
suppressed. Brescia alone made any lengthy resistance to the German
army. Before leaving Lombardy, Henry appointed imperial vicars in the
chief cities, and in Milan he intrusted the office to Matteo Visconti,
thus finally establishing the dynasty which ruled Milan for a century
and a half, and at one time seemed likely to unite the whole of northern
Italy under its sway.
From this time the difficulties of Henry VII. rapidly increased. The
force of circumstances had compelled him to become a Ghibelline against
his will. The hopes which that party built upon his arrival are
expressed in the _De Monarchia_ of Dante. Peace could only be bestowed
upon Italy by a strong monarchy, and such a monarchy could only be
established by a German king with the traditions of the Empire at his
back. But the more enthusiastic the Ghibellines became, the more
resolute was the opposition of the Guelfs. Robert of Naples, the close
ally of Clement V., did not venture to embark on open hostilities, but
he was rendered both jealous and uneasy by Henry’s progress, and did not
hesitate to intrigue against him. Henry VII. succeeded in obtaining the
lordship of Genoa and Pisa, the latter of which was always on the
Ghibelline side. But Florence, the leading Guelf city in Tuscany,
obstinately refused to admit the German king or his troops, and he was
compelled to pass on one side on his journey to Rome. There he found the
greater part of the city occupied by the Guelf family of Orsini,
assisted by a Neapolitan force. A battle would have been necessary to
obtain possession of St. Peter’s, and the coronation ceremony had to
take place in the church of St. John Lateran (June 29, 1312). Henry VII.
was now convinced that the reduction of Italy to obedience could only be
accomplished by force of arms. King Robert had as yet avoided any
declaration of war, and it would have been dangerous to attack Naples
while the Guelfs in the north were strong enough to cut off
communications with Germany. It was decided to strike terror into the
Guelfs by the reduction of Florence. The German troops advanced to the
city walls in September, 1312, but they found them too strong and too
well garrisoned to venture on an attack. Henry retreated to Pisa to
await reinforcement. Against Robert of Naples, who was preparing to give
active assistance to Florence, he issued the imperial ban, and concluded
an alliance with the Aragonese king of Sicily. Henry had commenced his
march to meet the Neapolitan troops, when he suddenly died of [Sidenote:
Death of Henry VII., 1313.] fever at Buonconvento, twelve miles from
Siena (August 24, 1313). The Ghibellines believed that he had been
poisoned by a Dominican monk in administering the sacrament. The schemes
of Henry VII. were entirely out of date: the Holy Roman Empire, as Dante
understood it, was already an anachronism: and the Emperor’s death is
only important as marking the failure of the last serious attempt to
reduce Italy to obedience to a German king. The forces of disunion were
strong enough to break up any monarchy; it was only an added weakness
that the monarchy was claimed by a foreigner.
CHAPTER III
FRANCE UNDER THE LATER CAPETS, 1270-1328
Progress of the French Monarchy—Its difficulties—Philip III.—The
inheritance to Toulouse, Champagne, and Navarre—Wars with Castile
and Aragon—Accession of Philip IV. and the importance of his
reign—His War with England and Flanders—His relations with the
Papacy—The suppression of the Templars—His policy of annexation—His
domestic government—The King’s Court and its departments: the
_conseil du roi_, the _chambre des comptes_, and the _Parlement_ of
Paris—The States-General—Financial maladministration—Death of Philip
IV.—Louis X.—His death and the succession question—The Salic Law—The
short reigns of Philip V. and Charles IV.
The history of the modern kingdom of France begins with the break-up of
the great Karoling Empire in the treaty of Verdun (843). Western
Francia, split off from the other dominions of Charles the Great,
continued for a century to be ruled by his degenerate descendants. But
the decentralising movement did not stop with the division of the
Frankish Empire into three fairly well-defined units. The dukes and
counts, who had been provincial governors under Charles the Great, took
advantage of the growing weakness of the central power to make their
position hereditary and practically independent. Superficial unity was
only maintained by the necessity of making head against the attacks of
the Northmen. The successful resistance of Paris to these invaders gave
to the dukes of Paris, the lords of the Isle de France, the royal title
which the Karolings at Laon were too feeble to defend. But the early
kings of the House of Capet were as powerless as their predecessors.
They themselves belonged to the feudal nobles, they owed the crown to
the support of their fellows, they were avowedly only _primi inter
pares_. Hugh Capet himself acknowledged this when he undertook to do
nothing of importance without consulting the tenants-in-chief. During
the eleventh century France was little more than a geographical
expression: its political unity was a mere shadow: its ecclesiastical
unity was independent of the crown. But in the twelfth century two
movements began [Sidenote: Progress of the French monarchy.] which were
destined to exert the most decisive influence on the fortunes of France:
the rise of the communes, and the growth of the royal power. There was
no formal alliance between the crown and the bourgeoisie, but they had
obvious common interests in opposition to the feudal nobles, and they
rendered the most vital assistance to each other. Feudalism, attacked
both from above and from below, seemed destined to perish. The three
kings who dealt the most fatal blows to aristocratic isolation were
Philip Augustus (1180-1223), Louis IX. (1226-1270), and Philip IV.
(1285-1314). The third estate rendered its greatest service to the
monarchy by giving birth to the class of lawyers. To their superior
training and their persistent advocacy of the principles of Roman Law
was due the gradual break-down of feudal jurisdiction. The _cour du
roy_, at first either the court of the royal domain or the court of
peers for the trial of cases concerning tenants-in-chief, became, as the
Parliament of Paris, the supreme judicial court for the whole of France.
Side by side with the advance of the central judicial power, another
great change was going on—the extension of the royal domain. In the
great fiefs female succession was admitted in default of male heirs, and
this proved fatal to the permanence of many of the old families. With
regard to the crown there was no acknowledged rule of succession,
because no occasion for dispute arose. From the accession of Hugh Capet
in 987, to the death of Louis X. in 1316, there was never wanting a son
to succeed to his father. This uninterrupted male succession for so many
generations, almost unparalleled among the reigning families of Europe,
was an invaluable element of strength to the crown in its struggle with
feudalism. One by one the great fiefs fell in, were conquered, or were
acquired by marriage with heiresses. The most notable successes were the
acquisition of Normandy by Philip Augustus, and of Languedoc after the
Albigensian crusade. By the time of Philip the Fair the only provinces
which retained their feudal independence were the county of Flanders in
the north, the duchy of Brittany in the west, the duchy of Burgundy in
the east, and the duchy of Aquitaine in the south. The royal power and
the territorial unity of France had advanced _pari passu_, and Philip
IV. found himself strong enough to attempt acquisitions beyond the
traditional frontiers of France.
So far—during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the tendency towards
centralisation, in spite of temporary obstacles and checks, had achieved
that success which usually attends directness and persistence of aim,
and a politic, if sometimes unscrupulous, choice of means. But at the
death of Philip IV. this progress was suddenly arrested, and during the
next two centuries a struggle had to be carried [Sidenote: Difficulties
of the monarchy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.] on,
differing in many respects from that which had gone before, but still
involving many of the same problems and ultimately terminating in a
victory for the same side. One essential factor in this struggle was the
tenure of the duchy of Aquitaine by a foreign prince—the king of
England. Obvious interest impelled English kings, like Edward III. and
Henry V., to ally themselves with all the forces of disunion in France,
and their efforts were aided and stimulated by the chance which gave
them a colourable claim to the French crown. But the difficulties of the
French kings of the House of Valois were not due merely to English
intervention. There were two fatal flaws in their own policy and that of
their predecessors. (1) While taking every advantage of the movement of
the lower classes, the kings had done little or nothing to satisfy their
legitimate aspirations. They gave the lawyers a distinguished position
in the service of the crown, and that was all. Before long, the third
estate was sure to weary of an alliance in which all the substantial
advantages were on one side; and if the commons were able or willing to
form a coalition with the nobles against the crown, they might impose
checks upon the royal power similar to those which were enforced by the
English parliament. That this danger was a real one will be seen when we
come to consider the attitude adopted by the States-General at the time
of the battle of Poitiers.[3] (2) While destroying the old feudal
nobility, the French kings had created a new one. As the great fiefs
fell in, many of them were granted out again as appanages to members of
the royal family. Doubtless it was considered that blood-relationship
would be sufficient to unite their interests with those of the monarchy.
But this proved a complete miscalculation. Relationship counts for very
little in politics as against the impulse given by selfish interests.
Edward III. tried a similar policy in England, and it led to the Wars of
the Roses. In France it led to the long contest of the Burgundians and
Armagnacs, to the _Praguerie_ of 1440, and to the League of the Public
Weal of 1465. The _féodalité apanagée_, as French writers call these
nobles of royal birth in contradistinction to the old _féodalité
territoriale_, did not long delay to assume the same attitude as their
predecessors, and became the opponents of the monarchy which had created
them. Their overthrow tasked the devotion of the capable servants of
Charles VII., and gave full employment to the mingled craft and
resolution of Louis XI.
The futile expedition to Tunis, the expiring effort of that crusading
impulse which had urged mediæval Europe to [Sidenote: Philip III.,
1270-1285.] heroic deeds, cost France the life of the noblest of her
long line of kings. Louis IX. was almost the only French ruler who
combined the highest moral virtues with eminent political capacity. His
son and successor, Philip III., could claim neither of his father’s
characteristics. He was illiterate, and the rashness which earned him
the name of _le Hardi_ was not redeemed by any clear insight or any
signs of ability. He was only in name the head of the House of Capet:
the real master of French policy was his uncle, Charles of Anjou. Paris
looked for guidance to Naples, rather than Naples to Paris. That the
French monarchy continued to advance, in spite of the incapacity of the
king, is a signal proof of its inherent strength and of the ability of
the trained lawyers who served it. The reign of Philip III., obscure as
it appears at first sight, was marked by the acquisition of three
important provinces, of which two remained permanently subject to the
crown.
Among the numerous victims who perished on the return journey from Tunis
were Alfonso of Poitiers (August 21, 1271), brother of St. Louis, and
his wife Jeanne [Sidenote: The Toulouse inheritance.] of Toulouse, the
last descendant of the famous House of St. Gilles. They left no
children, and their vast inheritance, including the counties of
Toulouse, Poitou, Auvergne, and the marquisate of Provence,[4] fell to
the French crown. The only exceptions were the district of Agenais,
which was claimed by the English king, and the Venaissin, near Avignon,
which was ceded to the Papacy in accordance with the treaty of Meaux in
1229. Thus France completed the absorption of Languedoc, which had been
begun in the crusade against the Albigenses. It is true that Philip
undertook to rule his new territories as count, and not as king, and
that he created a special parliament and law-court at Toulouse, but
these concessions to local independence were only temporary and
illusory.
In 1274 occurred another important death, that of Henry, King of Navarre
and Count of Champagne and Brie, leaving [Sidenote: Champagne and
Navarre.] an only daughter, Jeanne, aged three years. The widow, Blanche
of Artois, carried the infant heiress to France and threw herself on the
protection of the king. Philip at once occupied Champagne and Brie,
which were henceforth united to the crown. At the same time he procured
a dispensation from Pope Gregory X. for the future marriage of Jeanne to
his own second son Philip, who soon afterwards became heir to the throne
by the death of his elder brother. The people of Navarre revolted
against this high-handed settlement of their fate by a foreign prince,
but their resistance was crushed by a French army, and Philip assumed
the government of the kingdom as guardian for his future
daughter-in-law.
These territorial gains were the only notable successes of Philip III.’s
reign, and his remaining years were mainly occupied [Sidenote: Wars with
Castile and Aragon.] with two futile wars in Spain. Alfonso X., formerly
the claimant of the throne of the Cæsars, was still reigning in Castile,
but the actual conduct of affairs fell in his old age to his sons,
Ferdinand de la Cerda and Sancho. The elder, who had married Philip
III.’s sister Blanche, died in 1275, leaving two sons. The Castilian
Cortes, in regulating the succession, passed over these children, and
secured the crown on Alfonso’s death to Sancho, who had earned the name
of ‘the Brave’ for his exploits against the Moors. Philip was indignant
at the exclusion of his nephews, and took up arms to support their
claims. But his invasion of Castile was so reckless and ill-planned as
to gain him the name of _le Hardi_, and he was unable to force a passage
through the mountains. His intervention was naturally fruitless, and
Sancho succeeded to Castile on his father’s death.
The second war was more prolonged. The Sicilian Vespers in 1282 (_v._ p.
25), which resulted in the transfer of Sicily to Peter III. of Aragon,
made a profound impression in France, and many nobles hurried to offer
their services to Charles of Anjou. The Pope excommunicated Peter III.,
and offered the crown of Aragon to Philip III.’s second surviving son,
Charles of Valois, on condition that it should never be united to
France. The offer was accepted in 1284, and in the next year Philip
himself headed a great expedition against Aragon, which was dignified by
the name of a crusade. The capture of the fortresses of Elna and Girona,
both after an obstinate resistance, were the only successes of the
campaign. Roger di Loria with his Catalan sailors destroyed the French
fleet, and cut off the possibility of receiving supplies by sea. At the
same time disease broke out in the French army. Philip found it
necessary to retreat, and died at Perpignan [Sidenote: Death of Philip
III., 1285.] on October 5, 1285. He left three sons: Philip, who in 1284
had married Jeanne, heiress of Navarre; Charles, Count of Valois and
Alençon, and titular King of Aragon; and Louis, Count of Evreux, whose
descendants afterwards ruled in Navarre.
Philip IV. was seventeen years old when he succeeded his father, and he
died at the age of forty-seven. In the course [Sidenote: Philip IV.,
1285-1314.] of these thirty years he set a mark upon French life and
government which has never been completely effaced, not even by the
floods of successive revolutions. Yet our knowledge of his reign, and
especially of his person and character, is singularly scanty. That he
was good-looking we know from his being called _le Bel_, but we are not
informed whether he was tall or short. His character we have to infer
from his actions, and we are forced to conclude that it was far less
attractive than his face. This dearth of contemporary records is the
more notable when it is contrasted with the striking picture which we
possess of his grandfather, and with the wealth of narrative on the
subject of the fourteenth century wars. Philip was not the man to be the
hero of a Joinville or a Froissart, and no Philippe de Commines had yet
arisen. There is little that is heroic or picturesque about his reign.
The most striking scene, the humiliation of Boniface VIII., is repulsive
in itself and is discreditable to Philip’s memory. It may even be said
that there was little result to show for his restless activity. The two
enterprises which he had most at heart—the annexation of Aquitaine and
Flanders—ended in failure. His only territorial acquisition of
importance was Lyons. The suppression of the Templars was not an
achievement to be proud of. A notable victory was gained over the
Papacy, but it was gained by discreditable methods; and, after all, the
residence at Avignon brought no permanent advantages to France. Philip’s
great work lay in the comparatively obscure details of domestic
government, in the improvement and completion of administrative
machinery, and in the removal of all obstacles in the way of an
efficient despotism. These are achievements which escape the notice of
historians who are attracted by the heroes of chivalry, but they produce
far more definite and deep-seated results than the most brilliant
exploits on the battlefield. It must be admitted that Philip IV. was
cruel and cold-blooded; that his regard for the letter of the law was a
mere disguise for unscrupulousness; that this unscrupulousness was the
more repulsive for the hypocrisy which could always find pretexts to
justify it; it may even be admitted that his failures in external
politics outweighed his successes,—yet he must be always memorable as
the real founder of that administrative centralisation which has ever
since been the dominant characteristic of the government of France, and
has been a prominent cause of the subsequent greatness, if also of the
subsequent disasters, of that country.
If this estimate of the reign be correct, it is obvious that we need not
linger long over Philip’s foreign relations, and that our attention will
be better devoted to his domestic measures. The war with Aragon, which
he inherited, never interested him, as the only possible gainers by it
were his brother and his cousin. After lasting for nearly twenty years,
it ended in the final loss of Sicily by the House of Anjou, and the
abandonment by Charles of Valois of his claims on Aragon on condition
that his cousin, Charles II. of Naples, should give up to him his
appanages of Anjou and Maine. Before this settlement had been arrived
at, Philip had turned his attention to a far more exciting
enterprise—the attempt to [Sidenote: Wars with England.] wrest Guienne
and Gascony from Edward I. of England. These provinces had been united
to the English crown since the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of
Aquitaine, and on the whole they were fairly satisfied to remain subject
to their distant ruler, whose island kingdom gave them a convenient
market for the produce of their vineyards. But Edward I. had his hands
full with the suppression of discontent in his recent conquests in
Wales, and with enforcing his lately acknowledged suzerainty over
Scotland. This gave Philip IV. an opportunity which he was not slow to
seize. Taking advantage of a naval quarrel between some Norman sailors
and the mariners of the Cinque Ports, and of the refusal of the Gascons
to acknowledge the judicial authority of the French courts, Philip
summoned Edward I. to appear before him to answer for the breach of his
obligations as a vassal (November, 1293). Edward was aware that a
contumacious attitude towards his suzerain would set a dangerous example
to John Balliol in Scotland, and did all in his power to avoid a
rupture. Unable to go to France in person he sent as a proxy his brother
Edmund, who had married Philip’s mother-in-law, Blanche of Artois. On
this docile envoy Philip played what can only be described as ‘the
confidence trick.’ He assured him of his perfect friendliness to
England, offered the hand of his sister Margaret to Edward, who was now
a widower, and in return he demanded that, as a mere sign of trust and
submission, Gascony should be ceded to him for a period of forty days.
Edmund consented; but on the expiration of the time, Philip declared the
English king to be contumacious for not having appeared in person, and
his troops remained in occupation of the Gascon fortresses. After this
there was no alternative but war. Edward was at an immense disadvantage.
He had a war with Scotland and Wales on his hands; his subjects,
especially the clergy, were discontented at his exactions, and the enemy
was already in possession of a large part of his territories. His only
ally of importance, Adolf of Nassau, was too impotent in Germany to
effect any diversion. On the other hand, Philip offered aid to John
Balliol, and thus laid the foundation of that permanent alliance between
France and Scotland which lasted till the reign of Mary Stuart. The
actual hostilities were unimportant, but the balance of success was
decidedly against the English. It was at this time that Boniface VIII.’s
attempt to interfere led to his first quarrel with Philip IV., and to
the issue of the bull _Clericis laicos_ (_v._ p. 29). In 1297 the war
assumed a new phase. Edward I. had succeeded in deposing John Balliol
and in conquering Scotland, so that he was now free to take part in the
continental war. At the same time he found an ally in Count Guy of
Flanders, who had hitherto been kept passive by Philip’s detention of
his daughter as a hostage. But Edward was again hampered by quarrels
with the clergy and the barons, and the latter refused to serve in
Gascony if the king persisted in going in person to Flanders. The result
was that Guienne and Gascony were left defenceless, while Edward and his
Flemish ally were unable to make head against the French. This check and
the outbreak of a Scotch rebellion under Wallace forced Edward to make
overtures for peace, and Philip determined to postpone the annexation of
Aquitaine until he had completed the reduction of Flanders. Boniface
VIII. had been compelled by difficulties in Italy to draw closer to the
French king, and he had published a modified interpretation of his bull
against clerical contributions to secular rulers. He was now allowed to
act as mediator, though Philip protested that he accepted his mediation
as a private person and not as Pope. It was arranged that both parties
should retain their possessions as they stood until the conclusion of a
final settlement. As a security for future peace, Edward I. was to marry
Philip’s sister, Margaret, and the young Edward of Wales was betrothed
to Philip’s daughter, Isabella. Both kings abandoned their allies (June
30, 1298).
While Edward I. returned to defeat Wallace at the battle of Falkirk,
Flanders was left at Philip’s mercy. The Flemish citizens had no love
for their count, and would render him no assistance. In this hopeless
position, Guy [Sidenote: War in Flanders.] was induced by the
treacherous promises of Charles of Valois to trust to the clemency of
his suzerain. He was at once thrown into prison, and his fief was
declared forfeited to the crown (1300). On his first visit to his new
province, Philip’s cupidity was excited by the wealth which he found
there. His wife, Jeanne of Navarre, exclaimed, when she saw the
jewellery of the ladies of Bruges: ‘I thought I was the only queen in
France, but I find that here there are six hundred.’ The attempt to
gratify the greed thus aroused was certain to lead to discontent. The
Flemings were as fond of their wealth as they were jealous of their
independence. They soon discovered that it was better to be oppressed by
their count than to be both oppressed and pillaged by their French
governor, Jacques de Chatillon. The signal for a general rebellion was
given in Bruges, as twenty years before in Palermo, by a massacre of the
French. Philip despatched a large feudal army under Robert of Artois to
crush the insurgents. The French nobles reckoned on an easy victory over
unwarlike and ill-armed citizens, but they were undone by their own
confidence and recklessness, and were utterly routed in the famous
battle of Courtrai (July 11, 1302). This was the first of a great series
of battles which taught Europe that an infantry force, if properly led
and handled, could more than hold their own against mounted and heavily
accoutred men-at-arms. It was some time before the lesson was thoroughly
learned; but when it was mastered, the military system of the Middle
Ages collapsed, and with it perished the social organisation which
rested on the invincibility of the knightly force. Philip IV. advanced
in person to recover the lost honour and power of France, but the
approach of winter compelled him to retire without having done anything
towards the suppression of the rebellion. The great disaster of 1302,
the first which Philip had yet experienced, came at the crisis of his
quarrel with the Papacy, and forced him to moderate his ambition. In
1303 he concluded a final peace with Edward I. and resigned his
acquisitions in Aquitaine. In 1304, Boniface VIII. being dead, a great
effort was made for the reduction of Flanders. At Mons-en-Puelle (August
18), by carefully avoiding the ruinous mistakes at Courtrai, Philip
succeeded in defeating the Flemings; but his victory was hardly won, and
was by no means so decisive as that of his opponents had been. Within
three weeks the rebels had re-formed their army and were as formidable
and undaunted as ever. Philip found himself compelled to recognise that
he had undertaken a task beyond his strength, and he hastened to escape
from it by concluding a treaty (June, 1305). Robert of Béthune, the
eldest son of Count Guy, who had died in prison in 1303, was invested
with the fiefs of Flanders, Nevers, and Rethel; the Flemings undertook
to pay 200,000 livres to the French king, and to hand over as security
for the payment Douai, Lille, and other towns on the southern frontier.
It was long since a French king had suffered such a humiliating check.
In 1300, Philip seemed to have secured the whole of Flanders and the
greater part of Aquitaine. Four years later he had lost both provinces.
Philip’s relations with the Papacy have been already alluded to (_v._ p.
29). In his quarrel with Boniface VIII. he had substantial justice on
his side, and the national development of France necessitated an
energetic resistance to the exorbitant pretensions of the mediæval
Papacy. But these considerations do not justify the brutality of the
French soldiery at Anagni, nor the vindictiveness with which Philip
persisted in blackening the character of Boniface after the latter’s
death. Equally inexcusable was his treatment of the ill-fated Benedict
XI., though there is no reasonable ground for believing the charge that
Philip’s agents poisoned the Pope in consequence of his excommunication
of Boniface’s assailants. In Clement V. the king was face to face with a
Pope upon whose subservience he had reasonable claims, and who was fully
his match in diplomatic subtlety and in the want of scruples. The hold
which Philip obtained upon the Papacy at this time enabled him to effect
the blackest action of his reign, the destruction of the Templars. The
crusades in the East had come to an [Sidenote: Suppression of the
Templars.] end with the fall of Acre in 1291, and the Orders which had
been formed for the defence or conquest of Palestine must inevitably
fall victims to the jealousy which their wealth and independence excited
in Europe, or they must undertake some new task which would justify
their existence and give them a renewed hold on the public opinion of
Europe. The Knights of St. John and of the German Order of St. Mary
chose the latter course, and secured a prolongation of their corporate
existence—the one in Prussia, and the other in the island of Rhodes. The
Templars, who had been the most prominent in the wars of Palestine, were
the least prepared to find a new occupation, and their inaction impaled
them on the other horn of the dilemma. It is needless to go through the
long catalogue of charges, some horrible and some absurd, which were
brought by the king’s agents against the Order. It was inevitable that a
celibate society of warriors should give occasion for the belief that
the vow of chastity was not always observed. It is credible that in
their intercourse with the Saracens many of the knights may have been
led into unbelief, or even to adopt a contemptuous and irreverent
attitude towards Christianity. But it is not credible that the whole
Order was guilty of the obscenity, blasphemy, and irreligion that were
charged against its members. Confessions extorted under horrible
tortures and recanted when health and sanity were restored, do not
constitute evidence from which any reasonable conclusions can be drawn.
But Philip IV. was deaf to all considerations of justice or of clemency,
and his iron will extorted a condemnation from judicial tribunals and
from the Pope. In 1310, after the trial had lasted for two years,
fifty-four knights were burned in Paris, and many other executions
followed. In 1312 the Order was formally suppressed, and its possessions
transferred to the Knights of St. John. This last provision was only
imperfectly fulfilled, and much of the Templars’ hoarded wealth never
passed from the hands of the king. In 1314 the last grand master,
Jacques de Molai, after a solemn retractation of all extorted
confessions, and a denial of the truth of all charges against the Order,
perished at the stake on an island in the Seine.
Philip’s last success was an encroachment on those border territories
between France and Germany which constituted [Sidenote: Encroachments in
Arles.] the obsolete kingdom of Arles. The first step towards their
annexation to France had been taken when Philip III. inherited the
marquisate of Provence (see above, p. 47). In 1291 Philip IV. had
arranged a marriage between his second son, Philip, and Jeanne, daughter
and heiress of Otto IV., Count of Burgundy. This marriage brought
Franche-Comté under French influence, but did not result in the final
annexation of the province, which was not accomplished till the treaty
of Nymegen in 1678. For a long time the city of Lyons and the adjacent
territory had been objects of French covetousness, and constant quarrels
between the archbishop and the citizens offered frequent pretexts for
intervention. At last, in 1312, taking advantage of the Emperor Henry
VII.’s absence in Italy, Philip IV. ventured to take the final step, and
Lyons was incorporated with France.
We must now turn to Philip IV.’s domestic government, [Sidenote:
Domestic Government.] which constitutes his sole claim to a place
among the great kings of history. His aims were those of his
predecessors—those, in fact, of all kings in the later Middle Ages who
wished to extend their power. He had to destroy feudalism as a basis
of government, or, in the words of a great historian, to ‘eliminate
the doctrine of tenure from political life.’ The essential vice of the
feudal system was that every man was directly bound only to the
immediate lord of whom he held his land; the connection with that
lord’s suzerain was purely indirect. Hence came an inevitable tendency
to disruption; the tie between vassal and lord was stronger than the
indirect tie between the sub-tenant and the king; if a great noble
rebelled he could compel his tenants to follow him even against his
suzerain. For this system, which had many merits, but was inconsistent
with either national unity or a strong government, Philip desired to
substitute an organisation in which all Frenchmen, whether
tenants-in-chief or sub-tenants, should stand in equal subjection to
the law and to the king as the source and guardian of the law.
To accomplish this end, an efficient administrative machinery was
necessary, and of this the foundations had been laid by Philip’s
predecessors. The country was divided into _bailliages_ in the north and
_sénéchaussées_ in the south. Philip IV. regulated and extended the
functions of the bailiffs and seneschals, and employed them not only to
carry out his edicts in the provinces, but also to supply him with that
accurate local information without which centralisation is useless and
incompetent. Besides these local officials, he [Sidenote: The King’s
Court.] had the _cour du roi_ which attended his person. This body, the
earliest institution of Capetian France, was originally merely the court
of the king’s domain, and consisted of the household officers and the
immediate domain tenants. From time to time, however, the king must have
had to decide questions concerning the great tenants-in-chief, and by
the essential principle of feudalism such questions must be referred to
their equals. Hence arose the court of peers, the creation of which is
assigned by tradition to Philip Augustus when he summoned John of
England to answer for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. Whether this
court ever had a separate existence from the domain court is difficult
to decide, but if it had, it soon lost it. In the reign of Louis IX. the
domain court was transformed, when necessary, into a court of peers by
the addition to it of some of the great vassals. At the same time, the
court was made more efficient by the introduction of trained lawyers.
Under Philip IV. these lawyers became the real managers of the work of
justice and administration; and the nobles, though retaining the right
of attendance, preferred as a rule to absent themselves from business in
which their want of legal training placed them at a conspicuous
disadvantage. The work of the court included all departments of
government: the advising of the king, the management of finance, and the
administration of justice. And the judicial work was enormously
increased, partly by the compulsion of the nobles to allow appeals from
their local courts to that of the suzerain, and partly by the
reservation of an increasing number of _cas royaux_—_i.e._ cases which
had to be brought in the first instance before the king. It was
impossible for one body of men to discharge such a vast mass of
business, and the court was gradually split up into three great
departments, which continued, with modifications in detail, to conduct
the routine administration of France till the Revolution.
(1) The first of these divisions was the _conseil du roi_, which
corresponds roughly to the Privy Council in England. It consisted of the
great officers of the household with fifteen councillors of state and
two or more secretaries. Its chief business was to advise the king in
all affairs of government. Ordinary jurisdiction was delegated to the
Parliament, but the council continued to exercise judicial power.
Appeals could in the last instance be made to the king in council, and
he could evoke cases to it from other courts.
(2) The _chambre des comptes_ was the financial division of the royal
court, and resembles the English Exchequer. It received and audited the
accounts of the bailiffs and seneschals; it had jurisdiction in all
financial suits, and it registered all edicts and deeds which concerned
the domain.
(3) The most famous of the three bodies was the great law-court of
France, the Parliament of Paris. Its functions correspond to those of
the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas in England, but its peculiar
history arises from the maintenance of a corporate unity and authority
which the English judges never possessed. Philip IV. not only gave to
the Parliament a separate existence, he also fixed its sessions in
Paris, and organised its three earliest sub-divisions. The _chambre des
requêtes_ decided the lesser cases of first instance brought directly
before the Parliament. The _chambre des enquêtes_ received and prepared
for further consideration all appeals from lower courts. The _grande
chambre_ was the largest and most important of the sub-divisions, and is
often called the Parliament by itself. In it the peers retained the
right of sitting down to the Revolution, but they only appeared on
formal occasions. The _grande chambre_ decided all important appeals,
and cases of first instance concerning the peers, the royal officers,
and the members of the sovereign courts. At first the Parliament only
met twice a year, at Easter and All Saints. But the two sessions proved
insufficient to discharge the growing business of the court, and, later
in the century, it was made a permanent court, and its members were
appointed for life or during the royal pleasure. In addition to its
judicial work, the Parliament had to register all royal edicts, treaties
of peace, and other formal documents. This was originally a duty rather
than a right; and it was not till much later that the Parliament based
upon this practice a claim to remonstrate against, or even to veto, the
edicts of the king.
The organisation of this administrative machinery is the greatest
achievement of Philip IV.’s domestic government. [Sidenote: The
States-General.] But his reign is also noteworthy for the origin of the
States-General, which at one time promised to become the basis of a
constitutional system of government such as was our Parliament
established in England, but was ultimately crushed into insignificance
by the crown which had created it as a mere instrument to serve its own
ends. The first meeting was held in 1302, when Philip wished to parade
the unanimity of his subjects in opposing the pretensions of Boniface
VIII. They were summoned again in 1308 to condemn the Templars, and in
1314 to support the king in a renewed war with Flanders. Philip may have
found a model for these assemblies either in the provincial estates of
Languedoc and Brittany, or in the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, but it
is more than probable that he was inspired by the example of his great
contemporary, Edward I. of England, who in 1295 had summoned the famous
‘model parliament,’ and had himself in 1301 obtained a protest against
the papal claims from a parliament at Lincoln.
The States-General under Philip IV. are especially remarkable for their
numbers. All tenants-in-chief, whether clerical or lay, were invited to
attend in person, and those who were prevented by any unavoidable cause
might send proxies. The cathedral chapters and monasteries sent
representatives; and so did all the towns of any size in the kingdom.
There was no attempt to determine the condition which entitled a man
either to vote or to be elected. The only class which was unrepresented
was the peasantry. When the States met, they were divided into three
estates: clergy, nobles, and citizens. The meeting only lasted a day,
and there was no general discussion. The royal spokesman explained the
object for which they were summoned, and then each estate separately
drew up a document in accordance with the wishes of the king.
It is obvious that the summons of the States-General was not in any way
forced upon the king by external pressure, but was a mere expedient to
strengthen his hands. The assembly never got rid of this taint on their
origin. If a French king thought his end could be best attained by
summoning the States-General, he summoned them: but if, on the contrary,
he thought it advisable to treat separately with the various provinces,
he did so. Later in the century an attempt was made to secure regular
assemblies with definite authority, but the attempt was a failure, and
parliamentary government was never established in France until the
nineteenth century.
The whole of Philip’s rule is marked by the steady encroachments upon
feudal independence and privilege of an unscrupulous but efficient
despotism. He claimed for the crown the right of creating peers, which
he exercised in favour of Charles II. of Naples and of Robert of Artois.
He raised to the rank of nobles men who had no qualification either by
descent or by tenure, and was thus enabled to reward those ministers who
borrowed from Roman Law the phrase, _quod principi placuit legis habet
vigorem_, and coined from it a French legal adage, which the monarchy
might have taken for its motto: _que veut le roi, si veut la loi_. But
there was one glaring defect in Philip IV.’s government, which he also
bequeathed to his successors. His financial [Sidenote: Financial
maladministration.] administration was as incompetent as it was
tyrannical and oppressive. He strained to the utmost the normal sources
of revenue, the income from the domain and the feudal incidents. When
these were exhausted, he imposed _gabelles_ or taxes on the sale of
commodities. But these taxes he was foolish enough to farm out to his
creditors in order to obtain large sums of ready money. Such an
expedient, especially in early times, always results in loss to the
state and oppression to the taxpayer. More ruinous, because more
dishonest, was the constant debasement of the coinage, which Philip
carried to such lengths that contemporaries called him the ‘false
coiner.’ Thus the founder of the French monarchy was also responsible
for the defect which ultimately ruined his creation. It is an
extraordinary thing that France, one of the richest countries in Europe,
and in some ways one of the most efficiently governed, never had a sound
financial system under the old monarchy. Philip’s successors imitated
the defects as well as the merits of his rule. To his devices of farming
the taxes and of debasing the currency they added the disastrous
practice of selling offices, and of increasing their value by granting
their holders exemption from taxation. Many Frenchmen saw and deplored
the evil results of this system, but no one was strong enough to apply a
drastic remedy. The deficit which resulted was the immediate occasion,
though not the cause, of the great revolution. It may be fanciful, but
it is not preposterous, to contend that, if Philip IV. had been a
capable and honest financier, the Bourbons might still be seated on the
throne of France.
Such a harsh government as that of Philip IV. could not possibly be
popular. His direct attack upon their [Sidenote: Death of Philip IV.]
interests exasperated the _noblesse_, and his financial extortions
alienated the _bourgeoisie_. In 1314 a new war broke out with Flanders,
and Philip attempted to defray its expense by a heavy tax upon all
commodities, to be levied on their sale, from both seller and purchaser.
This caused an explosion, and for the first and only time nobles and
third estate were leagued together against the king. Such an alliance
threatened to ruin the monarchy, and Philip was forced to yield. He
abolished the tax, and promised to redress the grievances of his
subjects as regards the coinage. Soon after this humiliation he died
(November 29, 1314).
During the next fourteen years Philip’s three sons ruled in rapid
succession, and their reigns are chiefly notable for [Sidenote: Louis
X., 1314-16.] the establishment of the all-important rule of succession
which excluded females from the succession to the French throne. The
eldest, Louis X., was only twenty-four years old at his father’s death,
and took no interest in the work of government. The conduct of affairs
was allowed to fall into the hands of his uncle, Charles of Valois, who
had always sympathised with the feudal opposition to Philip IV. The
triumph of the reactionary party was seen in the trial and execution of
Enguerrand de Marigny, one of the chief advisers of the late king. But
the nobles, freed for the moment from royal domination, were
short-sighted enough to throw over their recent alliance with the
bourgeoisie, and thus lost an excellent chance of imposing permanent
restrictions upon the power of the crown. The concessions which they
obtained were solely in the interests of their own class, and even they
were not national concessions but were embodied in a series of
provincial charters. The absence of national unity, to which these
events testified, was a cause of the ultimate victory of the monarchy,
which had never again to face such a hostile union of classes as had
been formed for the moment in 1314.
Apart from this momentary victory of the feudal nobles, the reign of
Louis X. is absolutely uneventful. He got rid of his first wife,
Margaret of Burgundy, in order that he might marry Clementia, sister of
Carobert of Hungary. He also undertook an expedition to Flanders in
order to force the Count to observe his treaty obligations; but the
campaign was wholly unsuccessful, and soon afterwards the young king
died, on June 5, 1316. His death was more [Sidenote: Succession question
in 1316.] important than his life, as it gave rise to the first doubtful
succession since the reign of Hugh Capet. For the first time for more
than three centuries there was no male heir to the crown, as Louis only
left a daughter, Jeanne, the offspring of his first marriage. As the
question of female succession had never arisen before, there was no rule
to decide either way. But the problem in this case was further
complicated by the fact that Clementia, Louis’s second wife, was
expecting a child to be born five months after her husband’s death.
Until this event took place nothing could be settled, and during the
necessary interregnum the regency was naturally intrusted to Philip, the
elder brother of the late king. Meanwhile the interests of Jeanne were
maintained by her maternal uncle, Eudes IV. of Burgundy, with whom
Philip concluded a treaty. This provided that if Clementia gave birth to
a son he should succeed to the whole inheritance, but if the posthumous
child were a daughter, then Jeanne was to have Navarre, Champagne, and
Brie until she was of marriageable age, when she was to choose whether
to renounce the crown of France or to demand a formal consideration of
her claims.
In November, 1316, Louis X.’s widow gave birth to a son, who is reckoned
in the list of French kings as John I. The child was born on a Sunday,
and died on the following Friday. Thus the claims of Jeanne were left in
full force, but they were seriously prejudiced by the fact that during
the previous five months her uncle had obtained a firm hold of the reins
of government, which he was by no means prepared to resign. The Duke of
Burgundy was bribed to abandon the cause of Jeanne by a marriage with
Philip’s daughter, and by the gift of Franche-Comté and 500,000 crowns
as his bride’s dowry. The French lawyers, sharing the general prejudice
against female rule, which resulted from so long a period of male
succession, hunted out a clause in the laws of the Salian Franks which
forbade [Sidenote: The so-called Salic Law.] the inheritance by women of
_terra Salica_. This clause they arbitrarily applied to the crown, and
thus coined the famous expression, the Salic Law. But it must never be
forgotten that the exclusion of women from the throne of France rests,
not upon any ancient rule, but upon the precedent of Jeanne’s exclusion
in 1316, followed and confirmed by further exclusions in 1322 and 1328.
Once securely established on the throne, Philip V. showed [Sidenote:
Philip V., 1316-22.] himself a resolute and able ruler. The reaction in
favour of feudal independence was checked; the lawyers recovered their
ascendency in the royal counsels; and the administrative machinery of
Philip IV. was once more set in working order. Numerous assemblies were
held, in which the third estate was fully represented; and a vigorous
attempt was made to improve trade, and to check provincial isolation by
establishing uniformity in coinage, weights, and measures. But Philip
did not live long enough to carry out designs which, if successful,
might have given him a place among the great administrators of France.
He died in 1322 leaving only daughters, and his brother Charles IV. had
little difficulty in seizing, not only the throne, [Sidenote: Charles
IV., 1322-28.] but also Navarre, Champagne, and Brie, which ought to
have been left in the hands of Jeanne. The reign of Charles is of little
importance except in connection with England, where Edward II. was
deposed and murdered by a conspiracy headed by his faithless wife and
Charles’s sister, Isabella of France. To his nephew, the young Edward
III., Charles handed over Guienne, but retained the district of Agen, to
be the source of future disputes. With Charles IV.’s death (January 31,
1328) the main line of the House of Capet came to an end. There was
still one doubt as to the rule or custom of succession. That women could
not themselves hold the crown had been settled by three successive
precedents within twelve years. But could they transmit a claim to their
male descendants? There were in 1328 two possible claimants on this
ground—Philip, the son of Eudes IV. of Burgundy by a daughter of Philip
V., and Edward III. of England, whose mother was a sister of the three
last kings. But France was not likely to adopt a rule of succession
which might at any moment give the crown to a foreign prince. And so the
crown passed to the nearest male heir, Philip of Valois.
Footnote 3:
See below, chap. iv., pp. 81-88.
Footnote 4:
Since 1125 Provence had been divided into two parts: (1) the county,
south of the Durance, which was given to the family of Bérenger, and
passed, with the hand of their heiress Beatrice, to Charles I. of
Anjou and Naples; (2) the marquisate, between the Durance, the Isère,
the Alps, and the Rhône, which was held by the counts of Toulouse, and
was brought by Jeanne to her husband, Alfonso of Poitiers.
CHAPTER IV
FRANCE UNDER THE EARLY VALOIS, 1328-1380
The accession of Philip of Valois—His relations with Navarre and
England—Robert of Artois—Philip’s action in Gascony, Scotland, and
Flanders brings on War with England—Edward III. and Jacob van
Artevelde—Edward III. claims the French Crown—Beginning of the
Hundred Years’ War—English Expedition into Picardy—The succession in
Brittany followed by a war—The Murder of Artevelde—The battle of
Crecy and siege of Calais—Annexation of Dauphiné to France—Accession
of King John and renewal of the war with England—Battle of
Poitiers—Etienne Marcel and the States-General of 1355 and 1357—The
Ordinance of March 3, 1357—Anarchy in France—The Murder of the
Marshals—Royalist reaction—The Jacquerie—The Murder of Marcel and
the capture of Paris—English Invasion of 1359 followed by the Treaty
of Bretigni—The succession to Burgundy—Charles V/’s
Government—Success of his policy in Brittany and Spain—The
reconquest of the English Provinces—Last years of Charles V/—Du
Guesclin and de Clisson.
The first result of the accession of Philip VI. was the severance
[Sidenote: Accession of Philip of Valois, 1328.] of the crowns of France
and Navarre, which had been united since the marriage of Philip the Fair
(see p. 48). Navarre was now given up to Jeanne, the daughter of Louis
X., and her husband, Philip of Evreux. In return Jeanne abandoned all
other claims, either to the French crown or to the provinces of
Champagne and Brie. By this bargain Philip secured his throne against
one possible claimant, and confirmed the exclusion of female succession
in France. Another rival, Edward III. of England, who could contend that
females might transmit a claim to a male heir, was not at the moment
very formidable. He was very young, he had obtained the throne through
his father’s deposition in 1327, and for the time he was under the
tutelage of his mother Isabella and her paramour Mortimer. So far from
putting forward a claim to the French crown, Edward III. came over to
Amiens in 1329, and recognised Philip VI. by doing homage to him for his
inherited possessions in Aquitaine.
So confident was Philip in the strength of his position that he did not
hesitate to provoke enemies both at home and abroad, and this
recklessness ultimately led to a quarrel with England, and to the
outbreak of a war which lasted more than a hundred years, and exercised
the most decisive influence upon the development of both nations. Among
the nobles who had contributed most to bring about Philip VI.’s
accession was his brother-in-law, Robert of Artois. He was a grandson of
Count Robert of [Sidenote: Robert of Artois.] Artois, who had fallen in
the battle of Courtrai in 1302. In spite of the normal preference for
male succession, the grandson had been excluded in favour of his aunt
Matilda, whose daughter Jeanne had married Philip V. Robert had made
several efforts to vindicate his claim to Artois, but without success.
On the accession of Philip VI., however, he was confident of obtaining
justice, and at once commenced a suit for the purpose of proving that
the inheritance had been unlawfully withheld from him. Matilda and
Jeanne came to Paris to defend their rights, and both of them died
within a short interval of each other, not without strong suspicions of
foul play. Their claims now passed to Margaret, the daughter of Jeanne
and Philip V. Robert of Artois found himself accused, not only of
employing poison to rid himself of his rivals, but also of forging
documents in support of his claims, and of employing magic arts against
the king himself. His supposed accomplices were tortured into some sort
of confession, and Robert, finding that he had lost the royal favour on
which he had reckoned, fled from the court. The suit was decided against
him (1332), and he himself sentenced to banishment. He found a refuge in
England, and in his eagerness for revenge set himself to urge Edward
III. to claim the French throne on the ground of his mother’s descent
from Philip IV.
Edward III. might have paid little attention to such obviously
interested advice had not events elsewhere brought him into hostile
relations with France. Philip VI. was suspected, with some justice, of
desiring to imitate his uncle’s policy in Gascony, and to bring that
province directly under his rule. More serious still was his conduct in
regard to [Sidenote: War in Scotland.] Scotland. The treaty of
Northampton in 1328, by which the independence of Scotland had been
recognised, had stipulated for the restoration of their lands to those
nobles who had supported England in the war. Robert Bruce died in 1329
without carrying out this part of the treaty, and the nobles who ruled
during the minority of his son David were not likely to give up
possessions which had fallen into their own hands. The dispossessed
nobles determined to maintain their own cause in arms, and a successful
battle at Dupplin Moor enabled them to place Edward Balliol upon the
Scottish throne. Edward III. had given no aid to this expedition, but
now that the revolution was accomplished, he was willing to profit by it
and to receive Edward Balliol’s homage. But the partisans of David Bruce
rallied from their first defeat and drove Balliol from the throne.
Edward III. now led an army into Scotland, won the battle of Halidon
Hill (1333), captured Berwick, and restored Balliol. The result was a
renewal of the Scottish war, and the party of independence appealed for
aid to France. Philip VI. did not hesitate to secure such a useful ally
in case of future difficulties with England. French troops were
despatched to Scotland, and the safety of the young Scottish king was
secured by sending him to France. From this time may be dated the
permanent alliance between France and Scotland, which was at once a
grievance and a source of serious embarrassment to English rulers.
English and French troops were now fighting each other as auxiliaries on
Scottish soil, and it was obvious that the two countries must soon be
involved in open strife. The final impulse was supplied by events in
Flanders. In the fourteenth [Sidenote: Flanders.] century Flanders was
the most important trading and manufacturing country in western Europe.
Ghent was the Manchester, and Bruges the Liverpool, of that day. In
Bruges we are told that merchants from seventeen kingdoms had settled
homes, while strangers journeyed thither from all parts of the known
world. It was the great centre-point of mediæval commerce, where the
products of north, south, and east were brought together and exchanged
against each other. Still more important to the Flemings themselves and
to their relations with England was the manufacture of wool. England
produced the longest and finest wool, which was woven into cloth and
worsted on the looms of Ghent and Ypres. With France, on the other hand,
the relations of the Flemings were purely political. The Count of
Flanders, who found his subjects very difficult to govern, was the
vassal of the French king, and his authority could hardly be maintained
without the aid of his suzerain. To the material interests of the
Flemings France was almost wholly alien. France, as contrasted with the
other states of Europe, was little affected by the commercial spirit of
the age. While Edward III. and the Black Prince, who appear in the pages
of Froissart as mirrors of chivalry, were yet sufficiently practical to
encourage the industrial interests of their subjects, the Valois kings
pursued a totally different policy. They crushed industry by excessive
and ill-judged imposts. They maintained no police to give safety to the
foreign merchant, and foreign wares were kept out of France by the
insecurity of the roads and the heavy duties upon imports. This
difference is paralleled by the difference in the military system of the
two countries. The English king, supported by the growing wealth of his
subjects, was able to leave the majority of his people at home, and to
make war with a well-paid and equipped mercenary army. The King of
France, after extorting all he could wring from the pockets of his
subjects, compelled them to serve in the old feudal array, and led them
to be butchered by opponents who were numerically inferior, but had been
trained to war, and were not distracted from the work before them by the
sense that they were neglecting their material interests at home.
Philip VI. had been involved in a Flemish war at the very beginning of
his reign. The citizens of West Flanders, headed by Bruges and Ypres,
rose in revolt against their Count, Lewis, who appealed for aid to the
French king. A feudal army was led to his assistance, and the citizens,
weakened by the abstention of Ghent, were crushed at the battle of
Cassel (1328). The Flemings had to suffer, not only for their
unsuccessful rebellion, but also for their previous victory at Courtrai,
which had now been so ruinously reversed. Their leaders were mercilessly
hunted to death, the town charters were confiscated, and their
fortifications razed to the ground. The authority of the count was
restored, but he was more than ever the dependent vassal of the French
king. In 1336, at the command of Philip VI., he ordered the imprisonment
of all Englishmen in Flanders. Edward III. promptly retaliated by
prohibiting the exportation of English wool and the import of foreign
cloth. Flemish artisans were induced to emigrate to England, and to lay
the foundations of a prosperous woollen manufacture in Norfolk.
These events, which may be taken as the actual origin of the hundred
years’ war, illustrate the folly and recklessness of [Sidenote: Alliance
of England with the Flemings.] Philip VI. So far his quarrel with Edward
III. in Aquitaine and in Scotland had been a personal quarrel; and the
English people, though reluctant to lose the profitable trade with
Bordeaux, were by no means enthusiastic either for the continental
dominions of their king, or even for the establishment of his suzerainty
over Scotland. But to strike at English trade with Flanders was to
inflict a mortal blow at the most sensitive of English interests. From
this time the quarrel with France became a national as well as a royal
quarrel, and Edward could count upon the unanimous support of his
subjects. Still more serious was the effect of Philip’s action in
Flanders. In the fourteenth century, as in the Napoleonic wars at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, England had the stronger position
in a trade dispute with the Continent. The Flemish market was important
to England, but English wool was indispensable to Flanders. The
reprisals of Edward III., forced upon him by the action of the French
king, threatened the Flemings with the ruin of their most important
industry. A new rising, more formidable than that of 1328, was at once
planned. Ghent, which had then held aloof, was now prepared to play its
part; and in Ghent arose a leader, Jacob van [Sidenote: Jacob van
Artevelde.] Artevelde, whose eloquence and decision gave him for a time
practical omnipotence, while his guidance gave to the movement a unity
and consistency which previous rebellions had too often lacked. His
avowed object was to restore the supply of wool to the Flemish looms,
and for this purpose to establish friendly relations with England. He
assembled at Ghent the men of the chief cities, and ‘showed them that
they could not live without the King of England; for all Flanders was
supported by cloth-making, and without wool one could not make cloth;
therefore he urged them to keep the English king their friend.’ At the
same time he was anxious to avoid any needless infraction of feudal law,
and therefore suggested that Edward should claim the French crown,
pointing out that the Flemings could not lawfully serve the King of
England against the King of France, but that they could serve the lawful
King of France against the usurper.
Edward III. saw that war was inevitable; and the arguments of Artevelde
convinced him, if any conviction were needed, [Sidenote: Edward III.
claims the French crown.] that by putting forward a claim to the crown
he would gain powerful supporters, and in the end more substantial
advantages. In 1337 he published his claim before a parliament, and set
to work to form continental alliances. The Emperor, Lewis the Bavarian,
indignant at Philip’s dictation to the Pope, Benedict XII., was willing
to support the English king. In September, 1338, he met Edward at
Coblentz, and formally invested him with the office of imperial vicar in
the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. The Duke of Brabant and
several other princes of the Netherlands were persuaded or bribed to
promise contingents to the English army. Edward’s position seemed to be
of overwhelming strength. He could attack France on both sides, from
Flanders and Artois on the north-east, and from Guienne and Gascony on
the south-west.
But the English successes were by no means so great as had been
confidently expected. Edward’s first expedition [Sidenote: Opening of
hostilities.] into Picardy in 1339 was a complete failure. The Emperor,
vacillating as ever, would give no effective aid, the Flemings were
content with the recovery of the wool supply, and it was only the
sluggishness of Philip VI. which enabled the English forces to retire
without serious loss. In 1340 the enterprise was renewed. A French and
Genoese fleet had been collected off Sluys to dispute the landing. The
Genoese commander refused to fight in a position which made it
impossible to manœuvre, and left the French vessels to be utterly
destroyed in the first important encounter of the war. But this naval
victory was the solitary triumph of the campaign. Although the Flemings,
under the influence of Artevelde, gave more active assistance than in
the previous year, Edward was repulsed from the walls of St. Omer and
Tournai. In September he concluded a truce for nine months with Philip
VI. The only gainers by the war were the Flemings, who had practically
abrogated the authority of their count, and had organised an independent
federation of communes.
It seemed for the moment as if the war might collapse altogether in
1340. Edward’s allies had either deserted him or were obviously lukewarm
in his cause. He had spent vast sums of money without having any
substantial result to show for it. His subjects were discontented, and
Edward chose this moment for a violent quarrel with his chief minister,
Archbishop Stratford, who was backed up by the English parliament. But
the dwindling flames of the war were rekindled into a blaze by a quarrel
about the succession in Brittany. Duke John III. died in 1340,
[Sidenote: Succession quarrel in Brittany.] leaving no children. Of his
two brothers, the elder was dead, but had left a daughter, Jeanne, who
was married to Charles of Blois, a nephew of Philip VI. The younger
brother was John de Montfort, who claimed the vacant duchy as the
nearest male heir. The Count of Blois appealed, on behalf of his wife,
to the Parliament of Paris, and that court decided in her favour. The
result was a civil war between the French and the Celtic population of
Brittany, the Celts supporting de Montfort and rejecting the rule of
Charles of Blois as an alien. Philip VI. determined to support the cause
of his nephew and the decision of his parliament. De Montfort crossed
over to England and recognised Edward III. by doing homage to him for
Brittany. Thus in the case of Brittany, as in that of Artois, the two
kings were committed to principles which ran counter to their own
claims. The French king, who owed his crown to the so-called Salic
law,[5] appeared as the champion of female succession; while Edward
III., who claimed to be King of France through his mother, contended for
the exclusive right of the male heir.
The war in Brittany offered to Edward III. ‘the finest [Sidenote: War in
Brittany.] possible entry for the conquest of the kingdom of France,’
but his intervention served rather to prolong than to decide the
struggle. Charles of Blois, with the aid of John of Normandy, the heir
to the French crown, began by gaining important successes. Nantes was
captured, and John de Montfort sent prisoner to Paris. But the heroic
Countess of Montfort, a sister of the Count of Flanders, supported her
husband’s cause with masculine energy and courage, and the arrival of
English succour restored the balance of forces in Brittany. But Edward
III. still found himself confronted by superior numbers, and in 1343
papal mediation succeeded in arranging a general truce for three years.
The truce, however, was not allowed to run its full term. John de
Montfort escaped from his prison, and the severity with which Philip VI.
punished some nobles in Brittany and Normandy for suspected treason led
to a renewal of hostilities in 1345. Edward III. determined to make
greater efforts than ever, and to attack France on three sides—from
Guienne, Brittany, and Flanders. In Guienne Henry of Lancaster gained a
considerable victory at Auberoche, and captured several fortresses which
were held by the French. In Brittany John de Montfort died, leaving his
claims to his son, and his death prevented any important operations from
being undertaken. Meanwhile Edward himself prepared to co-operate with
the Flemings on the north-east. But his plans were interrupted by what
appeared to be a great disaster to his cause. Jacob van Artevelde had
incurred the distrust of his fellow-citizens. [Sidenote: Murder of
Artevelde.] He had found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the
jarring pretensions of the rival cities, or to compose the jealous
divisions of the fullers and weavers of Ghent. In his alliance with
England he had gone further than the majority of the Flemings desired.
They would have been content to impose conditions upon their count,
whereas Artevelde had schemed to depose him altogether, and to transfer
the direct government of Flanders to the Prince of Wales. But the final
accusation against the once popular leader was that he had placed the
great treasure of Flanders at the disposal of the English king. In a
rising of the infuriated mob, Artevelde’s house was stormed and he
himself slain. For the moment Edward feared that he might lose his hold
upon Flanders. But Artevelde’s policy survived him. The Flemings were
not prepared to make unconditional submission to their count, and to
extort conditions the alliance with England must be maintained. They
hastened to excuse their conduct to the English king, to assure him of
the continuance of their support. But Edward had received the news of
another loss, which checked his advance in 1345. This was the death of
his brother-in-law, William IV. of Holland, Hainault, and Zealand. As he
left no children, his territories were seized by Lewis the Bavarian and
conferred upon one of his younger sons (see p. 108). The Emperor had
already deserted the English alliance, and the establishment of the
House of Wittelsbach in the dominions of William IV. broke up the
coalition which Edward III. had formed on the borders of France.
These checks induced Edward, not to relax his efforts, but to alter his
plans. The military interest of 1346 seemed likely to [Sidenote:
Campaign of 1346.] be concentrated in the south-west. A large French
army under Philip’s eldest son, John of Normandy, entered Guienne,
recovered many of the places lost in the previous year, and besieged the
inferior English troops in Aiguillon. Edward III. collected a large army
at Southampton, and set sail on July 2. His intention was to land at
Bordeaux, and march to the relief of Aiguillon. But his voyage was
hindered by storms, and the advice of some of his French followers
induced him to make for the coast of Normandy. The province was wholly
unprepared for attack, and the English met with little resistance on
their devastating march. Along the valley of the Seine they advanced as
far as Poissi, where the flames of the burning houses were seen from the
walls of Paris. Meanwhile, Philip VI. had strained every nerve to
collect a second army for the defence of his capital. Among the allies
who came to his aid were John of Bohemia and the newly elected King of
the Romans, Charles IV. But Edward declined to assault Paris, or to face
an army which was now larger than his own. Misleading Philip by a feint
in the direction of Tours, he crossed the Seine at Poissi, and marched
at full speed towards Picardy, in order to effect a junction with the
Flemings. Philip followed with his enormous force, and the destruction
of the bridges over the Somme seemed to shut the English in a trap. But
a captured peasant guided Edward to a comparatively unguarded ford at
Blanche Taque, and the French arrived just as the last of the enemy had
crossed. The battle, however, was only postponed, though the crossing of
the river enabled Edward to choose his own ground, instead of fighting
at a disadvantage with an impassable river behind him. To continue the
retreat with an exhausted army pursued by superior numbers must have
ended in disaster, and Edward drew up his troops at Crecy, near
Abbeville, [Sidenote: Battle of Crecy, 1346.] to try the hazard of the
first pitched battle of the war. The result was to teach the world a
lesson in the art of warfare which had only been imperfectly suggested
by the battles of Stirling Bridge, Bannockburn, and Courtrai. It was a
combat of infantry against cavalry, of missile weapons against heavy
armour and lances, of trained professional soldiers against a
combination of foreign mercenaries with disorderly feudal levies. And
the inevitable result was made the more decisive by the utter want of
generalship on the part of the French king. Obeying a momentary impulse
of rage, he ordered his troops to engage when they were exhausted by a
long march. The Genoese crossbows were wetted by rain, and their bolts
fell harmless, while they were exposed to a hail of arrows from the
English longbows. Then the men-at-arms charged over the unfortunate
Genoese, and were already in disorder before they could reach the enemy.
There was individual prowess in plenty, but no organisation or
discipline, and the bravest of the assailants only rushed upon a certain
fate. Philip fled in despair, but the King of Bohemia, the Counts of
Flanders and Alençon, and many lesser princes and nobles, were left dead
upon the field. Edward III. made no attempt to turn back upon France. It
would have been difficult for him to feed his soldiers in a district
which had been already swept bare by the requisitions and the pillage of
two great armies. After allowing three days for rest and the burying of
the dead, he continued his march northwards, and laid siege to Calais.
His victory had decisive results both in the west and the south. The
siege of Aiguillon was raised, and the retirement of the Duke of
Normandy left Guienne at the mercy of the English. Henry of Lancaster
recovered the places lost at the beginning of the year, and, entering
Poitou, took and sacked Poitiers. In Brittany the French cause met with
almost equal disasters. Charles of Blois was captured and carried a
prisoner to England, and, though his wife continued the struggle, the
party of de Montfort had for a time a secure predominance. To complete
the list of failures, an attempted diversion by David of Scotland, who
invaded England in the autumn of 1346, ended in the king’s defeat and
capture at the battle of Nevill’s Cross.
Meanwhile Edward III. was engaged in the blockade of Calais, where Jean
de Vienne held out with heroic obstinacy [Sidenote: Siege of Calais,
1346-7.] for nearly a whole year. The death of Lewis of Flanders at
Crecy seemed to open the prospect of a reconciliation of the Flemings
with France, and if this could have been effected, the siege would
probably have ended in failure. The young Count, Lewis de Mâle, had done
nothing to incur the enmity of his subjects, and they welcomed his
return with enthusiasm. But in their treaty with Edward III. the
Flemings had agreed that their new ruler should marry an English
princess. This stipulation Lewis refused to fulfil, and when the
citizens tried to coerce him, he escaped from subjects who had become
his gaolers and returned to the French court. His departure left the
Flemings bound to the English alliance, and to Philip VI.’s lavish
offers of bribes they turned a deaf ear. The siege could only be raised
by force, and Philip collected an army for that purpose. But when he
approached he found the English too strongly entrenched, and retired
without risking a battle. Thus, deprived of all hope of succour from
outside, the defenders were forced to accept Edward’s terms, and to hand
over the town, with six of the principal burghers, to his mercy. The
burghers were spared on the entreaty of Queen Philippa, but the whole
population of Calais was expelled to make room for English settlers.
Gradually, as Edward’s wrath at the prolonged resistance died away, some
of the original inhabitants were allowed to return, but the population
of Calais continued to be preponderantly English during the two
centuries that it remained subject to England.
The fall of Calais was the last military disaster of Philip VI.’s reign.
Both England and France were exhausted by the strain of the contest, and
the outbreak of the terrible Black Death, which ravaged western Europe
in 1348 and 1349, diverted men’s minds from international quarrels. A
truce, originally concluded for ten months, was prolonged by mutual
consent for several years. Philip concluded his reign in peace, and
before his death (August 22, 1350) he was able to add an important
province to France, and thus to gain some consolation for the losses
[Sidenote: Dauphiné annexed to France.] of the English war. Among the
largest fragments of the old kingdoms of Arles was Dauphiné, ruled as a
fief of the Empire by the Dauphins of Vienne. The last of these princes,
Humbert, had supported Lewis the Bavarian in his struggles against
France and the Avignon Popes. But like so many of the Emperor’s allies,
he was alienated by Lewis’s weakness and selfishness, and pecuniary
troubles forced him to change his policy and to draw closer to France.
In 1343 he concluded a treaty with Philip VI. by which Dauphiné, in
default of lawful issue to himself, was to fall to a younger son of the
French king. In the next year this treaty was modified to secure the
inheritance to the heirs to the French crown; and finally in 1349
Humbert’s life-interest in the province was bought out by payment of a
large sum, and Dauphiné was handed over to the House of Valois, and in
the course of the next generation became the regular appanage of the
eldest son of the reigning king. About the same time, France acquired
another advantage on the side of Flanders. In 1348 Lewis de Mâle
recovered his county, and by encouraging internal quarrels among his
subjects, he not only evaded the hated obligation of an English
marriage, but also restored some measure of authority over the turbulent
Flemings. As long as his power could be maintained, it might be hoped
that France would escape the dangers of Flemish co-operation with the
English.
John the Good, as he is called by the caprice of historical
nomenclature, was no better a ruler than his father, and was even more
unfortunate. He had already been active both in military and civil
affairs, but had [Sidenote: Accession of King John, 1350.] profited
little by his experience. War, in his eyes, was nothing but a tournament
on a large scale. Of orderly finance he had no conception; and as to the
welfare of his subjects he had neither interest nor insight. He was a
reckless spendthrift, imbued with the chivalrous ideals of the day, and
subject to sudden gusts of passion, alternating with fitful and
uncalculating acts of generosity. His accession marks the appearance on
the scene of a new generation of actors. The Black Death had been most
fatal to the lower classes, but it had by no means spared those of
higher rank. In a single year John had lost his mother, Jeanne of
Burgundy; his first wife, the sister of Charles IV.; his uncle Eudes
IV., who had added Franche-Comté to the duchy of Burgundy, and now left
both Burgundies to an infant grandson, Philip de Rouvre; and his cousin,
Jeanne of Navarre, whose kingdom and possessions in France passed to her
son, deservedly known in history as Charles the Bad, and destined to be
the evil genius of France in the hour of her worst misfortunes. In
England there had been a similar clearance of prominent personages.
Edward III. still lived, but he played little further part in the French
war, where his place was taken by the Black Prince.
The truce with England expired in 1351, but for some years the revived
hostilities were only local and unimportant. So great was the mutual
exhaustion of the two states, that the new Pope, Innocent VI., elected
in 1352, almost succeeded in negotiating a general peace. But, as
before, it was internal disturbances in France which led to a renewal of
the war. Charles of Navarre had been invested with the county of Evreux
and with the large possessions of his [Sidenote: Renewed war with the
English.] mother in Normandy and the Ile-de-France. He had also received
in 1352 the hand of the king’s daughter, Jeanne. But his ambition was
still unsatisfied, and John took no further pains to conciliate a prince
who could advance claims to Champagne and Brie, and might, under
favourable circumstances, become a rival candidate for the crown. In
1354 the king’s favourite, Charles of Spain, was assassinated by the
emissaries of the King of Navarre. John was induced to pardon his
son-in-law; but the reconciliation was only hollow, and Charles was
impelled by real or imaginary grievances to open negotiations with
Edward III. The English king could not resist the temptation of invading
France with the aid of so powerful an ally, and prepared to enter
Normandy through Calais in 1355. This danger compelled John once more to
make overtures to his rebellious son-in-law, and Edward found himself
deprived of the promised aid. He landed at Calais, ravaged the
neighbouring districts, and then withdrew to repel a Scottish invasion.
The Black Prince was more successful. Starting from Bordeaux, he marched
through Languedoc, treating that province as Edward III. had treated
Normandy in 1346. But the French king was as reckless as ever. Early in
1356 he surprised Charles of Navarre as he was banqueting with the
Dauphin at Rouen, put his chief supporters to death, and carried the
king a prisoner to Paris. The result of this violent act was to excite
general disaffection. Charles’s brother, Philip of Navarre, promptly
took up arms, and appealed for English support. The Black Prince was not
slow to respond. His plan was to march northward through the most
fertile districts of France, cross the Loire, and advance through Maine
to join the rebels in Normandy. But his force was insufficient for such
an enterprise. John hastily collected an army, the Loire valley was
blocked, and Prince Edward had to retire before vastly superior numbers.
John hurried eagerly in pursuit, and actually reached Poitiers before
the enemy. A battle was now inevitable. So hopeless [Sidenote: Battle of
Poitiers, 1356.] were the odds that the Black Prince was willing to
accept any honourable terms, but John declined to let the enemy escape.
All the advantages, however, of superior numbers were thrown away by the
egregious folly of the French king. He sent a small detachment of
men-at-arms to attack the English position on the hill, while he ordered
the bulk of his army to dismount on the plain. The men-at-arms, who had
to advance by a narrow lane under the arrows of the English archers,
were speedily routed, and the English cavalry followed up this success
by butchering the dismounted host, who could neither stand their charge
nor fly. The king, after fighting bravely to the last, was taken
prisoner with his youngest son Philip, and the flower of the French
nobility either shared his captivity or escaped it only by death on the
field. As at Crecy, the English made no attempt to profit by their
victory. The Black Prince was content to carry his illustrious prisoner
to Bordeaux, whence he subsequently despatched him to London.
The crushing defeat at Poitiers and the captivity of the king marked the
climax of a long series of disasters, of which [Sidenote: Discontent in
France.] the cause was to be sought in the continued maladministration
of French kings and ministers. No country could be brought into such a
plight as that to which France was reduced without giving rise to
serious and dangerous discontent, and this discontent had already found
expression before the campaign of 1356. From 1350 to 1355 frequent
assemblies of local estates had been held for the raising of supplies,
and these had not been voted without ominous grumbling and demands for
redress of grievances. At last, in November 1355, King John had found it
necessary to convoke the States-General of Languedoil, [Sidenote:
States-General of 1355.] in order to deliberate on the best mode of
resisting the national foes. The ‘deputies of the three estates’—for
nobles and clergy could only attend when elected by their order—met in
Paris on November 30. The orator of the third estate, in the formal
reply to the chancellor’s opening speech, was Etienne Marcel, provost of
the merchants in Paris, and for the next four years one of the most
important men in France. After deliberating on the matters submitted to
them, the States drew up the great ordinance of December 28, 1355. They
granted to the king a _gabelle_ upon salt, and a tax of eight deniers
the pound on the sale of all commodities. These are to be levied upon
all classes—clergy, nobles, non-nobles, and even the members of the
royal family. The collection of the taxes is to be superintended by
delegates chosen by the estates, and the expenditure is to be controlled
by a council of nine, three from each estate. Purveyance and the
arbitrary alteration of the money-standard were forbidden. Finally, the
dates were fixed for two subsequent sessions—one in March and the other
in November of the next year.
It is obvious that the States-General acted, whether consciously or
unconsciously, in imitation of the English Parliament, and took
advantage of the financial difficulties of the crown to impose
constitutional checks upon the royal power. But, unfortunately, the
financial skill of the estates was by no means equal to [Sidenote:
Financial blunders of the States.] the importance of their objects, or
to their energy in striving after them. The _gabelle_ on salt has in all
ages been the most unpopular tax in France, and the tax upon sales
breaks all the canons of taxation which modern economists have agreed to
accept. Great disaffection was excited by the attempt to collect the
tax, and in some provinces serious disturbances took place. When the
States-General met in March they yielded at once to the expression of
public opinion, repealed the obnoxious taxes, and imposed in their place
an extraordinary income-tax, which was so adjusted that the percentage
increased as the income diminished. After taking steps to control the
collection and expenditure of the revenue, the estates adjourned till
May 6. They then discovered that the amount raised was wholly
insufficient to defray the necessary expenditure, and in their ignorance
and perplexity they reimposed the unpopular taxes on salt and sales, and
ordered the levy in June and August of two extra charges upon incomes.
After the battle of Poitiers matters seemed more hopeless than ever. The
king’s eldest son, Charles,[6] assumed the government on his father’s
imprisonment, but he displayed little of the wisdom or capacity for
which he was afterwards renowned. His first act was to convene the
States-General [Sidenote: States-General of Oct. 1356.] on October 17.
The assembly was unusually large, the third estate being represented by
exceptional numbers. Of the nobles, however, the attendance was very
small. Large numbers of them had perished at Poitiers, and the survivors
were discredited. Thus the balance of classes, so necessary for the
success of constitutional changes, was overthrown. The third estate
became preponderant in the assembly, and its leader, Marcel, obtained
considerable support from the clergy through his ally Robert Lecoq,
Bishop of Laon. The demands of the estates were far more extreme than
those of the earlier assemblies. They were no longer content to impose
checks upon the government, but determined to take it into their own
hands. The royal ministers were to be dismissed, and thirty-six
delegates—twelve from each estate—were to be appointed to manage the
affairs of the kingdom. At the same time, outspoken complaints were made
of the failure to carry out promised reforms, especially in the matter
of the coinage, and the release of the King of Navarre was demanded. But
the Dauphin, encouraged by the grant of a considerable subsidy from the
estates of Languedoc, was not prepared to hand over his authority to the
States-General. He prorogued the assembly, endeavoured to raise money
from the provincial estates, and even ventured on a new debasement of
the currency. The reforming party was driven by this obstinacy to
revolutionary methods. The mob rose in Paris, and Marcel ordered the
royal officials to cease minting the inferior coins. The Dauphin, who
had gone to Metz to demand the mediation of Charles IV. with England,
returned to find his capital in open revolt. Unable to resist the
popular demands, he was forced to hold a new meeting of the
States-General on February 5, and to accept the ordinance which they
drew up of March 3, 1357. In [Sidenote: Ordinance of March 3, 1357.]
this the policy which had been proposed in the earlier session was
carried out, and the royal power was subordinated to that of the States.
The commission of thirty-six was definitely appointed to superintend
every branch of the administration. An aid was granted for the
maintenance of 3000 men-at-arms, but it was to be collected and spent,
not by royal officials, but by nominees of the States. The predominance
of the third estate is conspicuous in the articles directed against the
nobles. They were forbidden to carry on private wars, and if they
disregarded the prohibition, the local authorities or the people might
arrest them and compel them to desist by fines or imprisonment. Not only
was purveyance forbidden, but it was permitted to the people to assemble
at the ringing of a bell, and to oppose its collectors by force.
King John, who was about to start from Bordeaux to London, sent a
message to Paris to annul an ordinance which dealt so shrewd a blow at
the royal authority. But the Parisians were not prepared to submit to a
distant and captive king, the Dauphin was forced to promulgate the
ordinance, and the revolution in the government of France was completed.
[Sidenote: Anarchy in France.] The thirty-six showed their power by
purging the royal council and the magistracy of all who were suspected
of hostility to the popular party. But any hopes that the change of
rulers would bring prosperity to France were doomed to disappointment.
The revolutionary government was no more successful than that which it
had superseded. The provinces were not prepared to submit to the
dictation of Paris, and their discontent encouraged the Dauphin to wait
for an opportunity of recovering power. The nobles became more and more
indignant at the predominance of the bourgeois. The English, still
exulting in their triumph of the previous year, were content to accept a
truce for two years; but the mercenary troops, deprived of their
legitimate occupation, wandered about the country pillaging or levying
blackmail on the people. Conscious that their position was insecure, and
that the Dauphin might at any moment become actively hostile, Marcel and
his associates endeavoured to secure a powerful ally by releasing
Charles of Navarre (November, 1357). The only result was to kindle a
civil war. The Dauphin had been compelled to promise the restoration of
all his cousin’s possessions, but his lieutenants would not give up the
strong places, and Charles the Bad took up arms. For the moment he was
the ally of the bourgeois, but he had no real sympathy with the cause of
reform, and sought to fish in troubled waters for his own gain. The
disasters of the ruling dynasty seemed to offer him a fair chance of
establishing a right to the throne. In his speeches to the people he was
careful to point out that his own claim was much stronger than that of
Edward III.
As the reforming movement became weaker and more discredited, it began
to adopt more violent and revolutionary methods. The career of Marcel is
marked by increasing narrowness and selfishness. He had begun by
advocating measures for the regeneration of France, then he had become
the champion of the third estate; within that estate he was driven to
maintain the preponderance of Paris and its mob; and at last he had to
fight in Paris for his own personal ascendency. At the beginning of 1358
his adherents adopted as their ensign a red and blue cap. The Dauphin
was raising an army against the King of Navarre, and had recalled many
of his former ministers. A new exhibition of mob violence was necessary
to intimidate him into submission. Marcel forced his way into the
Louvre, [Sidenote: Murder of the marshals.] where the marshals of
Normandy and Champagne were murdered in their master’s presence. The
unfortunate prince fell on his knees to beg for his own life, and had to
submit to the indignity of wearing the parti-coloured cap, which was
placed on his head by Marcel himself. For the moment this deplorable act
seemed to have achieved its end. The Dauphin was cowed into submission;
his unpopular advisers were dismissed, and Charles of Navarre was
admitted to Paris and formally reconciled with his cousin.
But the murder of the marshals was really as impolitic as it was
criminal. The open dictation of the mob, and the failure of the
bourgeois government to remedy the misfortunes of France, provoked a
violent reaction in [Sidenote: Royalist reaction.] favour of the
monarchy which had been so insultingly defied. With fatal
self-confidence Marcel allowed the Dauphin, who now assumed the title of
regent, to leave Paris and to throw himself upon the loyalty of the
provinces. Charles summoned the States-General to meet in May 1358, at
Compiègne instead of in Paris. The meeting was not very numerous, but it
expressed the prevalent sentiment of France in favour of royalty. Marcel
endeavoured to strengthen himself by forming a league of towns for the
maintenance of common interests, but it was only joined by the towns in
the immediate neighbourhood of Paris. Civil war was inevitable, and the
new fortifications which Marcel had built to protect the capital against
English attack were now to be employed for the defence of the citizens
against their fellow-countrymen.
At this critical moment the evils of France were suddenly multiplied by
the rising of a class for which neither king, nobles, nor citizens had
done anything. The [Sidenote: The Jacquerie.] serfs or villeins of
France had suffered terrible hardships within the last decade. Their
numbers had been decimated by the Black Death, and the survivors had to
add to their own tasks the work of those who had perished. Their
hard-won savings had been wrung from them to pay the ransom of their
lords, who had fallen into the hands of the English at Poitiers or
elsewhere. The lands from which they extracted a scanty living were
devastated by the mercenary soldiers in peace as well as in war.
Despairing of redress, they determined, at any rate, to avenge their
sufferings. The story of their revolt is one of almost unredeemed
horror. It began in the district of Beauvais, and rapidly spread over
Champagne, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France. Castles were burned; men,
women, and even children were tortured and put to death. But the nobles
soon recovered from the first panic, and took arms against enemies whom
they now loathed as much as they had previously despised them. The
ill-armed peasants were unable to face the trained men-at-arms, and the
suppression of the revolt was as murderous and destructive as its
outbreak.
There was little real sympathy between peasants and bourgeois. They had,
it is true, a common enemy in the nobles, and Marcel had tried to use
the Jacquerie as a diversion in his own favour. But he gave no efficient
aid to his allies, and his half-hearted connection only brought upon
himself the discredit and disaster of their ruinous defeat. From the
victorious troops of the nobles the regent was able to form an army for
the reduction of his rebellious capital. The citizens were bellicose,
but they were not warlike, and it was necessary to bring trained troops
to [Sidenote: Siege of Paris.] the aid of their undisciplined valour.
Charles of Navarre was appointed captain-general of Paris, and brought a
mercenary army for its defence. But the king’s aims were as purely
selfish as ever. While professing to defend the city, he was negotiating
with the regent for its surrender. Such proceedings excited serious
mistrust, which was increased by quarrels between the citizens and the
soldiers of Navarre. At last the king left Paris for St. Denis, and
further resistance seemed almost hopeless. The citizens were willing to
make terms, but the Dauphin would not negotiate with the murderer of the
marshals. Marcel felt that in such a dilemma he could no longer trust
his followers. A party was already formed within the city which was
hostile to his continued ascendency, and in favour of restoring the
royal authority. If the citizens had to choose between their own safety
and the interests of their provost, their choice could not be long
delayed. There was only one apparent means of escape, and Marcel
clutched at it. He offered to surrender Paris to Charles of Navarre, and
to proclaim him King of France. But on the very night when this
treacherous design was to be carried out, Marcel was assassinated by one
of his [Sidenote: Murder of Marcel.] own followers (July 31, 1358). It
is easy to see and condemn the errors of his later career, but his name
will always be memorable in French history as the leader of the most
notable attempt, before 1789, to give to France a constitutional form of
government.
Two days after the death of Marcel the regent Charles entered Paris, and
the restoration of the royal authority was signalised by the severe
punishment of its chief opponents. In the next year Charles bought off
the King of Navarre, who had lost all hopes of gaining the crown with
the collapse of the bourgeois revolution. There still remained the war
with England. During the truce John had been negotiating for his
release, and in 1359 he agreed to the cession of nearly the whole of
northern and western France. But the Dauphin was of opinion that the
mutilation of his inheritance was too high a price to pay for his
father’s liberty. He convened the States-General, now the docile
instrument of the prince whose authority had been so recently defied by
its predecessors. The so-called treaty of London was unanimously
rejected, and Edward III. had no alternative but to renew the war. He
collected an enormous army for the invasion of France in October, 1359.
But the Dauphin had learned a lesson from experience, and would fight no
more battles like Crecy and Poitiers. The English army [Sidenote:
English invasion, 1359.] advanced to Rheims, but found the city too
strongly defended. An attack upon Burgundy was repelled, not by arms,
but by the payment of a large sum of money. Edward marched against
Paris, but the Dauphin refused to quit the shelter of the walls, and the
invaders had to turn westwards to Chartres. The country had been so
desolated by war and pestilence that it was difficult to feed the army,
the season was wet and unfavourable, and Edward III., finding that his
army was wasting away without gaining any success, agreed to negotiate.
By the treaty of Bretigni (May 8, 1360) he renounced [Sidenote: Treaty
of Bretigni.] his claims to the French throne and to the Norman and
Plantagenet provinces north of the Loire. In return he was to enjoy full
sovereignty, without any homage to the French king, in his own conquest
of Calais, and in the possessions which Eleanor had brought to Henry
II., viz. Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, and a number of smaller
territories. France was to renounce the Scottish, and England the
Flemish alliance. The ransom of King John was fixed at three million
crowns, to be paid in six yearly instalments. On receipt of the first
instalment the king was to be released, but hostages were to be given
for the payment of the remainder. It was not easy to raise the ransom
from exhausted France; but Galeazzo Visconti was opportunely willing to
pay six hundred thousand gold florins to gain for his son the hand of a
French princess, and this bargain with the Milanese despot enabled John
to return to his kingdom. He seems, however, to have found the cares of
government a disagreeable burden after the comparative gaiety of his
imprisonment in London. In 1363 his second son, Louis of Anjou, escaped
from Calais, whither he had gone as one of his father’s hostages. John
seized the opportunity to parade a chivalrous regard for his plighted
word, and at the same time to abandon duties which had become difficult
and distasteful. Leaving the regency once more to his eldest son, he
sailed to England in January 1364, and died in London three months
later. Before his departure he had done one act which is of cardinal
importance in the history of France. In 1361 a return of the plague had
carried off Philip de Rouvre, the childless ruler of Burgundy,
Franche-Comté, and Artois. The two latter provinces, which had come to
Philip through the female line, passed to Margaret of Flanders, but the
duchy [Sidenote: Duchy of Burgundy.] of Burgundy escheated to the crown.
A prudent king would have retained the direct rule of so valuable a
possession; but John, with reckless generosity, gave it away to his
fourth son Philip, who had fought boldly by his side at Poitiers, and
had shared his captivity. This Philip the Bold is the founder of the
great line of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy.
The new king, Charles V., had been the practical ruler of France since
the battle of Poitiers. During those eight years [Sidenote: Government
of Charles V.] he had learned from harsh experience many lessons which
stood him in good stead when circumstances enabled him to gain some
success. The very weakness of his bodily health, which contemporaries
attributed to poison administered by Charles of Navarre during their
early friendship, debarred him from the active exercises of chivalry,
and impelled him to cultivate his mental faculties. Fragile, timid, a
stranger to the joys of the tournament and the battle-field, he seems
strangely out of place in the days of the Black Prince and Bertrand du
Guesclin, of John Chandos and the Captal de Buch. Yet Charles V. is the
greatest of the Valois kings before Louis XI., and must be reckoned
among the founders of modern France. His chief task was to restore the
despotic power of the crown, which had been so rudely shaken between
1355 and 1358. Arbitrary taxation was to supersede the grant of supplies
by the estates; military and civil officials were to be royal nominees;
even the local assessors and collectors of taxes were to be under the
supervision and control of the crown. Only once did the States-General
meet during the reign, and then they were summoned merely to strengthen
the king’s hands. But the despotism of Charles V. was a capable and
orderly government, wholly different from that of his predecessors. It
is curious to note how this absolute king adopts and turns to his own
advantage the expedients of his enemies. He reimposed the _gabelle_ on
salt, and the _aides_ or taxes on the sale of commodities, the two
financial expedients of the States of 1355. He retained the _élus_, the
local collectors whom the States had nominated to levy these charges,
though he was careful to take their appointment into his own hands. He
gave tardy expression to the will of the estates by putting an end to
the debasement of the currency, the worst of all grievances, and by
imposing strict limitations on the right of purveyance. When his
brother, Louis of Anjou, provoked discontent by his brutal
administration in Languedoc, Charles did not hesitate to dismiss him
from the governorship, and to grant redress to the complainants. Such a
government was a great and a novel boon in the fourteenth century, and
it is only on its financial side that it is open to hostile criticism.
The expenses, both civil and military, were enormous, and the people
were subjected to a heavier burden of taxation than they had ever
experienced before. And the taxes were not only excessive in amount and
arbitrary in their imposition, they were also oppressive and unequal. To
increase the receipts from the _gabelle_, Charles V. introduced the
practice of requiring every family to purchase at least a fixed amount
of salt from the royal granaries; and the principle of equality, which
is enjoined in his ordinances, was infringed by the frequent grant or
sale of exemptions, sometimes to a class, sometimes to a district or a
corporation. It is these exemptions, multiplied as time goes on, which
make the financial system of France, down to the Revolution, so unjust,
so disorderly, and so inefficient. And Charles V. was also responsible
for a disastrous innovation. His predecessors had received a revenue
from customs duties levied on the frontiers of their kingdom. Charles
was the first to hamper domestic trade by imposing customs on the
transit from one province to another.
But in spite of these drawbacks the administration of Charles V. was
eminently successful, and it was this success which led his subjects to
approve, or even to welcome, the [Sidenote: The French welcome absolute
rule.] arbitrary character of his rule. A people which had suffered from
every kind of misfortune, from foreign invasion, pestilence, and civil
strife, as the French had done in the middle of the fourteenth century,
is never very eager to limit the power of a capable ruler. What it needs
is a government which will maintain order at home, and retrieve the
national honour by victories over foreign foes; and to such a government
much will be forgiven. If the English had reason to approve the personal
rule of the Tudor sovereigns, the French a century earlier had
infinitely more reason to support a king who gratified their most
imperious desires. For not only did Charles V. remedy the most glaring
defects of his predecessors’ administration, but this most unmilitary of
kings was able to gain triumphs over the hated English which a few years
before must have seemed impossible.
The first opportunity for an indirect renewal of the strife with England
was offered by affairs in Brittany. The treaty [Sidenote: War in
Brittany.] of Bretigni had left unsettled the long struggle between John
de Montfort and Charles of Blois, and England and France were not
pledged to abandon the cause of their respective candidates. In the very
year of his accession Charles V. determined to strike a vigorous blow in
favour of the House of Blois, and sent Bertrand du Guesclin, whose
military genius he had already detected, to lead a considerable force
into Brittany. But this first enterprise was not crowned with success.
The superior discipline of the English mercenaries enabled them to gain
a decisive victory in the hard-fought battle of Aurai (September 29,
1364). Charles of Blois was slain, and Bertrand du Guesclin was left a
prisoner in the hands of John Chandos. To prevent a complete transfer of
the allegiance of Brittany to the English king Charles V. found it
necessary to negotiate, and in April, 1365, John de Montfort was
recognised as duke, with the proviso that if he died without male issue
the duchy should pass to the eldest son of Charles of Blois.
More important in its ultimate results was French intervention in
Castile. The government of Peter the Cruel had excited the bitter enmity
of his subjects, who [Sidenote: War in Castile.] found a champion in the
king’s bastard half-brother, Henry of Trastamara. Henry appealed for aid
to France, and Charles V. welcomed the opportunity to rid his country of
the hated free companies. Bertrand du Guesclin, who had been ransomed
from his captors, raised an army among these professional soldiers, and
crossed the Pyrenees at the end of 1365. The task of the invaders was
facilitated by a general revolt of the Castilians. Henry of Trastamara
was crowned king, and Peter fled to Bordeaux to implore English
assistance. The Black Prince was conscious that French ascendency in the
Spanish peninsula threatened his duchy of Aquitaine, and chivalrous
motives impelled him to support a legitimate king against a usurper.
Peter made the most lavish promises of pay to his auxiliaries, and the
Black Prince became surety for the good faith of his guest. In 1367 all
preparations were complete, and the treacherous Charles of Navarre gave
a passage through his kingdom to the invaders. Between Najara and
Navarrette, not far from the later battle-field of Vittoria, a complete
victory was won over the French and Castilian forces. Du Guesclin was
once more a captive, Peter the Cruel recovered his crown, and Henry of
Trastamara had to seek safety in exile. But Peter proved to be as
faithless as he was cruel. He declined to fulfil his promises to allies
who seemed to be no longer necessary, and the English prince was in
great straits to satisfy the soldiers who had trusted in his surety. To
make matters worse the troops were wasted with disease, and the Black
Prince himself contracted a fever which remained in his blood and led to
his early death. With his temper embittered and his health broken, he
led the remnants of his army back to Gascony. His departure was followed
by a new revolution in Castile. Henry of Trastamara returned to reclaim
the crown, and du Guesclin, whom the Black Prince imprudently allowed to
pay a second ransom, once more entered his service. In 1369 the French
troops won the battle of Montiel, and in a personal interview which
followed Peter was stabbed to the heart by his half-brother. Thus all
the fruits of the battle of Najara were lost, and a king was seated in
Castile who was pledged to the French alliance.
These events in Castile encouraged Charles V. to carry out a
long-cherished design for the reconquest of the English [Sidenote:
Renewal of English war.] provinces. A pretext for a rupture was found in
the discontent which was excited in Aquitaine by the heavy taxes levied
by the Black Prince to defray the expenses of his Spanish expedition. In
1368 several of the Gascon nobles, regardless of the treaty of Bretigni,
appealed to Charles V., as their suzerain, to redress their grievances.
Charles delayed a final rupture until he had made his preparations, and
had heard of the triumph of his ally in Castile. In 1369 he summoned the
Black Prince to appear in Paris to answer the complaints of his subjects
before the court of peers. Edward replied grimly that he would willingly
go to Paris, but with sixty thousand men in his company. It was easier,
however, to utter the threat than to carry it out. The conditions which
had enabled the English to gain some conspicuous successes in the
earlier war were now altered, and to some extent reversed. The wise
government of Charles V. had already removed many of the administrative
evils which had crippled France under his grandfather and his father.
Thanks to du Guesclin, the French king could now put into the field a
professional army under capable leaders, in place of the disorderly
feudal levies which had been cut to pieces at Crecy and Poitiers. The
Black Prince was no longer the active and resolute commander that he had
shown himself before his illness, and he lost some of his most capable
lieutenants, notably Chandos, who died in 1370. The provinces ceded at
Bretigni had had some years’ experience of English rule, and their
discontent was stimulated by a growing sense of national sympathy with
the rest of France. Another very prominent cause of the reversal of
military success in the years following 1369 is to be found in the
cautious tactics deliberately adopted and enforced by Charles V.
himself. For an invading army victory is imperatively necessary; for the
defenders it is enough not to be defeated. Charles forbade his generals,
no matter what provocation they received, to risk an engagement in the
open field. They were to shut their troops in the strong towns, and to
leave the English armies to be wasted by disease, by want of provisions,
and by the difficulty of coercing a [Sidenote: English disasters.]
hostile population. As the invaders departed, the French could harass
their march, cut off stragglers and supplies, and occupy the territory
which the enemy was compelled to evacuate. These tactics were eminently
successful, and they were immensely aided by the support of the
Castilian fleet, which enabled the French to gain a temporary naval
ascendency. This deprived the English of direct communication with the
coast of Aquitaine, and forced them to carry on military operations at a
disastrous distance from their ultimate base of supplies. Almost the
only English success was the capture of Limoges in 1370 by the Black
Prince, who blackened his own reputation by ordering an indiscriminate
massacre of the inhabitants. Soon afterwards he was compelled by illness
to return to England, and to resign his duchy of Aquitaine, which he
never revisited. In 1372 the English fleet, which was carrying an army
under the Earl of Pembroke to Bordeaux, was destroyed off La Rochelle by
the combined naval forces of France and Castile. A new and larger force
was prepared in 1373 under John of Gaunt, but in consequence of this
maritime disaster it was necessary to land the troops at Calais. Thence
John of Gaunt marched right across France, but he found no enemy to beat
in the field, and he could not take a single fortress. Meanwhile his
troops melted away through desertion, disease, and famine. A defeated
army could hardly have been in a more lamentable condition than that of
which a scanty and impoverished remnant succeeded in reaching Bordeaux.
The failure of this great effort on the part of England was decisive.
Already several provinces had been practically lost, and by 1374, of all
the vast possessions which had been gained at Bretigni, there remained
only Calais in the north, and the strip of land stretching from Bordeaux
to Bayonne. In 1375 the Pope succeeded in negotiating a truce for two
years, and before its expiry both the Black Prince and Edward III. had
died, and England, bitterly chagrined at such complete and unexpected
disasters, had passed under the rule of a child.
In 1378 hostilities were resumed, though the English wished to prolong
the truce, and it seemed almost inevitable that Charles V. would
complete his task of expelling [Sidenote: Last years of Charles V.] the
foreigner from French soil. The English had no longer any allies in
France. John de Montfort, who had clung to his old protectors ever since
the outbreak of war in 1369, had been expelled from Brittany, which was
now almost wholly occupied by royal troops. Charles of Navarre, who had
been a traitor to both sides in turn, discovered his mistake in allowing
the English power to be so completely depressed, and opened negotiations
with John of Gaunt for a joint effort to recover the lost provinces. But
between France and Castile the King of Navarre found himself powerless.
The royal troops seized the strong places which he possessed in France,
while the Castilians entered Navarre and laid siege to Pampeluna.
Charles the Bad was deserted even by his own son, and was forced to make
a humiliating peace in 1378. If the French forces had now been
concentrated on the reduction of Bordeaux and Bayonne, and if the
Castilian fleet had been employed to cut off reinforcements by sea, the
English must have lost their last strongholds in Aquitaine. But Charles
V. was tempted by his successes to undertake a more ambitious
project—the annexation of the duchy of Brittany to the royal domain.
Such a plan at once raised the whole of Brittany against him. The
supporters of the House of Blois, who had fought for the king against de
Montfort, were resolute to defend the independence of their province.
The great soldiers of France, Bertrand du Guesclin and Olivier de
Clisson, were Bretons by birth, and though they obeyed the royal orders,
their action in Brittany was reluctant and inefficient. The rebellion
was wholly successful; John de Montfort was restored to his duchy, and
was even welcomed by the widowed Countess of Blois, who had so long
championed the cause of her husband against him. This failure in
Brittany was a bitter disappointment to Charles V., and his chagrin was
increased by the death of Bertrand du Guesclin. The king himself did not
long survive his most brilliant and faithful servant, and at the time of
his death (September 16, 1380), the English still possessed a foothold
in the north and south of France, which enabled them to make disastrous
use of the disorders of the next reign.
Footnote 5:
See above, p. 64.
Footnote 6:
Charles had been created by his father Duke of Normandy as well as
Dauphin of Vienne. It is shorter and simpler to call him the Dauphin,
though to contemporaries he was known by his higher title.
CHAPTER V
LEWIS THE BAVARIAN AND THE AVIGNON POPES, 1314-1347
Disputed election to the Empire—Quarrel between Lewis IV. and John
XXII.—The Franciscans and the Pope—The Heresy of the Beatific
Vision—National feeling in Germany—Causes of the failure of Lewis as
Emperor—The Expedition of the Emperor to Italy—Lewis supports the
Anti-Pope—His retirement from Italy—His position in 1338—The
Succession question in the Tyrol—Election of Charles IV.—Death of
Lewis.
The death of the Emperor Henry VII. (1313) gave occasion for one of
those disputed elections which were almost inevitable as [Sidenote:
Disputed election in the Empire.] long as there was no central power
strong enough to control German factions, and as long as the rules or
custom of election were uncertain and ill-defined. The Hapsburgs eagerly
grasped at the opportunity of recovering the power they had lost by the
death of Albert I. Their opponents, headed as before by Baldwin of
Trier, passed over John of Bohemia on account of his youth, and put
forward as their candidate Lewis, Duke of Upper Bavaria. The rival
forces were not ill-balanced. On October 19, 1314, Frederick the
Handsome, son of Albert I., was chosen at Sachsenhausen by the
Archbishop of Köln, Henry of Carinthia, still claiming the crown of
Bohemia (see p. 18), the Elector Palatine, and the Duke of
Saxe-Wittenberg. On the following day five electors—the Archbishops of
Mainz and Trier, John of Bohemia, Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg, and
the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg—gave their votes at Frankfurt in favour of
Lewis the Bavarian. Thus two votes—those of Saxony and Bohemia—were cast
by rival claimants upon both sides. On November 25, a double coronation
took place: Frederick being crowned at Bonn, and Lewis at Aachen. The
dispute could only be settled by arms; and a desultory war, lasting for
seven years, was closed in 1322 by the battle of Mühldorf, where the
capture of his rival seemed to secure the final victory of Lewis.
But the very completeness of Lewis’s triumph only served to provoke a
far more formidable enemy than the Hapsburg duke. As long as the war
lasted in Germany, the Pope had been content to pursue his policy of
strengthening the Guelf party in Italy, confident that his Ghibelline
opponents could receive no assistance from beyond the Alps. Clement V.,
on hearing of the death of Henry VII., had seized the opportunity to
claim the administration, and to grant the office of imperial vicar
during the vacancy to his patron and ally, Robert of Naples. John XXII.,
who succeeded Clement in 1316, after an interregnum of over two years,
continued his predecessor’s policy. But Robert of Naples could only just
hold his own against the Visconti and other Ghibelline leaders; and the
battle of Mühldorf seemed likely to turn the scale decisively against
the Guelfs. In his partisanship for the Angevin cause, John XXII.
determined to revive the most extreme claims of the mediæval Papacy. On
the pretext that he had [Sidenote: Quarrel of Lewis IV. and John XXII.]
the right to decide the disputed election, and that neither claimant
could assume the imperial office without his sanction, he called upon
Lewis to plead his cause before the Roman Curia (1323), and, when he
failed to appear, pronounced him contumacious and finally proceeded to
issue a bull of excommunication against him. Thus commenced a struggle
between the Empire and Papacy which was continued under the pontificates
of Benedict XII. (1334-1342) and Clement VI., and was hardly terminated
by the death of Lewis in 1347.
In many ways this struggle looks like a revival of past struggles
between Emperors and Popes, and to raise the old questions as to the
relations of Church and State. But if it [Sidenote: Peculiarities of the
quarrel.] is examined a little closer, it will be found to differ in
several important respects from its predecessors, and to present
peculiar characteristics of its own. In the first place, the dispute
arises from more petty causes, and the combatants are of lesser mould
than the protagonists of earlier times. There is no Hildebrand or
Innocent III. among the Avignon Popes, and Lewis the Bavarian lacks both
the courage and the imposing personality of Frederick Barbarossa or
Frederick II. The pretensions of the rival powers are less far-reaching
and exalted; and if at times we find the language of the past reproduced
in the papal bulls, it sounds unreal and almost ridiculous. No more
conclusive illustration of the decline of both Papacy and Empire can be
presented than the impression of unreality and insignificance produced
on the mind by the records of this long and obstinate contest.
Yet it is hardly probable that this impression was shared by
contemporary spectators. To them the struggle must have seemed to
involve questions of vital importance. No previous contest between the
rival heads of Christendom had produced so much literature, or
literature of such merit and significance. Michael of Cesena, the
general of the Franciscan Order, John of Jandun, and William of Ockham,
‘The Invincible Doctor,’ exhausted the subtleties of the scholastic
philosophy in their championship of the imperial position against papal
pretensions. Above all, Marsiglio of Padua, in his great work the
_Defensor Pacis_, examined with equal acuteness and insight the
fundamental relations of the spiritual and secular powers, and laid down
principles which were destined to find at any rate partial expression in
the Reformation.[7]
This outburst of literary and philosophical activity was due in great
part to the fact that for the first time in the long strife between
Papacy and Empire, the struggle involved doctrinal differences. Hitherto
the contest had been between Church and State, and the Church had been
for the most part united. But, on the present occasion, the Church was
profoundly divided. The great Franciscan Order had been founded by the
professed advocate of clerical poverty. In course of time this original
principle [Sidenote: The Franciscans and the Pope.] had been departed
from, and the Order had amassed considerable wealth, though it had been
found desirable to conceal the change by making the Pope the trustee,
and giving the Order the mere usufruct of its property. This lapse from
the strictness of the original rules had given rise to a schism within
the Order. The Spiritual Franciscans, or Fraticelli, maintained that
Christ and the Apostles held no individual or corporate property, and
that the Church was bound to copy the examples of its founders. This
doctrine, which was accepted by a chapter of the Order in 1322, was not
likely to find favour with a Pope who was accused, with good reason, of
avarice. John XXII., urged on by the Dominicans, denounced the doctrine
as heretical, and thereby alienated the Franciscans, who could plead in
their favour a bull of Nicolas III., and appealed from the authority of
the Pope to a General Council of the Church. In common hostility to John
XXII., the Franciscans espoused the cause of Lewis the Bavarian, and it
was among them that he found his most enthusiastic champions, and his
most influential advisers.
This antagonism of a section of the Church to its own head seemed likely
to be increased in John XXII.’s later years, when he was induced to
favour the [Sidenote: Heresy of the Beatific Vision.] dogma that the
dead are not admitted to the divine presence until after the final day
of judgment. This contention struck at the root of the prevalent custom
of invoking the mediation of the saints, and provoked a storm of
opposition throughout Europe. Even the French king threatened to abandon
the cause of so heterodox a Pope, and on his death-bed John found it
prudent or necessary to retract his too hasty opinion.
It is obvious that these doctrinal disputes weakened the Papacy, and so
far tended to give the Emperor an advantage. But this gain to Lewis was
as nothing compared with the strength which he derived from the most
noteworthy peculiarity of the struggle. In all previous contests with
the Empire, the Popes had been able to command the services of an
anti-imperial party within Germany, and this party had included not only
the great ecclesiastics, but many of the lay princes. But in the great
critical moments of the struggle with Lewis, this was found to be
impossible. For the first time in history the German ruler found himself
[Sidenote: National sentiment in Germany.] backed up by a vigorous
national sentiment among his subjects, a sentiment quite as strong as
that which had supported Philip IV. of France against Boniface VIII. The
primary cause of this unwonted union among German princes and people was
undoubtedly the residence at Avignon and the subservience of the Popes
to France. The national revolt against a spiritual authority which
allowed itself to become the tool of a hostile state, led in England to
the issue of the great statutes of Provisors and Præmunire, and found
equally resolute expression in Germany in the famous decrees of 1338.
Benedict XII., more moderate and placable than his predecessor, had been
on the verge of a reconciliation with the Emperor, but was actually
forbidden to put an end to the quarrel by the imperious Philip VI. This
open dictation on the part of the French king drove the Germans to fury.
In July, 1338, all the electors with the exception of the King of
Bohemia met at Rense on the Rhine, and formally resolved that the
imperial authority proceeds directly from God, and that the prince who
is legally chosen by the electors becomes king and emperor without any
further ceremony or confirmation. This meeting is noteworthy in the
constitutional history of Germany as the first occasion on which the
electors assumed corporate functions other than the filling of a vacancy
in the throne. In the following month, a numerously attended diet at
Frankfort endorsed the declaration of Rense, and proceeded to draw up
laws which should strengthen the central power. The punishment of death
is decreed against all breakers of the public peace: the feudal tenant
who takes arms against his imperial overlord is declared to forfeit both
life and property: whoever refuses to take up arms at the summons of the
Emperor is pronounced guilty of felony. The decrees of Frankfort seem to
promise a revival of the German monarchy.
In spite of all these advantages on the side of the Emperor, the quarrel
ended, not exactly in a papal triumph, yet in the complete and
humiliating discomfiture of Lewis. Doubtless the personal character of
the Emperor [Sidenote: Causes of Lewis’s failure.] contributed
essentially to this result. Lewis was well-meaning but vacillating: he
could take strenuous measures under the influence of a stronger will,
but when he lost his adviser his habitual irresolution and his
superstitious dread of the terrors of excommunication returned upon him.
To carry through the contest he required the firmness, the intellectual
craft, and the want of reverence of a Philip the Fair; and he had none
of these qualities. On more than one critical occasion, when success
seemed within his grasp, he alienated and disgusted his supporters by
grovelling offers to purchase absolution by surrendering all the
principles which were at stake in the quarrel. Moreover, the doctrinal
disputes in which he became involved, although a source of weakness to
the Pope, were not an equal source of strength to the Emperor. The
Franciscans had many powerful opponents, especially in the great rival
Order of St. Dominic, and these were alienated from the Emperor by his
alliance with a faction in the Church. The Franciscan cause rested upon
an unpractical enthusiasm which could not command the lasting support of
the clergy, accustomed as they were to wealth and to the influence which
it confers. And in the end, the strong corporate spirit of the Church
was inevitably aroused and alienated by the spectacle of a secular ruler
interfering in questions of dogma, and claiming a right of
interpretation and decision.
There was, too, in the Emperor’s position a fundamental weakness which,
unless detected and remedied, was inevitably fatal to his success.
Neither Lewis nor the Franciscan advisers who in the early years of the
struggle dictated his conduct, could realise that the conditions of the
Middle Ages were passing away. They could not see that the old imperial
pretensions were obsolete; that intervention in Italy had always brought
ruin to German kings; that even in Italy the Guelfs had the stronger,
because the less anti-national, position; and that the Ghibellines, the
professed champions of imperial ascendency, only pursued this policy for
their own ends, and had no real desire to weaken their independence by
the foundation of a strong Italian monarchy. Lewis had an almost unique
opportunity of building up such a monarchy in Germany, not on the lines
of the mediæval Empire, but on the basis of the newly awakened national
sentiment and sympathy. This opportunity he threw away because he had no
conception of the conditions under which alone such success could be
attained. Instead of endeavouring to rule as an Edward I. or a Philip
IV., he set himself to imitate the Ottos of the tenth century.
In 1325 Germany was astounded by the news that Lewis had been formally
reconciled with his imprisoned rival. It is true that the treaty was not
carried out, and Frederick, unable to fulfil his promises in face of the
opposition of his brothers, returned to captivity. But in the following
year the death of Leopold, the most resolute and active of the Hapsburg
princes, removed all danger to Lewis from this quarter, and enabled him
to follow the advice of his Franciscan counsellors and to take
aggressive measures against the Pope. In 1327 the Emperor appeared
[Sidenote: Lewis in Italy.] at Trent, where he was welcomed by the
Ghibelline leaders eager to have his assistance against Robert of
Naples. At Milan he received the iron crown of Lombardy, and thence,
accompanied by Castruccio Castracani, Lord of Lucca, he set out for
Rome. The Guelf cause seemed to be ruined in northern and central Italy,
and the partisans of the Pope and Naples fled from the city. In January,
1328, Lewis was crowned Emperor by two bishops, whose chief
qualification was that they shared with their patron the penalties of
excommunication. Three months were spent in planning further
proceedings, and in April John XXII. was formally declared uncanonically
elected and guilty of heresy. In May, Peter di Corvara, a Franciscan
friar, nominated by the Emperor and accepted by the acclamations of the
citizens, assumed the papal title as Nicolas V.
This initiation of a schism in the interests of the Franciscan party
marks the limit of the Emperor’s success in Italy. He had committed
himself to an enterprise which he had neither the moral nor the material
force to carry through. His immediate enemy, Robert of Naples, had not
yet been even attacked. When the imperial troops advanced southwards in
June, they were speedily compelled to retreat, and Lewis thought it
advisable to evacuate Rome and retire to the Ghibelline strongholds in
the north. The Emperor was accompanied by his Antipope, and the Roman
populace, with characteristic inconstancy, expelled the imperial
partisans and opened their gates to the Orsini and the Neapolitan
troops. To make matters worse, death carried off two of Lewis’s chief
advisers, Castruccio Castracani and Marsiglio of Padua. From this time
his career in Italy was one long catalogue of blunders, and he eagerly
seized the excuse for returning to Germany on the news of the death of
his former rival, Frederick the Handsome (January, 1330). The
unfortunate Nicolas V., deserted by his patron, was compelled to resign
his dignity and to make the most humiliating submission to John XXII. He
ended his life a prisoner in the palace of Avignon.
After such a complete and disastrous failure it might have been thought
that the cause of Lewis was ruined, and that he too would have to submit
to the triumphant Pope. But the open alliance of the Papacy with France,
and the consequent alienation of Germany, enabled him to recover much of
the lost ground, and by 1338 his position appeared [Sidenote: Position
of Lewis in 1338.] to be firmer than ever. At the head of a national
movement, which had expressed its sentiments unmistakably in the decrees
of Rense and Frankfort, and closely allied with Edward III. of England,
who was now committed to his great war with France, Lewis seemed able to
dictate his own terms both to Benedict XII. and Philip VI.
But Lewis was as incapable as ever of pursuing a resolute and consistent
course of policy, and at the very moment when success seemed assured he
began to vacillate and draw back. In 1340 he suddenly abandoned the
English alliance and made terms with Philip VI., in the hope that the
French king would use his influence to secure for him the papal
absolution. Philip, delighted to be freed from a very pressing danger,
did endeavour to intercede with the Pope, but even the gentle Benedict
fired up at this attempt to command what the king had previously
forbidden; and the Pope died in April 1342, without having granted the
Emperor the pardon for which he craved. The Germans were naturally
disgusted by Lewis’s pusillanimity, but this feeling was as nothing
compared to the storm of indignation excited by the Emperor’s conduct in
the question of Tyrol. The final cause of Lewis’s failure is to be found
in his reckless pursuit of that policy of family aggrandisement which
had been almost forced upon the holders of the imperial dignity since
the Great Interregnum. In his insatiable greed for territory, he did not
hesitate to alienate the chief German princes at a time when their
support was absolutely indispensable.
In 1335 Henry, Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, had died leaving an
only daughter, Margaret Maultasch, who [Sidenote: Succession question in
Tyrol.] was married to John Henry of Moravia, a son of King John of
Bohemia. The claim of Margaret to succeed to her father’s territories
was contested by the dukes of Austria, whose father, Albert I., had
married the sister of Henry of Carinthia. The struggle for the
succession between the Houses of Hapsburg and Luxemburg ended in a
partition, the Hapsburg dukes taking Carinthia, while Tyrol was ceded to
their niece Margaret. But the marriage relations of Margaret and John
Henry proved extremely inharmonious, and in 1341 the former discarded
her husband and threw herself upon the protection of the Emperor. The
temptation to acquire a new province for his House was more than Lewis
could resist. He had already in 1323, on the death of Waldemar of
Brandenburg, conferred the vacant provinces and electorate on his eldest
son Lewis. On the death of his cousins, the sons of Henry of Lower
Bavaria, he had seized their land and had thus united the whole of
Bavaria under his own rule. To these acquisitions he would now add the
county of Tyrol. In reckless defiance of ecclesiastical prejudice, he
usurped rights which had hitherto been exercised by the Church. By
solemn decree he granted Margaret a divorce from her husband, and a
dispensation to marry his own son, Lewis of Brandenburg.
The consequences of this reckless action might have been foreseen. The
clergy were alienated by the assumption of clerical powers by a layman,
while the lay princes, headed by John of Bohemia, were jealously
indignant at such an addition to the already immense possessions of the
Bavarian House. The new Pope, Clement VI., found himself at last in a
position to raise an anti-imperial party in Germany, and to bring about
the election of a rival king. But for the fact that Philip VI. was now
engaged in the war with England, Clement, who was a thorough Frenchman,
would probably have used all his influence to secure the election of the
French king. As it was, it was natural to find a candidate in the House
of Luxemburg, which had most cause for exasperation with Lewis, and was
also closely allied with France. John of Bohemia himself was
disqualified by blindness, having lost his eyesight in a campaign
against the heathen Wends of Prussia, but his eldest son, Charles, was
put forward in his [Sidenote: Election of Charles IV., 1346.] place. The
only electors who supported Lewis were his own son, Lewis of
Brandenburg, and the Archbishop of Mainz, Henry of Virneburg. The Pope,
to secure another vote, deposed the archbishop, and awarded his see to
Gerlach of Nassau. On June 11, 1346, the three Archbishops, with John of
Bohemia and Rudolf of Saxony, formally elected Charles as king of the
Romans. With characteristic quixotism the blind king, instead of
asserting his son’s title with arms, hurried the new king off to France
to aid his ally, Philip VI. On the field of Crecy John of Bohemia fell
in heroic despair, but Charles IV., whose share in the battle is wrapped
in some obscurity, escaped to Germany to maintain his title.
Meanwhile Lewis had made the last great addition to the territories of
his family. His second wife, Margaret, was a sister of William IV. of
Holland and Hainault, and [Sidenote: Death of Lewis, 1347.] on the death
of that prince in 1345 his possessions fell to William V., a son of
Lewis by this second marriage. The House of Wittelsbach seemed for the
moment so powerful that it need fear no rival, and the injudicious
absence of the Luxemburg princes had enabled Lewis to strengthen himself
still further by an alliance with Albert of Austria. Charles found his
position almost hopeless. An attack upon Tyrol was repulsed, and he was
forced to retire to Bohemia. Lewis, confident of an easy triumph, left
the prosecution of the campaign to the Margrave of Brandenburg and
returned to Bavaria, where he died suddenly on October 11, 1347, while
engaged in a boar-hunt near Munich.
Footnote 7:
See on this subject Riezler, _Die Literarischen Widersacher der Päpste
zur Zeit Ludwigs des Baiers_, and Creighton, _History of the Papacy
during the Reformation_, i. pp. 35-41.
CHAPTER VI
CHARLES IV. AND THE GOLDEN BULL
Charles IV. secures the German Crown—His rule in Bohemia—His
coronation in Italy—Difficulties in Germany—The Golden Bull—The
Papacy and the Golden Bull—The results of the Golden Bull—The
intentions of Charles IV.—The Territorial Policy of Charles IV.—The
Succession question in Upper Bavaria—The election and coronation of
Wenzel—The Swabian League—The Great Schism—Death of Charles
IV.—Partition of the Luxemburg territories.
When Charles IV. returned from the campaign in France, which had cost
his father’s life, he seemed to have very little [Sidenote: Position of
Charles IV. in 1347.] chance of gaining the imperial throne, to which he
had been elected by the opponents of Lewis the Bavarian. It is true that
Bohemia was rich in mineral wealth, but in territorial power the House
of Luxemburg was no match for the House of Wittelsbach, whose various
members ruled over the Palatinate, the whole of Bavaria, the marks of
Brandenburg, Tyrol, and the border districts of Hainault, Holland,
Zeeland, Friesland, and Utrecht. The second son of Lewis, Stephen, was
head of the powerful Swabian League, and the imperial towns were all on
the side of the Bavarian Emperor. The electors who had given Charles
their votes were not prepared to make any sacrifices in his cause, and
Albert of Austria, the most powerful of the non-electoral princes, was
committed to the cause of Lewis. The chief ally to whom Charles might
have looked for support was the French king; but Philip VI. was fully
occupied in the war with Edward III., and was thus unable to take any
part in the affairs of Germany.
And Charles had another great disadvantage in his relations to the
Papacy. In return for the support of Clement VI. he had made very
extreme concessions in a treaty arranged at Avignon in April 1346. He
had admitted that the imperial coronation must follow confirmation of
the election by the Pope; he had promised that he would only go to Rome
with the Pope’s consent, and would only stay there a single day; the
Pope was to be arbiter in the disputes between the Empire and France. It
is true that this treaty had not been published: and it is also true
that Lewis had more than once offered even greater concessions as the
price of absolution. Still, it was patent to all that Charles was the
Papal candidate; and the injudicious boast of Clement that he held the
imperial throne in his gift was not likely to conciliate German princes
and people who had so energetically protested against spiritual
dictation from Avignon. The imperial cities refused to open their gates
to the _Pfaffen-Kaiser_, or ‘parson’s emperor,’ as they called him in
derision.
While affairs were in this almost hopeless condition, three events
occurred which greatly improved Charles’s prospects. The first was the
sudden death of his rival, Lewis the Bavarian. Another was the outbreak
in 1348 of the Great Plague or Black Death, which diverted men’s
attention from political disputes, and led them to look for the checking
of anarchy and disorder to the prince who possessed at any rate the
title of king. The third event was the appearance in Brandenburg of a
pretender claiming to be Waldemar, the last margrave of the House of
Ascania, who was supposed to have died in 1319, when the electorate had
been conferred upon the eldest son of the late Emperor. The ‘false
Waldemar,’ as he is called, declared that he had never died, but had
been driven by the stings of conscience to undertake a prolonged
pilgrimage, from which he now returned to claim his rights. In order to
weaken his Wittelsbach opponent, Charles gave his countenance [Sidenote:
Charles secures the German crown.] to the pretender, who speedily
secured a large part of Brandenburg.
It was an additional advantage to Charles that the party of the late
Emperor had great difficulty in finding a successor to put in his place.
In 1348 four electors—Henry of Virneburg, who still held the see of
Mainz in defiance of the papal authority, the Elector Palatine Rupert,
Lewis of Brandenburg, and Eric of Saxe-Lauenburg, who claimed to
exercise the electoral vote of Saxony—sent proxies to Ober-Lahnstein to
proceed to a new election. The vacant crown was offered in the first
place to Edward III. of England, who had indirectly rendered a service
to the Bavarian party by preventing French aid being sent to Charles IV.
But Edward could neither neglect the French war nor face the resolute
opposition of the English Parliament. On his refusal, the crown was
offered to Lewis of Brandenburg, who had enough to do to cope with the
false Waldemar, and then to Frederick of Meissen, who declined to risk
anything in a losing cause. At last, in despair, the electors chose
Gunther of Schwartzburg, a military leader of some reputation, but below
the highest princely rank. Gunther, who had little to lose and
everything to gain, accepted the proffered dignity, but he died in 1349,
before he had time to test his ability to hold it.
Charles IV. set himself, with rare diplomatic ability, to make the most
of his own advantages and of the difficulties of his opponents. The
imperial cities, discontented by the death of their patron, Lewis the
Bavarian, and involved in difficulties and disorders by the Plague, were
gained over by the concession of privileges, and one by one opened their
gates to Charles. Albert of Austria was detached from the Wittelsbach
alliance by a politic marriage between his eldest son Rudolf and
Charles’s second daughter Catharine. Charles, himself a widower, sued
for the hand of a daughter of the Elector Palatine, and thus gained to
his side the head of the House of Wittelsbach. Finally, by disowning the
cause of the false Waldemar, he achieved the reconciliation of his most
resolute opponent, Lewis of Brandenburg. The death of Gunther of
Schwartzburg removed all difficulties in the way of Charles’s
recognition, and by 1350 his title was acknowledged throughout the whole
of Germany.
Charles IV. is incontestably the greatest ruler whom Europe produced in
the fourteenth century, yet his merits have met [Sidenote: Character of
Charles IV.] with singularly little appreciation except from Bohemian
historians. To most English readers he is chiefly known from the saying
of Maximilian I. that he was ‘the father of Bohemia but the stepfather
of the Empire,’ or by the more recent epigram of Mr. Bryce who says that
‘he legalised anarchy and called it a constitution.’ Of the two sayings,
the latter is by far the more unjust and ill-founded. Charles is a
unique figure in the family of Luxemburg which rose to such sudden and
short-lived eminence in the fourteenth century. His grandfather, Henry
VII., threw away his life in a chimerical effort to revive an imperial
authority which was no longer either possible or desirable. His father,
John of Bohemia, was the representative knight-errant of his time,
perhaps the noblest type of fourteenth century chivalry—now crusading in
Poland, now trying to found a new territorial power in Italy, and in the
end deserting his own interests to fight and fall in the service of an
ally. Of Charles’s sons, the eldest, Wenzel, was a good-natured
hedonist, who had few desires beyond the pleasures of the table; and the
second, Sigismund, was a schemer who always imagined more than he could
achieve. In the midst of this remarkable family, which can boast of
three emperors and a king who twice narrowly missed election to the same
dignity, Charles IV. stands in complete contrast both to his
predecessors and his successors. He had none of the romantic enthusiasm
of his father or his grandfather, but he had what was far better—a
strong sense of the practical duties of government, and a strenuous
business capacity which enabled him to carry them out. It is true that
he failed to maintain the Ghibelline cause in Italy, but he preferred
the more solid and substantial aim of building up a territorial monarchy
in Germany. He was distinguished among contemporary monarchs for his
preference of diplomacy to force, for his strong legal sense, and his
love of order. Like Edward I. of England and Philip IV. of France, he
marks the transition from mediæval to modern ideals and methods of
government.
The merits of Charles IV.’s government in Bohemia have never been
contested. One of the first-fruits of his good [Sidenote: Bohemia under
Charles IV.] understanding with Clement VI. was the procuring of a papal
bull to erect Prague into a metropolitan see, whereas it had previously
been dependent on the Archbishop of Mainz. In 1348, while his affairs in
Germany were in their most critical condition, Charles laid the
foundations of the University of Prague, with a constitution modelled
upon that of the University of Paris, where the king himself had
studied. To Charles the Bohemian capital owes not only its university
and its archbishopric, but also its famous bridge over the Moldau, and
many of its most notable buildings. Much of his attention was given to
the promotion of commerce. He established a uniform coinage, provided
for the protection of highways, and lowered the tolls upon roads and
rivers. He projected a canal from the Moldau to the Danube, which was to
carry through Bohemia the traffic between Venice and the Hanseatic
League. Many of his measures were protective in the extreme. Every
foreign trader who crossed the Bohemian frontier was compelled to expose
his wares for sale in Prague; no foreigner could conclude a bargain
except through a native merchant; and all goods had to be sold by
Bohemian weight and measure. Short-sighted as such regulations may
appear in the present day, they were in accordance with the ideas of the
time, and they were not unsuccessful in attaining their end. From German
and Slavonic countries nobles, merchants, teachers and scholars flocked
to the capital of Bohemia; the members of the university were to be
counted by thousands before Charles’s death.
Under this beneficent rule Prague promised to become the chief city of
Germany, and the balance of power and of civilisation was transferred
from the west to the east. Charles, undoubtedly, looked forward to
securing for the House of Luxemburg a position almost exactly similar to
that afterwards attained by the House of Hapsburg; and he trusted that
his descendants would enjoy, as the Hapsburgs did in later times, an
unbroken and quasi-hereditary succession to the imperial throne. And his
more sanguine schemes did not stop at this point. He founded in Prague a
cloister of Slavonic monks, collected from Bosnia, Servia, and Croatia,
whose task was to draw closer the bonds between Bohemia and the eastern
Slavs, and ultimately to pave the way for a union between the Latin and
Greek Churches. If this dream had been fulfilled, the Luxemburg House
might have founded a power greater than that of any Emperor, and
Bohemia, which has always been a triangular wedge thrust from the east
into the west, might have become a rivet between the two great divisions
of the Continent.
In 1354 Charles IV. set out for Italy to receive the Lombard crown at
Milan, and the imperial crown in Rome. [Sidenote: Charles IV. in Italy.]
From the Ghibelline point of view his journey was ignominious, but as
throwing light upon Charles’s policy it was of great significance. He
refused to be drawn into the vortex of Italian politics, or to break his
treaty with the Pope. To the representations of the Ghibelline leaders,
as to the eloquent appeals of Petrarch, Charles turned a deaf ear. He
entered Rome to be crowned, paraded the streets in his imperial robes,
and then retired outside the walls to San Lorenzo. With as little delay
as possible, he hastened on his return journey. It was a deliberate
renunciation of the claim of the mediæval Emperors to rule in Italy.
Charles saw clearly that Germany had been ruined by the attempts of its
rulers to make their monarchy in Italy a practical force, and in the
interests of Germany he refused to imitate the folly of his
predecessors. His main object was the reconstruction of an orderly and
efficient authority in Germany, and that object could only be achieved
by resolutely cutting himself free from the entanglement of Italian
ambitions.
It was to the task of reform in Germany that Charles devoted himself
immediately on his return to Germany, and his conferences with the diets
at Nürnberg in 1355 and 1356 resulted in the issue of the great
enactment with which his name will always be connected—the Golden Bull.
There were two great and pressing [Sidenote: Difficulties in Germany.]
problems which required solution. One very obvious cause of recent
disorders in Germany had been the disputed elections to the Empire, and
these were intimately associated with the uncertainty as to the rules of
election. It is true that tradition had decided that there should be
seven electors, and that certain sees and certain families had claims to
the right of voting. But the German practice of subdividing lands among
male heirs had given rise to great uncertainty as to which member of a
family should exercise this right. Thus the House of Wittelsbach was
split into two main branches, the one holding the Palatinate of the
Rhine, the other the duchy of Bavaria. By family agreement the
Wittelsbach vote was to be given alternately by the heads of the two
branches, but such an arrangement was certain to give rise to quarrels.
In 1314 the Saxon vote had been given on opposite sides by two rival
claimants, and the same thing had taken place in the elections of 1346
and 1348. The prevention of similar disputes in the future was a primary
condition of peace and order in Germany, and was one of the main objects
of the Golden Bull.
The second great and pressing difficulty in Germany was the danger of
the complete disruption of all political unity. There were innumerable
tenants-in-chief, electors, princes, knights and cities, held together
by nothing but common allegiance to a monarchy which had lost all
efficient authority. If no remedy could be devised, Germany must become
a mere geographical expression like Italy. The cities would become
independent republics, and desolating wars between them and their
princely neighbours would lead to incurable anarchy. In that case, the
border provinces must inevitably fall to the growing power of France.
Lyons was already gone; Dauphiné was practically lost. Provence and
Franche-Comté, though acknowledging imperial suzerainty, were subject to
French influence and destined to fall, with the Netherlands, under the
rule of a French dynasty. German ascendency would disappear, first in
the valley of the Rhone and then in that of the Rhine.
Charles IV. was fully alive to these dangers. He had accompanied his
father to Italy in 1330, had acted for a time as his vicegerent, and had
then acquired an insight into Italian politics which profoundly
influenced his subsequent policy. It is hardly too much to say that his
guiding motive was to preserve Germany from the fate which nominal
subjection to imperial rule had brought upon Italy. And though he was
connected by relationship, education, and past alliances with the Valois
House of France, he was by no means blind to the dangers of French
aggression in the west. It was in the vain hope of checking the constant
falling away of border lands that in 1365 he went through the ceremony
of being crowned King of Arles, disused by his predecessors since
Frederick Barbarossa.
On the subject of imperial elections, the provisions of the Golden Bull
are clear and precise, and they remained a [Sidenote: The Golden Bull,
1356.] fundamental law until the Holy Roman Empire ended its shadowy
existence in 1806. The number of electors is fixed at seven—viz. three
ecclesiastics, the Archbishops of Mainz, Köln, and Trier, and four lay
princes, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke
of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The three ecclesiastical
electors are to be archchancellors of the three kingdoms: the Archbishop
of Mainz in Germany, the Archbishop of Köln in Italy, and the Archbishop
of Trier in Arles. The four secular electors are to hold the great
household offices: the King of Bohemia is chief cup-bearer, the Count
Palatine grand-seneschal, the Duke of Saxony grand-marshal, and the
Margrave of Brandenburg grand-chamberlain. The election of the Kings of
the Romans and future Emperors is to be held in Frankfort, and decided
by a majority of votes. The elected prince is to be crowned at Aachen,
and to hold his first diet at Nürnberg. The territories to which the
electoral dignity is attached are never to be divided, and the
succession is to be regulated by the rules of primogeniture among male
agnates. During a minority, the electoral vote and the administration of
the electoral provinces are to be intrusted to the nearest male relative
on the father’s side. The electors are to take rank before all other
princes; they are to have the royal rights of coining money and of final
jurisdiction without appeal. All confederations of subjects without the
leave of their territorial lord are prohibited, and the towns are
forbidden to grant their citizenship to _pfahlbürger_, or burghers
outside the walls, or to receive fugitive serfs to the shelter of their
walls and franchises.
There is one omission in the Golden Bull which is as significant and
important as any of its direct provisions. The [Sidenote: The Papacy and
the Golden Bull.] papal claims to confirm or veto an election, and to
administer the Empire during a vacancy, were passed over in complete
silence. The great electoral resolutions of Rense were practically but
silently erected into an imperial law, and the election of future
Emperors was to be treated as a private affair of the German nation.
Innocent VI. did not hesitate to show his displeasure at the
promulgation of such a law by a prince who was regarded as the docile
creature of the Holy See. But Charles IV. showed a firmness worthy of
Edward I. or of Philip the Fair. When the papal nuncio tried to levy a
tenth of clerical revenues, Charles replied by demanding a reform of
ecclesiastical abuses and by threatening to confiscate Church property.
The Pope was forced to give way, and to abandon his opposition to the
Golden Bull.
With regard to the practical results of the Golden Bull, historians are
unanimous. It erected an aristocratic federation [Sidenote: Results of
the Golden Bull.] in Germany in place of the older monarchy, and the
German constitution never lost the impress which it received in the
fourteenth century. The powers and privileges which the Bull conferred
upon the electors were inconsistent with the exercise of efficient
monarchical authority. And though the secular electors in 1356 were not,
with the exception of Charles himself, very powerful princes, yet it was
certain that the establishment of primogeniture and of indivisibility of
territories would before long give them a territorial power
proportionate to their elevated rank.
But historians have misjudged Charles IV., partly because [Sidenote:
Motives of Charles IV.] they have fallen into the common error of
confusing the results of the Golden Bull with the intentions of its
author, and partly because they have paid insufficient attention to the
precise circumstances of the time in which he lived. Charles was
profoundly convinced—and it is difficult to maintain that he was
wrong—that the mediæval Empire was at an end, and that any attempt to
revive it would result in the ruin of Germany. The forces which he most
dreaded were the rising cities in the north and south, and the greater
territorial princes, such as the Hapsburgs and the Bavarian
Wittelsbachs. Both of these were weakened by the Golden Bull—the cities
by its actual provisions, and the princes by their definite exclusion
from the electoral vote, and by the virtual lowering of their rank which
was effected by the elevation of the electors. It is true that the
electors themselves received powers and privileges which might prove the
foundation of independence, but at the same time their interests were
enlisted on the side of unity. The Golden Bull gave them a grander
position as joint rulers of Germany than they could look forward to as
mere rulers in their own provinces. Thus it might reasonably be hoped
that they would resist the further progress of that disruption which had
already done so much harm to Germany.
And while he provided this check upon growing disunion, Charles IV. had
no desire or expectation that the state of things recognised and
confirmed in the Golden Bull should be permanent. His intention was to
obtain for the House of Luxemburg such an overwhelming territorial
strength that he would secure to his successors a practically hereditary
claim to the imperial office, and also such a predominance in the
electoral college as would enable them to rule Germany through that
body. By gradually adding province after province to the family domain,
it might be possible in the end to build up a territorial monarchy like
that which existed in England and was in process of construction in
France. It is true that such a monarchy might be less imposing than the
wide-reaching claims of imperial suzerainty, but it would be infinitely
stronger and more advantageous to Germany. No single lifetime could be
long enough to effect such a work, and Charles’s direct heirs only
lasted for a single generation, and were themselves incapable of
following in their father’s footsteps. But such territorial power as was
afterwards gained in Germany by the Hapsburgs was, for the most part,
acquired by following the lines laid down by Charles IV., and in more
than one way the Hapsburgs may be regarded as the heirs of the House of
Luxemburg.
It is this definite policy which gives to Charles’s territorial
ambitions an interest and a dignity which are lacking to the purely
selfish and aimless acquisitiveness of his [Sidenote: Territorial
acquisitions of Charles IV.] predecessor. In 1356 John, Duke of Brabant
and Limburg died, and his territories passed to his daughter and her
husband Wenzel, Duke of Luxemburg, Charles’s youngest brother. The
Emperor supported his brother against the rival claims of the Count of
Flanders, and obtained from the duchess and the estates of Brabant an
agreement that, in default of heirs, the provinces should fall to the
main line of Luxemburg. In 1363 occurred a very important crisis in the
family relationships of Germany through the death of Meinhard, the only
son of Margaret Maultasch and of Lewis of Bavaria, the eldest son of the
late Emperor (see p. 107). Meinhard’s death left vacant both Tyrol and
the duchy of Upper Bavaria. The Hapsburg claim to Tyrol, which had
failed in 1335, was promptly renewed by Rudolf of Austria. Rudolf was
one of the princes who were most indignant at the increased rank given
to the electors by the Golden Bull, and he had shown his irritation by
assuming the title of ‘archduke,’ which in the next century was
permanently adopted by the House of Hapsburg. Charles IV. seized the
opportunity to gain over so powerful a malcontent. He confirmed Rudolf
in possession of Tyrol, and at the same time concluded with him a treaty
of mutual inheritance by which, on the extinction of either House, the
other was to inherit all its lands. At the time, the House of Hapsburg
seemed nearer to extinction than that of Luxemburg; and, as a matter of
fact, the treaty was never actually carried out. But it is not a little
curious that within a century after the male line of Luxemburg had come
to an end, almost all the territories which it held in 1364 had passed,
in one way or another, into the hands of the Hapsburgs.
Meanwhile a struggle had broken out as to the succession in Upper
Bavaria. By a treaty made in 1349 between the sons of Lewis the
Bavarian, that duchy ought now to have gone to Lewis the Roman and Otto,
in whose favour their elder brother Lewis had renounced the possession
of Brandenburg. But the second brother, Stephen of Lower Bavaria,
anticipated their claim and obtained his own recognition from the
estates of Upper Bavaria. The two margraves applied for assistance to
Charles IV., and promised him the succession to Brandenburg if they died
without heirs. This agreement ultimately took effect in 1373, when Otto,
the surviving margrave, was induced or compelled to cede Brandenburg to
the Emperor, who pledged himself to the estates that the union of
Brandenburg with Bohemia should be perpetual. Thus Charles acquired a
second electoral vote and a very notable increase of his territorial
power in northern Germany. About the same time he betrothed his second
son, Sigismund, to the daughter of Lewis the Great, King of Hungary and
Poland, and thus opened a prospect of adding these states to the now
enormous possessions of the Luxemburg House.
These actual or prospective acquisitions could be of little permanent
value unless Charles could secure to his House the continued occupation
of the imperial office, and in 1374 he began to sound the electors on
the subject [Sidenote: Election of Wenzel.] of the election of his son
Wenzel, a boy of fifteen years old. But there were many difficulties in
the way. The Golden Bull made no provision for an election during the
lifetime of any occupant of the throne. The spirit, if not the letter,
of the law was against such a thing. There were also serious objections
to the election of a minor, and many princes were jealous of the
predominance already gained by the Luxemburgers. Charles, however, was
not very scrupulous in such a critical matter, even about the observance
of his own laws. He gained over the electors, but by the old
objectionable method of bribing them. He did not hesitate to appeal for
papal approval, thus reviving the pretensions which the Golden Bull had
practically abrogated. But his policy was successful in its immediate
aim. Wenzel was elected at Frankfort on June 16, and crowned at Aachen
on July 6, 1376.
The election of Wenzel as King of the Romans was the last triumph of
Charles IV. His repressive attitude towards the cities had met with only
partial success. The great northern Hansa had conducted a successful war
against Waldemar III., one of the strongest of Danish kings, and in 1370
had forced him to conclude a humiliating treaty at Stralsund (see p.
437). And in 1376 a new danger arose in the south. The Swabian towns
were disgusted at the sacrifice [Sidenote: The Swabian League.] of the
last imperial domains in their province to purchase electoral votes.
They renewed an old league under the leadership of Ulm, and refused to
recognise Wenzel’s election. At Reutlingen (May 14, 1377) the forces of
the league won a complete victory over their hated enemy, the Count of
Würtemburg. This was followed by a rapid extension of the confederation,
and Charles was too old and too weak to attempt its suppression. In
August, 1378, he authorised his son Wenzel to conclude a peace between
the towns and the princes, and to concede the right of union to the
former. Thus one of the provisions of the Golden Bull was abandoned
during Charles’s own lifetime.
Nor was this the only blow which Charles experienced in his later years.
He had long struggled to put an end to the papal residence at Avignon,
which was a scandal to Europe and a serious injury in many ways to
German and imperial interests. He had succeeded in persuading Urban V.
to return to Rome in 1367, and had himself visited the Pope in the
Eternal City. But Urban was alienated by Charles’s refusal to take
active measures against the Ghibelline Visconti, and was easily induced
by his French cardinals to return to Avignon. The whole work had to be
begun again. At last, in 1377, Gregory XI. was persuaded to quit the
[Sidenote: The Great Schism.] banks of the Rhone and to take up his
residence in Rome. But he was meditating a second withdrawal from the
city when he was overtaken by death. The new election had to take place
in Rome, and the choice of the cardinals fell upon an Italian, Urban VI.
This seemed for the moment a conspicuous triumph for Charles IV. But
Urban’s violence alienated the French cardinals, who seceded from Rome
and elected a rival Pope, Clement VII. Clement naturally threw himself
upon French support, and fixed his residence at Avignon. Thus the return
to Rome, instead of putting an end to scandal, gave rise to the famous
schism in the Church which lasted for forty years. Charles IV. was
bitterly chagrined, and appealed to all the European princes to
recognise Urban and to resist the excessive and dictatorial power of
France. And there was some reasonable ground for such an appeal. A
brother of Charles V. of France was Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke’s
wife was the heiress of Flanders, Artois, and Franche Comté. Another
brother claimed the succession in Naples, and the King of Hungary and
Poland was a member of the older House of Anjou. The prince who was
naturally expected to resist this threatening danger to the balance of
states was Charles IV., who might have found it necessary to lead an
army against the French king and the Antipope. But on November 29, 1378,
just two months after the [Sidenote: Death of Charles IV.] outbreak of
the schism, death removed him from the scene of strife.
Before his death, Charles IV.’s weakness for his children had led him
into an act which was ruinous to his most cherished schemes. The Golden
Bull had shown how clearly he appreciated the advantages to a state of
indivisibility and a strict rule of primogeniture. [Sidenote: Partition
of Luxemburg territories.] These advantages he deliberately threw away
in his own case. He even broke the solemn pledge which he had given
never to separate the marks of Brandenburg from Bohemia. He left Bohemia
and Silesia to his eldest son, Wenzel, while he transferred Brandenburg
to his second son, Sigismund, and formed a duchy in Lausitz for the
third son, John of Görlitz. Moravia was already in the hands of Jobst
and Prokop, the sons of Charles’s second brother, John Henry; while
Luxemburg was still held by the surviving brother, Wenzel, the husband
of the Duchess of Brabant and Limburg. The family possessions had
increased enormously since the days of Henry VII., but they were of
comparatively little value when scattered among so many hands. The House
of Luxemburg was never destined to hold the position imagined for it by
the greatest ruler it produced, Charles IV.
CHAPTER VII
RISE OF THE SWISS CONFEDERATION
The origin of Swiss independence—The Hapsburgs in Swabia—The Forest
Cantons—The League of 1291—Its Character—The Battle of
Morgarten—Luzern joins the League—Zürich under Brun joins the
League—Accession of Glarus—The League conquers Zug—Bern joins the
League—The Eight Cantons—Continued danger from Austria—Rudolf IV. in
Swabia—Leopold II., his brother, renews the war with the
Swiss—Battle of Sempach—Treaty of 1389.
The Swiss Confederation has played a part in European [Sidenote:
Interest of Swiss history.] history wholly out of proportion either to
the area which it covers, or to the population which it includes. It is
placed in the midst of the western peoples of the Continent, on the
border where the Romance and German elements touch each other at the
most decisive political and strategic points. This geographical position
has made the continuance of Switzerland an international necessity. At
the same time, Swiss history offers to the contemplation of the
scientific historian the most perfect, as it has been the most durable,
of federal constitutions. And this confederation is the more unique and
important because it shows how common interests and dangers can hold
together communities, not only of different origin and institutions, but
also of differing race and language. The story of its origin is one of
the most fascinating episodes in the history of the fourteenth century.
The beginnings of Swiss history have been obscured in two ways: by the
poetical myths which have gradually grown up, and by the theories which
have been spun in the imagination [Sidenote: Legends as to origin of
Swiss independence.] of patriotic antiquaries. The myths as to the
origin of Swiss independence have long enjoyed a world-wide fame, and it
has been reserved for the harsh criticism of the nineteenth century to
show that they had no real historical basis. The story of William Tell
shooting the apple on his child’s head has been proved to be an ancient
legend of the heroic sagas. The hoisting of the bailiff’s hat in the
market-place of Altdorf is an addition of quite recent origin. No
bailiff of the name of Gessler ever existed in the district; and if
there was a William Tell, which cannot be proved, he was of no political
importance whatever. Even the more probable and important story of
Fürst, Melchthal, and Stauffacher, and of their oath on the field of
Rütli, has also been ruthlessly demolished. If these men ever lived and
did the deeds for which they are renowned, it must have been in some
other place and in quite another relation.
The antiquarian theories as to the origin of the Swiss people are quite
as baseless as the legends, and not nearly so interesting. They have
varied sometimes in their form, but their object has always been to show
that the Forest Cantons, the earliest members of the league, had some
special race origin and some peculiar independence, apart from the rest
of Germany. They were founded, it is said, by settlers from Norway and
Sweden, who left their homes for fear of losing their liberties, and
swore to maintain them in a foreign land. All such stories are
absolutely without foundation. Modern researches have proved, not only
that the Forest Cantons were members of the Empire like their
neighbours, but that various lords, spiritual and temporal, held
different rights over them at various times. Their constant effort was
to get rid of the authority of these feudal lords, and to vindicate a
position of direct dependence upon the Empire alone. It was this effort
which led to the first formation of a league.
The Lake of Luzern, on the shores of which the original Swiss cantons
are situated, lies within the limits of the old duchy of Swabia. The
extinction of the line of dukes left a number of individuals and
corporations in Swabia without any intermediate lord between them and
the Emperor. But as the imperial authority declined, and especially
during the Great Interregnum, the chief families in Swabia set
themselves to reduce their weaker neighbours to subjection. The most
successful of these [Sidenote: The Hapsburgs in Swabia.] families was
that of Hapsburg, whose original estates were in the district of Brugg,
at the junction of the Aar and the Reuss. By the middle of the
thirteenth century the family had vastly extended their possessions. In
addition to their lands in the Aargau, they had large territories in the
Breisgau and in Elsass. Rudolf III., born in 1218, set himself to extend
his power by every possible means—by war, negotiation, and purchase. His
avowed object was to restore the territorial unity of Swabia under
Hapsburg rule. And if the old duchy had been revived, it would have been
difficult to intrust it to any other family.
But against this aggressive policy was arrayed the desire for local
independence, of which the most successful champions were the villages
of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. [Sidenote: The Forest cantons.] Uri had
been granted in 853 by Lewis the German to the abbey of nuns in Zürich,
but in 1231 the inhabitants had obtained from Frederick II. an
acknowledgment of their independence of any power except the Emperor.
The other two cantons, without such explicit proofs, had claims which
were generally acknowledged to a similar position. The endeavour to
maintain this independence of direct rule must have brought the
villagers into collision with their powerful neighbour, the Count of
Hapsburg. For the moment the struggle was postponed by the news that
Rudolf III. had been elected King of the Romans in 1273. Thus he
obtained in his new capacity a suzerainty over the cantons, which they
were prepared to deny him as Lord of Swabia. The contest must have
seemed hopelessly unequal now that the Hapsburg Count could use his
imperial authority to support his dynastic ambition. But Rudolf’s
attention was diverted from local affairs by his struggle with Ottokar,
by the acquisition of Austria, and by the establishment of his family in
this new eastern possession. He never relinquished his original aims in
Swabia, but he was no longer able to concentrate his attention on their
achievement. The Hapsburg conquest of Austria was the first foundation
of Swiss independence.
But the peasants by the Lake of Luzern showed a clear appreciation of
the danger that threatened them. In August, 1291, immediately after the
death of Rudolf, they [Sidenote: The original League of 1291.] drew up
the first league of which any record has been preserved. The document
itself is worth quoting:—‘Know all men that we, the people of the valley
of Uri, the community of the valley of Schwyz, and the mountaineers of
the lower valley, seeing the malice of the times, have solemnly agreed
and bound ourselves by oath to aid and defend each other with all our
might and main, with our lives and property, both within and without our
boundaries, each at his own expense, against every enemy whatever who
shall attempt to molest us, either singly or collectively. This is our
ancient covenant. Whoever hath a lord let him obey him according to his
bounden duty. We have decreed that we will accept no magistrate in our
valleys who shall have obtained his office for a price, or who is not a
native and resident among us. Every difference among us shall be decided
by our wisest men; and whoever shall reject their award shall be
compelled by the other confederates. Whoever shall wilfully commit a
murder shall suffer death, and he who shall attempt to screen the
murderer from justice shall be banished from our valleys. An incendiary
shall lose his privileges as a free member of the community, and whoever
harbours him shall make good the damage. Whoever robs or molests another
shall make full restitution out of the property he possesses among us.
Every one shall acknowledge the authority of a chief magistrate in
either of the valleys. If internal quarrels arise, and one of the
parties shall refuse fair satisfaction, the confederates shall support
the other party. This covenant, for our common weal, shall, God willing,
endure for ever.’
It is obvious from this simple document that the league, at its first
origin, is something more than a mere defensive [Sidenote: Character of
the League.] alliance. It regulates to a certain extent the punishment
for crime, probably because endless confusion would arise if different
penalties were enforced in each canton, and a criminal could fly from
one to the other. At the same time, there is no complete federal
government formed all at once. There is no mention of a joint assembly
to consider matters of common interest; nor is there any provision for a
common taxation for federal purposes. Each canton is to carry on war at
its own expense, and is to furnish, not a fixed contingent, but the
whole male population capable of bearing arms. The league was not the
work either of theorists or of experienced politicians, but was drawn up
by three village communities in the face of present danger, and future
difficulties were left to settle themselves. And the provision about
obedience to a lord proves that the object of the league was to guard
against oppression rather than to claim independence. But experience
soon proved that independence was the only safeguard against oppression.
Limited as its aims were, the league could hardly have maintained itself
if Rudolf’s eldest son Albert had succeeded his father on the imperial
throne. And here we [Sidenote: The League confirmed.] may notice the
good fortune that attended the infant confederacy. If the Hapsburgs had
continued to be a mere Swabian family there is little doubt that they
would have been successful in enforcing their immediate sovereignty. The
election of Rudolf, and his acquisition of Austria, gave the cantons a
breathing space in which they could agree upon joint action for their
defence. The failure of the Hapsburgs to maintain the imperial dignity
was another piece of luck for the allies. It gave them powerful allies
and a pretext for adhering to their claim of direct dependence upon the
Empire. They reaped an immediate advantage from the election of Adolf of
Nassau on the death of Rudolf. Adolf, eager to weaken his rival, Albert
of Austria, at once confirmed the league of 1291, and promised it
imperial protection. But the fall of Adolf and the election of Albert
again put the confederates in a very dangerous position. It is to
Albert’s reign that the tyranny of bailiffs, like Gessler, is
attributed. But these stories have no contemporary authority. Albert
certainly appointed bailiffs by virtue of his imperial authority, but we
have no record that he appointed aliens, or that his bailiffs were
tyrannical. In fact, Albert, like his father, had his hands full with
imperial affairs, and had no time to devote himself to his interests in
Swabia. The league remained passive during his reign, and wisely gave
him no pretext for hostile interference. Had Albert’s son succeeded to
the Empire, the Forest Cantons would probably have been gradually
absorbed in the Hapsburg dominions. But here again their good fortune
came to their aid. After Albert’s death the imperial crown was withheld
from his House for several generations. The Luxemburg and Bavarian
Emperors were for the most part hostile to the Austrian dukes, and were
not unwilling to strengthen the opposition to them in Swabia.
One of the first acts of Henry VII. was to grant to the league the most
ample confirmation of their sole dependence upon the Empire and complete
exemption from all foreign jurisdiction. In return for this they sent
three hundred soldiers to accompany the Emperor on his Italian
campaign—the first occasion on which Swiss troops served outside their
own country. In the struggle between Lewis the Bavarian and Frederick of
Austria the confederates naturally adopted the side of the former.
Leopold, Frederick’s brother, determined to punish the rebellious and
audacious peasants, as he called them. There is a legendary account of
the great battle between the opposing [Sidenote: Battle of Morgarten,
1315.] forces; but all that is known is that Leopold’s men-at-arms
allowed themselves to be attacked in a narrow valley at Morgarten, where
they had no room for evolution, and the Swiss, having first thrown them
into confusion by a shower of stones and other missiles, routed them at
the first down-hill charge. This is the first of the great fights which
showed the Swiss to be invincible on their own ground, and trained them
to become for a time the finest infantry in Europe. The victory was
celebrated by the formal renewal of the league at the village of
Brunnen; Lewis the Bavarian recognised the value of the service to his
cause by confirming the edict of Henry VII.; and by a treaty in 1318 the
Hapsburgs withdrew all claims to administrative authority within the
limits of the Forest Cantons. The league was now a recognised and
successful body to which its neighbours could look for aid in an
emergency.
The nearest, and for that reason the most important, of these neighbours
was the town of Luzern, which had grown [Sidenote: Luzern joins the
League, 1330.] up in the territory and under the protection of the abbey
of Murbach. As the town grew in power and wealth, the direct ownership
of the abbey was broken off, but the monks retained in their hands the
appointment of chief magistrate until it was purchased from them by
Rudolf of Hapsburg. The buying up of similar rights was one of the chief
methods by which he sought to extend his ascendency in Swabia. From that
time Luzern had acknowledged some measure of subjection to the
Hapsburgs, and had aided them with men and money in their struggle with
Lewis the Bavarian. But the demands of their overlords became more and
more onerous, and growing discontent seems to have impelled the citizens
to seek the support of the neighbouring villages. On December 7, 1330,
Luzern was formally admitted to the league, and this completed the union
of the four Forest Cantons.
There was in this no express defiance of the Hapsburgs, whose rights,
jurisdiction, and feudal prerogatives were expressly reserved in the
treaty, nor was any change made in the oligarchical government of
Luzern. But in time it was inevitable that the citizens should be
influenced by the independence and the democratic constitution of their
allies. The burgher nobles formed a conspiracy in 1343 to break off the
compact with the three original cantons. The legend tells that the plot
was overheard by a boy, who was discovered and pledged to secrecy.
[Sidenote: Revolution in Luzern.] He kept the letter of his promise by
telling the secret to a stove in a room where the butchers’ guild was
holding a meeting. The citizens were alarmed, and the conspirators
arrested; and the result was that not only did Luzern remain a member of
the league, but a new executive council was created of 300 members,
while the power of levying taxes, making war and concluding peace, was
vested in the whole community. Thus the exclusive oligarchy was
overthrown.
Two other cities, Zürich and Bern, though farther distant than Luzern,
were destined to play a more prominent part in the history of the
league. Zürich was in the fourteenth century a free imperial city, and
owed no obedience to any intermediate lord. The government was a close
oligarchy, as the council consisted of thirty-six members, all of whom
belonged to the old burgher families. As long as their power remained
unshaken, there was little likelihood of any close connection with the
peasants of the original cantons. But Zürich, like so many other towns
at the time, underwent a revolution. The artisans, organised in their
own guilds, were stirred up to dispute the exclusive rule of the old
burghers. The leader of the revolution was Rudolf [Sidenote: Rudolf Brun
in Zürich.] Brun, one of the most remarkable demagogues of a century
which produced Rienzi, Marcel, and the Arteveldes. Brun was himself a
member of the ruling class, but sought to gratify his own ambition by
turning against it. In 1336 the political change was accomplished. The
members of the council were intimidated into flight, and a mass meeting
decreed that the government should be reformed, and that in the meantime
Brun should hold supreme power. Before long the new constitution was
promulgated. Brun was appointed burgomaster for life with the assistance
of a council of twenty-six. Thirteen of these were to be nominees of the
burgomaster—six nobles and seven plebeians; the other thirteen were the
tribunes of the guilds. For the next fifteen years Rudolf Brun was
practically despot in Zürich, but it was not until his authority was
seriously threatened that he had any inducement to ally himself with
such sturdy opponents of personal rule as the inhabitants of the Forest
Cantons.
The undisguised despotism of Brun not unnaturally provoked a reaction in
Zürich, and the members of the dispossessed [Sidenote: Zürich joins the
League, 1351.] oligarchy were encouraged to intrigue for his overthrow.
They found zealous supporters among the nobles outside the walls,
especially in John of Hapsburg, Count of Rapperschwyl, a cousin of the
Austrian dukes. The story of the discovery of the plot is strangely
reminiscent of the similar incident in the history of Luzern. A baker’s
boy overheard the incautious conspirators, and informed his master. Brun
was warned, and the rising was ruthlessly suppressed. All citizens
suspected of disaffection were put to death, John of Hapsburg was
imprisoned, and his town of Rapperschwyl was razed to the ground. But
this act provoked the anger of the Austrian Hapsburgs, and to protect
himself against their threatened vengeance, Brun found himself compelled
to secure the alliance of the Forest Cantons. The agreement of May 2,
1351, is of great importance, as showing a marked progress towards
federation, and also because its provisions gave rise to many subsequent
difficulties. ‘We, the cantons of Zürich, Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, and
Unterwalden, do hereby enter into a firm and perpetual union: we engage
to assist each other with our lives and fortunes against all who shall
in any ways attempt to injure us in our honour, property, or freedom:
this we bind ourselves to perform at all times and in all places within
the Aar, the Thur, the Rhine, and Mount St. Gothard. Whenever the
council or community that calls for aid shall declare upon oath that the
case is urgent, each canton shall, without evasion or delay, and at its
own cost, send the demanded aid. In great emergencies, such as a distant
march or a long campaign, the cantons shall hold a congress at
Einsiedeln and there deliberate on the measures to be pursued. We, the
confederate cantons, solemnly reserve all the rights of the Holy Roman
Empire and its sovereign, and each of us his previous alliances. Each
canton may form new alliances, but not to the prejudice of the league.
We will jointly preserve the burgomaster and the constitution of Zürich.
Should (_quod Deus avortat_) any dissension arise between Zürich and the
Forest Cantons, the city shall send two good and wise men, and the
cantons two others, to Einsiedeln, and these four shall, on oath, decide
the difference: if their votes are equal, they shall chose a fifth
associate from any canton, and he shall give the casting vote.’ The
progress towards federalism is shown in the provisions for conference
and arbitration; while the diplomacy of Rudolf Brun is evident in the
clauses by which a canton is enabled to form separate alliances, and the
Forest Cantons are pledged to uphold the existing constitution of
Zürich.
Meanwhile Albert the Lame of Austria, the last survivor of the numerous
sons of Albert I.,[8] was arming to avenge the injury done to his
kinsman and to vindicate Hapsburg rights in Swabia. In 1352 his troops
advanced to the siege of Zürich, and the neighbouring towns and villages
were called upon to send aid to the invaders. The people of Glarus, not
far from Zürich, were dependent upon the abbey [Sidenote: Accession of
Glarus, 1352.] of Seckingen, and the administration was in the hands of
a steward appointed by the abbess. The Counts of Hapsburg had acquired,
more than a century before, the position of advocate, or military
champion, of the abbey, and this gave them a claim to the feudal service
of the people of Glarus. But to the demands of Albert II. they replied
that they were only bound to serve in the interests of the abbey of
Seckingen, and refused to fight in a private quarrel of the duke. Albert
at once sent a body of troops to coerce Glarus, but the inhabitants
obtained the assistance of the Forest Cantons and repulsed them. The
result was the conclusion of a permanent league between Glarus and its
allies. The rights and revenues of both duke and abbess were expressly
reserved in the treaty, and the people of Glarus promised to make no new
alliances without the concurrence of the confederates.
About the same time the league made its first conquest. Hitherto the
various members had joined of their own accord; but now the league took
the offensive, and to secure their own safety compelled the little town
of Zug to join them. Zug lies between Zürich [Sidenote: Conquest of Zug,
1352.] and the Lake of Luzern, and was occupied by an Austrian garrison.
The inhabitants of Schwyz marched to the walls and demanded its
surrender, declaring that they had no intention to diminish the
authority of the Duke of Austria or to change the constitution of Zug.
As no aid came from Albert II., the townsmen found it necessary to
submit, and were formally admitted to the league.
The expedition of Albert was thus a complete failure, and the campaign
of 1352 was closed by a hollow treaty. All prisoners were to be
released, and all hostages [Sidenote: Treaty of 1352.] and plunder
returned. Zug and Glarus were to pay the duke their accustomed
allegiance. The confederates were pledged in the future to conclude no
alliance with Austrian vassals: nor were Luzern and Zürich to admit such
vassals to their citizenship. But all former alliances, immunities, and
established regulations were to remain in force. The terms were perhaps
intentionally ambiguous. The Austrian duke contended that they involved
the separation of Zug and Glarus from the league, while the confederates
held that the last clause entitled them to maintain the alliance. But
though the treaty itself was but a doubtful gain, it was followed by a
very great accession of strength to the league. A successful embassy was
sent to invite the adhesion of the powerful city of Bern, and a
[Sidenote: Bern joins the League, 1353.] treaty was arranged at the
beginning of 1353. The direct alliance is made with the three original
cantons; Zürich and Luzern being only indirectly involved, while Glarus
and Zug are not mentioned at all. ‘The Swiss of the three Forest Cantons
shall be assisted by Bern, whenever they shall be in need: and the
cantons in return undertake to defend the city of Bern, its burghers,
and all its property.... We, the Bernese, promise to assist Zürich and
Luzern, when required by our Swiss confederates: we, of Zürich and
Luzern, promise that whenever Bern shall be attacked and its council
shall send to the Forest Cantons for aid, we will at our own expense
immediately march to its assistance.’
The accession of Bern completes the number of the eight old cantons; and
the league had grown to these dimensions [Sidenote: The eight old
Cantons.] in just over sixty years, from 1291 to 1353. But it is obvious
that as yet there were little more than the elements of a federation.
There was no central government, and no supreme court of justice. The
allies stood on various and unequal terms with each other, and some were
not connected at all. Bern was not directly allied with Zürich or
Luzern, and not allied at all with Glarus and Zug. Glarus and Zug had no
connection with each other, and the former had made more submissive
terms than any other canton. Moreover, differences in constitution
prevented the various members of the league from regarding political
questions in the same light. Bern maintained its exclusive aristocracy,
Zürich and Luzern had adopted a mixed constitution, while the three
original cantons, with Zug and Glarus, were pure democracies, in which
every adult male had a share in political power.
If all danger from the Austrian dukes had come to an end in 1353, it is
probable that this ill-cemented league would [Sidenote: Continued danger
from Austria.] have fallen to pieces. But as long as the Hapsburgs
remained great landholders in Swabia, their weaker neighbours were in
danger of absorption, and it was this which ultimately hardened the
league into a lasting federation. Albert II. was resolute to enforce his
interpretation of the treaty of 1352. In 1354 he demanded that Glarus
and Zug should renounce their alliance with the other cantons. The
league appealed to the Emperor, but Charles IV. was pledged to the
policy of discountenancing such associations, and he gave his support to
the Hapsburg claims. And Albert had another advantage in the
self-seeking policy pursued by Rudolf Brun, who was still supreme in
Zürich, and who was quite ready to make terms with Austria if he could
thereby strengthen his own position. The influence of Zürich nearly
induced the Forest Cantons to accept a treaty which would have involved
a surrender of the most vital points at issue, and it was only at the
last minute that the apparent treachery was discovered. The result was a
coolness between Zürich and the confederates, and the former went so far
as to conclude a separate treaty with the Austrian duke. Fortunately
Albert II. was too old and worn out to profit by this disunion, and just
before his death he concluded a truce for eleven years with the league,
leaving matters _in statu quo_ for the time.
Albert the Lame died in 1358 leaving behind him four sons, who were born
after he had been married for nineteen years without issue, and when the
extinction of the main line of his House seemed imminent. Before his
death he made an arrangement that his territories should pass undivided
to the joint rule of his four sons. The second son, Frederick, died soon
after his father, and the third son, Albert, preferred the study of
philosophy to the cares of politics. The two active members of the
family were the eldest son, Rudolf, and the youngest, Leopold.
[Sidenote: Rudolf IV. in Swabia.] Rudolf married the daughter of Charles
IV., quarrelled with his father-in-law about the elevation of the
electors, and was only reconciled on being allowed to annex the province
of Tyrol (see p. 120). In his Swabian dominions he showed himself an
active and capable ruler. He retained the support of Rudolf Brun, to
whom he granted a pension and the title of privy councillor. He bought
up the territory of Rapperschwyl, thus thrusting in a wedge between the
lake of Zürich and the Forest Cantons. On pretence of aiding the
pilgrims to Einsiedeln, he built a magnificent wooden bridge over the
lake, which was regarded by contemporaries as one of the wonders of the
world. His real object was to get into his hands the control of the
chief highway between Italy and Germany. His restless activity would
certainly have brought him, sooner or later, into collision with the
Swiss, but in the midst of his schemes he died suddenly in 1365, when he
was only twenty-six years old.
Of the two surviving brothers, Albert III. and Leopold, the latter had
been the confidant of Rudolf’s ambitious schemes, [Sidenote: Leopold II.
in Swabia.] and was eager to carry them out. With this object he induced
his brother to revive the practice of partition, and to content himself
with the duchy of Austria. Leopold received as his share Styria,
Carinthia, Tyrol, and the Swabian lands. It was to Swabia that he
devoted most of his attention. On every side he purchased territorial
and other rights. His aim was that of his great-grandfather: the
formation of a strong and united Swabian principality in Hapsburg hands.
In the pursuit of such an aim he was inevitably brought into collision
with the Swiss.
One of Leopold’s most conspicuous successes was the obtaining from
Wenzel, the feeble successor of Charles IV., the office of imperial
advocate in Upper and Lower Swabia. He soon found himself involved in
grave difficulties. To make head against the Swabian league of towns,
the princes and knights were forced to form confederations among
themselves. In such a state of things local collisions were frequent,
and there seemed the possibility of a great war of [Sidenote: Renewal of
war.] classes. The Swiss naturally supported the Swabian League, and
Leopold, after a vain struggle to act as arbiter between the hostile
forces, found himself forced by Swiss aggression to throw himself on the
opposite side. The forces of the neighbouring nobles flocked to his
banner at Baden in Aargau, and as the Swabian League failed to send any
assistance to the Swiss, Leopold seemed to have good reason to expect a
complete and easy victory. But the Swiss, who had defiantly broken the
treaty of 1352, were conscious that the struggle was one for liberty or
subjection. Rudolf Brun was dead, and Zürich had returned to complete
harmony with the confederates. No effort was spared to collect forces,
and the [Sidenote: Battle of Sempach, 1386.] Swiss victory at Sempach,
July 9, 1386, was even more decisive, if more hardly won, than that of
Morgarten. Leopold himself, fighting with reckless ardour to redeem the
fortunes of the day, fell upon the field. His death virtually decided
the war. It is true that the Swiss had to fight and win another battle
at Näfels, before they could force their opponents to terms. But the
treaty of 1389 [Sidenote: Treaty of 1389.] was as complete as any Swiss
patriot of those days could desire. The sons of Leopold renounced all
feudal claims, direct or indirect, over Luzern, Glarus, or Zug. Thus
within a hundred years from the formation of the league of 1291, the
Swiss had succeeded in obtaining for the whole territory comprised in
the extended confederacy that position of dependence upon the Empire
alone, which had been the first aim of the Forest Cantons.
Footnote 8:
See Genealogical Table C, in Appendix.
CHAPTER VIII
ITALY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, 1313-1402
Guelfs and Ghibellines—Equality of parties leads to foreign
intervention—Lewis the Bavarian—John of Bohemia—League against
Mastino della Scala—Walter de Brienne in Florence—Rise of
mercenaries—Foreign and native Condottieri—Joanna I. of
Naples—Succession disputes in Naples—Rome and the Papal
States—Career of Rienzi—Cardinal Albornoz recovers the Papal
States—Return of the Popes to Rome and outbreak of the Great
Schism—Strife of classes and families in Florence—Rising of the
_Ciompi_—Revolution of 1382 and triumph of the oligarchy in
Florence—Rivalry of Venice and Genoa—War of Chioggia—The Visconti in
Milan—Successes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti—His death.
The death of Henry VII. marks the failure of the last serious effort on
the part of a German king to carry out the ideal of [Sidenote: Guelfs
and Ghibellines.] Dante’s _De Monarchia_ by establishing an efficient
monarchy in Italy. A few years earlier the Papacy, which had done more
than any other power to thwart the imperial pretensions, had almost
deliberately weakened its authority by transferring its residence to the
banks of the Rhône. It seemed as if Italy might for a time be freed from
the rivalry of the two claimants to universal rule, whose quarrel had
done so much to cause discord and anarchy in the peninsula. But it is
one of the numerous anomalies of Italian history that the factions of
Guelfs and Ghibellines continue their feuds with the same vigour and
animosity as in the days when each had a substantial cause to fight for.
Yet beneath these feuds we can trace a growing undercurrent of political
interests and of selfish aggrandisement, which gradually led to the
absorption of the lesser states by their more powerful neighbours, and
ultimately to the formation of the five greater powers whose rivalry
fills the history of the next century. The example was set by Venice,
[Sidenote: Venetian policy.] whose geographical position removed her
from the main current of party strife, while her interests were more
strictly defined than those of any other state. In the east she had to
maintain and extend her trade and her influence against the rivalry of
Genoa; and she had also to face the serious problems raised by the
steady decline of the Eastern Empire and the constant aggressions of the
Turks. In the west she had not yet acquired any territory on the
mainland, but two pressing interests compelled her to keep a watchful
eye on the politics of Lombardy. She could not with safety allow any
continental power to obtain complete control of the Alpine passes
through which Venetian merchandise found its way to the markets of
Central Europe. Still less could she neglect the imperative need of
securing supplies of food. Built upon the small islands of the lagoons,
she could not possibly raise enough produce to feed her citizens, and
was necessarily dependent upon importations from eastern Lombardy or
Dalmatia. If a hostile power could cut off these supplies, Venice must
be speedily starved into surrender. This double interest forced Venice
to play a more prominent part in Italian politics than her isolated
position seemed to warrant, and in the end impelled her to join in the
scramble for territory on the mainland.
With the exception of Venice, all the Italian states were more or less
involved in the strife of factions. In the south [Sidenote: Balance of
parties.] Robert of Naples, relying upon Papal and French support, still
held the Guelf leadership, and still aimed, like his grandfather, at
converting this leadership into a kingdom of Italy. But the Angevin
power was no longer what it had been in the days of Charles I. The
Sicilian Vespers had given Sicily to a hostile dynasty, and the Popes in
Avignon were less valuable allies than their predecessors in Rome. In
the north lay the main strength of the Ghibelline party. Despots, like
Matteo Visconti in Milan and Cangrande della Scala in Verona, were
rapidly overthrowing the republican independence of the Lombard cities,
and these men had no legal basis for their authority save their
appointment as imperial vicars. Between Naples and Lombardy lay the
Papal States and Tuscany. In the former, the Popes continued to employ
what authority they could wield through their legates on the Guelf and
Angevin side. But the decline of their direct authority led to the rise
of petty despots in cities which were nominally papal fiefs, and these
despots, desiring the maximum of independence for themselves, naturally
leaned towards Ghibellinism. In Tuscany there was also a marked
division. Florence was the head of a group of communes which retained
republican institutions and were ardently Guelf in sympathy. But Pisa,
also a republic, was equally resolute on the Ghibelline side.
On the whole the two parties were so evenly matched in strength, that it
was difficult for either to resist the temptation of trying to turn the
balance in its own favour by [Sidenote: Foreign intervention in Italy.]
calling in foreign assistance. It is true that a number of writers,
including Sismondi, have represented the Guelfs as the national and the
Ghibellines as the anti-national party. But this view involves both a
misconception of the mediæval empire, and also the anachronism of
assuming a sense of nationality to exist in Italy at a time when no such
idea was possible. The only sentiment which could vie with devotion to
party was patriotism; but patriotism beyond the bounds of his own city
was as unknown to a citizen of Florence or Milan as it was to an
Athenian or a Spartan in the days of Greek independence. Robert of
Naples was as much a foreigner to a native of Lombardy or Tuscany as
Lewis the Bavarian, and the king of France was much more so. As long as
party spirit was the strongest force in Italy, we can trace a succession
of appeals for foreign intervention: and when party spirit finally gave
way to the rivalry of state with state, this intervention grew into
conquest and occupation.
Henry VII. in the last struggle before his death had clearly and
correctly perceived that the key to the situation was in [Sidenote:
Struggle in Tuscany.] Tuscany, that if the Ghibelline cause could
triumph in that province the overthrow of the Guelfs might be
confidently expected. And not long after his death the desired state of
things seemed not unlikely to be realised. One of the most famous
adventurers of the age, Castruccio Castracani, who had risen to
prominence by his military ability, made himself lord of Lucca and there
became a formidable neighbour to Florence. In 1325 he reduced the
intermediate town of Pistoia, and defeated the Florentine forces at
Altopascio. So terrified were the Florentines that they resolved to
sacrifice their independence as the price of safety and the victory of
their party. They offered the lordship of the city to Robert of Naples,
who accepted it for his only son, Charles of Calabria. The progress of
Castruccio was checked, and the appearance of Neapolitan forces in
Tuscany impelled the Ghibelline leaders to call in the assistance of
Lewis of Bavaria (_vide_ p. 104). Lewis [Sidenote: Lewis the Bavarian in
Italy.] entered Italy in 1327, but his coming brought little real gain
to his allies. In Milan he imprisoned his host, Galeazzo Visconti, and
restored to the citizens a mockery of republican independence. Pisa, in
spite of her Ghibelline traditions, stood a month’s siege before she
would open her gates to a prince who might hand her over as a reward to
his chief supporter Castruccio Castracani. No attempt was made to attack
the Duke of Calabria in Florence, and Lewis hurried on to Rome. There he
was crowned emperor. John XXII. was deposed as a heretic, and an
Antipope was elected. Castruccio was formally created Duke of Lucca,
Pistoia, and Volterra. But the news came that the Florentines had
captured Pistoia by stratagem, and Castruccio had to hurry north for the
defence of his duchy. He was indignant that Lewis had given the lordship
of Pisa to the empress, and in defiance of imperial authority he took
measures to secure his own rule in the city. From Pisa he advanced to a
successful siege of Pistoia, but he died almost immediately after
(September 3, 1328) of a fever contracted in the trenches.
The death of Castruccio and the humiliating failure of Lewis the
Bavarian, who was forced to evacuate Rome in the autumn of 1328,
deprived the Ghibellines of the advantages which they had secured in the
early part of the year. Lucca, which had threatened to subdue both
Florence and Pisa, became a prize for which many states and adventurers
contended. But the Guelfs did not profit as much as might have been
expected from the disasters of their opponents. Charles of Calabria,
having served the purpose of the Florentines by saving them from
Castruccio, died on November 9, 1328, and Florence recovered her
independence. Robert of Naples, profoundly discouraged by the death of
his only son, abandoned most of his ambitious projects and ceased to
interfere in the politics of northern Italy. Soon afterwards the emperor
found it necessary to leave Italy in order to look after his interests
in Germany. Before his departure he restored Milan to the rule of Azzo
Visconti, the son of the deposed Galeazzo, who had perished, like
Castruccio, of a disease contracted during the siege of Pistoia.
The departure of Lewis and the inactivity of the Neapolitan king left
the parties in northern Italy to fight out their quarrels without
foreign aid. The Ghibellines had lost their short-lived ascendency in
Tuscany, but they were still omnipotent on the Lombard plain. By far the
most powerful Ghibelline prince at this time was [Sidenote: Power of
Mastino della Scala.] Mastino della Scala, who in 1329 had succeeded his
uncle Cangrande in the government of Verona. Cangrande, a typical
Italian despot in his combination of relentless cruelty with the
patronage of letters, had established a strong territorial power in
eastern Lombardy. He had forced Marsilio Carrara to govern Padua as his
lieutenant, while he had brought into direct submission the towns of
Vicenza, Feltre, Belluno, and Treviso, and was thus enabled to control
the most important eastern passes through the Alps. Mastino inherited
his uncle’s ambition with his territories, and on receiving an appeal
for aid from the Ghibelline exiles of Brescia, he eagerly seized the
pretext for laying siege to that city. This aggression led to the most
interesting and unique instance of foreign intervention in Italy. John
of Bohemia [Sidenote: John of Bohemia.] (_vide_ p. 18) happened to be at
the moment on the Italian borders at Trent, negotiating the marriage of
his second son with the heiress of Tyrol, Margaret Maultasch (_vide_ p.
107). He had never taken part in Italian politics, but he enjoyed a
brilliant reputation in Europe, and there was much in his position to
attract the attention of the Italians. He was known to be on the most
intimate terms with the Pope and the French king, both patrons of the
Guelf cause. At the same time, as the son of Henry VII., he had strong
claims on the allegiance of the Ghibellines. If any man could act as a
mediator in the party feuds of Italy, it was the head of the house of
Luxemburg.
To King John the besieged Brescians appealed for assistance, and offered
in return the sovereignty over the city. [Sidenote: Successes of John in
Italy.] The prospect of a new field for adventure was more than John
could resist. He ordered levies to be collected in Bohemia, and warned
Mastino della Scala to desist from attacking a city which owned his
lordship. Mastino obeyed on condition that the Ghibelline exiles should
be restored; and this promise, to the great chagrin of the dominant
party in Brescia, the king fulfilled. On his entry into the city
(December 31, 1330) John announced that he would belong to no party,
that his one aim was to restore peace and justice, and that he hoped
that before long there would be no more Guelfs and Ghibellines. The
immediate effect of such unprecedented language was almost magical. The
Italians, exhausted with continual party warfare, welcomed as a
protecting angel the prince who promised impartiality. One after another
the cities of northern Italy, Bergamo, Cremona, Pavia, Vercelli, and
Novara, placed themselves under the rule of John of Bohemia. Even Azzo
Visconti, the powerful lord of Milan, found it advisable to acknowledge
the suzerainty of the king, and to accept the title of royal vicar. Soon
afterwards John’s dominions were extended southwards by the submission
of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and the unfortunate Lucca, which had been
tossed from hand to hand since the death of Castruccio Castracani. In
every case the exiles, of either faction, were allowed to return, and
the government was established without any regard to party divisions.
For a moment it seemed that the spontaneous action of the Italians
themselves might create the monarchy that had so long seemed an
impossible dream.
But John’s success was too sudden to be lasting. Party enmities were too
deeply rooted to be torn up at the first [Sidenote: Opposition to John.]
effort. Men began to ask in whose name had he come; did he represent the
Emperor or the Pope? An appeal to these potentates produced only
negative answers. John XXII. was indignant with the king for restoring
the Ghibelline exiles in Guelf strongholds; Lewis was jealous that a
rival should succeed where he had failed. And John had enemies both in
Italy and outside. Mastino della Scala felt himself threatened by the
rise of a conterminous principality in Lombardy, and Florence was afraid
lest a power which extended so far as Lucca might endanger her own
independence. In the north the dukes of Austria and the kings of Poland
and Hungary formed a league against him, and John had to cross the Alps
for the defence of Bohemia. His absence only hastened the destruction of
a dominion that rested on too shallow a foundation to endure. If he had
succeeded for a moment in uniting Guelfs and Ghibellines under his rule,
a still more wonderful union was brought about for his overthrow. In
1332 the strange spectacle was seen of a close league of Florence and
Naples with Azzo Visconti, Mastino della Scala, and other Ghibelline
princes of the north. Mastino had already succeeded in capturing
Brescia, and Azzo had seized upon Bergamo and Vercelli. The rest of
John’s possessions were to be partitioned among the allies. Cremona was
to go to Visconti, Parma to Mastino, Modena to the house of Este, Reggio
to the Gonzagas of Mantua, and Lucca to the Florentines.
John of Bohemia had succeeded in dividing the northern league, and had
proceeded to France and Avignon in order to secure the support of Philip
VI. and the Pope. He now hurried back to the aid of his son Charles,
whom he had left in charge of his Italian dominions. But he found that
he had no sufficient native support to [Sidenote: Collapse of his
power.] enable him to face the hostile coalition. The two parties whom
he had tried to conciliate were now united in opposition. He had few
real interests at stake in Italy, whither he had been mainly attracted
by the love of adventure. Instead of prosecuting the struggle, he sold
his prerogatives in each town to the highest bidder he could find, and
quitted Italy with his son in 1333. The episode is interesting as
throwing light on the character of John, and on the impulsive character
of the Italians, but in an indirect way it was of unforeseen importance.
The future emperor, Charles IV., never forgot the experience of Italian
politics which he had obtained during the two years in which he acted as
his father’s deputy, and one of the dominant influences which shaped his
subsequent policy in Germany (see chapter vi.), was a desire to save
that country from falling into the same condition as Italy.
The chief gainers by the overthrow of John of Bohemia were the
Ghibelline leaders of the confederacy against him, [Sidenote: League
against Mastino della Scala.] and especially Mastino della Scala, who
not only took his own share of the plunder, but refused to give up
Lucca, which should have fallen to Florence. It was reckoned by
contemporaries that only one European prince, the king of France, drew a
larger revenue from his subjects than the lord of Verona. But the rapid
growth of his power only served to excite the enmity of his neighbours.
Venice was impelled by self-interest to attack a potentate who not only
dominated the district from which the republic drew its most available
supplies of food, but also commanded the all-important Alpine passes.
Florence was eager to punish the ill-faith which withheld from her the
coveted possession of Lucca. Marsilio Carrara was tempted by the
prospect of recovering the independent lordship of Padua, while Azzo
Visconti and the other Lombard despots welcomed the opportunity of
destroying the ascendency in Lombardy which for the last decade had been
enjoyed by the Scaligers. The result was the formation of a powerful
league which Mastino was unable to resist. In 1338 he was forced to
conclude a treaty which put an end to the preponderance of Verona in the
north. Venice received Treviso, with the adjacent territory, Castelbaldo
and Bassano, thus securing a land fertile in corn and cattle, and at the
same time access to the foot of the Alps. The Carrara dynasty was
established in Padua as a buffer between Venice and the growing power of
the Visconti, who seized Brescia and Bergamo. Only Verona and Vicenza
remained to the house of Scala.
But the unfortunate Florentines were again duped of the reward which
should have attended their alliance with the Ghibelline princes. Lucca
was indeed ceded by Mastino for a money payment, but the Pisans
intervened to prevent such an addition to the dominions of their rivals.
In 1341 the Pisans defeated the forces of Florence, and in the next year
they obtained the surrender of Lucca. This disappointment was the last
of a series of disasters which weakened and discredited the government
of the _popolo grasso_ in Florence (_vide_ p. 32). In their chagrin the
citizens resorted to the expedient, so familiar in the mediæval history
of Italy, of intrusting a temporary dictatorship to a foreigner. Their
choice fell upon Walter [Sidenote: Walter de Brienne in Florence, 1343.]
de Brienne, who had previously been active in Florence as a follower of
Charles of Calabria. His ancestors had gained the duchy of Athens at the
time when the Fourth Crusade had given to western princes the dominion
of the eastern empire, and though his father had been forced to resign
in 1312, Walter still called himself Duke of Athens. The temporary
military and judicial authority intrusted to the duke failed to satisfy
his ambition, and he set himself to establish a permanent despotism in
Florence. It was not difficult for him to gain over the _grandi_ and the
lower classes, who were jealous of the monopoly of power claimed by the
wealthy burgesses. With their aid a parliament was convoked which
insisted on voting the signory to the duke for his life. But ten months
of arbitrary rule sufficed to disgust the most liberty-loving people in
Italy, and the nobles and lesser guilds combined with the greater guilds
to overthrow the despotism which had risen through the jealousy of
classes. Walter de Brienne ordered his hired horsemen to ‘course the
city,’ _i.e._ to gallop along the principal streets and disperse the
insurgents. But the citizens had erected barricades to bar the progress
of the cavalry, and the duke, besieged in the Palazzo Vecchio, was
compelled to abdicate. His fall was followed by concessions to the
_grandi_ who had taken an active part in the struggle. The Ordinances of
Justice [Sidenote: Constitutional changes.] (_vide_ p. 32) were
repealed, and the office of gonfalonier, whose original function was to
enforce the ordinances, was abolished. The government was to be
intrusted to twelve priors, three from each quarter of the city; and of
these three, one was to be a noble and two burghers. Other offices were
also thrown open to the nobles. But the old jealousy of the _grandi_ was
too deeply seated to allow this arrangement to be permanent. A rising of
the mob forced the four noble priors to quit the _palazzo_. The nobles
took up arms to defend their cause, but the civil strife was fatal to
the power of their whole class. The ordinances, and with them the office
of gonfalonier, were revived, and the only permanent result of the
crisis was the extension of political privileges to the _popolo minuto_,
or members of the lesser guilds. The number of priors was fixed at
eight, two from each quarter, and half the number were to belong to the
lesser guilds. The gonfalonier was to be chosen alternately from the two
classes of citizens. But while the exclusion of the noble class from
office was rendered permanent, some five hundred members of that class
were freed from its disabilities by being disennobled and ‘raised’ to
the rank of ordinary burghers.
The martial spirit which enabled the Florentines to defeat the schemes
of the Duke of Athens, was by no means common in Italy at the time, and
did not endure long even in Florence. The fourteenth century witnessed a
change in the military system of [Sidenote: Rise of Mercenaries in
Italy.] Italy which was destined to exercise the most vital and lasting
effects upon the history of the peninsula. In the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the military force of each state had consisted of the male
population of the state organised as a militia. The central
rallying-point of the army was the _carroccio_ or city standard, and the
regiments were arranged according to local divisions, or sometimes
according to the guild organisation of the city. Such a force was the
firmest security for the maintenance of political liberty. But when
despots began to overthrow republican independence in most of the
communes, their first aim was to disarm their subjects, and to procure
troops who had no natural sympathy with the native population. The
example was set by Frederick II., whose government of his southern
kingdom furnished in many ways a model for the imitation of later
rulers. In his struggle with the Popes he incurred great odium by taking
Saracens into his pay. The northern despots tried to secure their power
by enlisting foreign soldiers under their standard. Each of the
successive invasions of Henry VII., Lewis the Bavarian, and John of
Bohemia, left behind a number of German adventurers who were willing to
take Italian pay. These men were formed into body-guards by the Visconti
and other Italian despots, who were thus enabled to disarm their
subjects, and to trample on their liberties. And the republics which
retained their independence soon found it necessary to follow the
example of the princes. The mercenary troops were for the most part
heavy-armed cavalry, and the civic infantry were no match for them in
the open field. The republics would only have courted destruction by
continuing to employ a force which was inadequate for their defence.
Moreover, under the altered conditions of warfare, campaigns were much
longer than when the struggle was decided by a single contest between
the armed populace of two rival cities. The ordinary citizen could no
longer afford to sacrifice his time and his business to do work which he
might pay others to do for him. It was cheaper to be heavily taxed for
the maintenance of a hired force, than to leave the shop or the
counting-house for a protracted campaign. The Florentines soon adopted
the custom of employing mercenaries, and in 1351 commuted personal
service for a money payment. The Venetians, though they employed native
crews and native commanders in their fleet, always hired foreigners to
fight their battles on land. One result of the change was that infantry
was wholly superseded by heavy-armed cavalry, until the general use of
gunpowder, and the intervention of the great powers in Italy, brought
about another great change in the art of war.
At first the mercenary troops in Italy were employed as the body-guard
of a tyrant, or as the standing army of a republic. But as the leaders
of these forces became conscious [Sidenote: Foreign Condottieri.] of
their power, they began to form independent armies, which might live at
the expense of the unwarlike natives, or might acquire wealth by letting
out their services to the highest bidder. The first notable instance of
such an army was in 1343, when a German, Werner, or, as the Italians
called him, Guarnieri, formed the Great Company. He levied contributions
on the states which he entered with his forces, and only occasionally
took part in the Italian wars. The same company, or another with the
same name, appears in 1353 under the command of Fra Moreale, who was
afterwards put to death by Rienzi. When the treaty of Bretigny put an
end for a time to the English wars in France, a new flood of foreign
adventurers poured into Italy, where they formed the White Company under
the famous Englishman, John Hawkwood or Giovanni Acuto. He was
distinguished among _condottieri_ for the fidelity with which he
performed his contracts, and the Florentines expressed their sense of
his services by giving him a tomb and a monument in the _Duomo_.
In the earlier part of the fourteenth century the majority of the
mercenary soldiers and their commanders were foreigners; in the later
part of the century their place was to a large extent taken by native
troops and _condottieri_. As the smaller communes were gradually
deprived of liberty and of an independent political life by the
extension of the larger states, the more energetic and [Sidenote: Native
Condottieri.] ambitious citizens were only too glad to find an opening
for their activity in the career of arms. In 1379 the Company of St.
George, into which none but Italians were admitted, was founded by
Alberigo da Barbiano, a noble of Romagna. In this company were trained
Braccio and Sforza, the founders of the two great schools of Italian
commanders in the fifteenth century. That the native troops could be as
efficient as the foreigners whom they superseded was proved in 1401,
when a German army in the service of the Emperor Rupert was routed by an
Italian force which had been hired by the Duke of Milan.
Whatever semblance of unity had been given to Italian history by the
continuance of party feuds disappeared altogether in the later part of
the fourteenth century, when party allegiance was finally subordinated
to the desire of each state for territorial aggrandisement.
Chronological arrangement becomes impossible, and all that can be done
is to briefly point out the most notable incidents in the history of the
greater states. It will be convenient to begin this survey with the
south of the peninsula, and to proceed northwards.
The ambition of Robert of Naples had been moderated by the death of his
only son in 1328, and though he continued [Sidenote: Naples.] to support
the Popes in their quarrel with Lewis the Bavarian, he took very little
part in Italian politics in his later years. The subsequent history of
Naples turns for the most part upon dynastic rivalry, and demands an
accurate knowledge of genealogy.[9] Robert himself had succeeded his
father in 1309 to the exclusion of the stronger hereditary claim of his
nephew, Carobert of Hungary. Carobert died in 1342, leaving two sons,
Lewis, king of Hungary and afterwards of Poland, and Andrew. Robert, who
died in the following year, had no direct descendants except two
granddaughters, Joanna and Maria, the children of Charles of Calabria.
In the hope of averting strife with the Hungarian branch Robert, before
his death, arranged a marriage between Joanna and her cousin Andrew.
[Sidenote: Joanna I. and Andrew.] But this expedient failed to produce
the desired result. Joanna claimed the right of succession to her
grandfather, and wished to treat her husband as a mere prince-consort.
Andrew, however, insisted on the priority of his own claim as the male
representative of the eldest line. The quarrel was complicated by the
action of two descendants of Robert’s younger brothers, Lewis of
Taranto, who was suspected of being Joanna’s lover, and Charles of
Durazzo, who had married Maria, the queen’s younger sister. Both were
aspirants for the succession, and while Lewis sided with Joanna, Charles
encouraged the Hungarian prince to assert his claims. At last, in 1345,
Europe was scandalised by the news that Andrew had been murdered.
Suspicion rested from the first upon Joanna and Lewis of Taranto, whom
she subsequently married, though it is as difficult to furnish absolute
proof of their guilt as in the superficially similar case of Mary Stuart
and Bothwell. Lewis of Hungary, however, considered himself justified in
accusing Joanna of his brother’s murder, and took measures to exact
vengeance and, [Sidenote: Lewis of Hungary invades Naples.] at the same
time, to assert his own claim. His expedition was delayed for two years
by the intrigues of Pope Clement VI., by the struggle in Germany between
Lewis the Bavarian and Charles IV., and by the opposition of the
Venetians, always quarrelling with Hungary for the possession of
Dalmatia. It was not till the end of 1347 that Lewis was able to make
his way overland to Naples. Many of the nobles, including Charles of
Durazzo, rallied to his cause, and Joanna was forced to fly to Provence.
Lewis was crowned king of Naples, and one of his first acts was to put
to death Charles of Durazzo, nominally on a charge of complicity in
Andrew’s death, but probably because he might prove a dangerous
candidate for the throne. The outbreak of the Black Death and
difficulties in Hungary compelled Lewis to return northwards, and Joanna
seized the opportunity to attempt the recovery of her kingdom. To raise
money she sold Avignon to Clement VI., and it remained a papal
possession till its annexation to France in 1791. Joanna’s return to
Naples was followed by a desultory war with the Hungarian party. Lewis
returned to uphold his cause in 1350, but he found it practically
impossible to hold a kingdom so distant from Hungary, and in 1351 he
agreed to a treaty. The question of Joanna’s guilt was referred to the
Pope, and on his decision in her favour Lewis resigned the Neapolitan
crown, magnanimously refusing the money compensation which was offered
him by the papal award.
For the next thirty years the history of Naples was comparatively
uneventful. Joanna married two more husbands [Sidenote: Succession to
Joanna I.] after the death of Lewis of Taranto, but had no children to
survive her. As she grew old the question of the succession became of
pressing importance. Her nearest relative was her niece, Margaret, the
daughter of her sister Maria and the Charles of Durazzo who had been put
to death in 1348. The latter’s brother, Lewis, had left a son, another
Charles of Durazzo, who, in 1370, married his cousin Margaret, and was
afterwards treated by Joanna as her heir. But in 1378 the Great Schism
in the Papacy began, and the queen and her nephew took opposite sides.
Joanna was the first and most ardent supporter of Clement VII., whereas
Charles of Durazzo, who had been trained and employed by his kinsman,
Lewis of Hungary, espoused the cause of Urban VI. The result was a
violent quarrel, and Urban encouraged Charles, in 1381, to take up arms
against Joanna instead of waiting for the succession. Determined to
disinherit her undutiful kinsman, and, at the same time, to gain the
support of France, Joanna offered to [Sidenote: The second House of
Anjou.] adopt as her heir Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of
France. Louis could trace descent from the Neapolitan house, as his
great-grandfather, Charles of Valois, had married a daughter of Charles
II. of Naples. The offer was accepted, and from it arose the claim to
Naples of the second house of Anjou—a claim which distracted southern
Italy for a century, and ultimately passing to the French king, became
the pretext for the famous invasion of Charles VIII. in 1494. But for
the moment Joanna’s action brought her little good. Before aid could
come from France she was taken prisoner by Charles, and died in
captivity (May 22, 1382). The successful [Sidenote: Charles III. and
Louis I.] prince was crowned as Charles III. of Naples. His rival, Louis
of Anjou, seized one of Joanna’s dominions, the county of Provence,
which remained in the hands of his descendants. He also led a formidable
army to enforce his claim upon Naples, but he was not successful, and
died in 1385 without gaining more than the mere title of king.
Charles III. was now firmly established in Naples, but the disturbances
in Hungary after the death of Lewis the Great induced him to assert a
claim to that kingdom. A momentary success was followed by his
assassination (February 24, 1386). Hungary fell into the hands of
Sigismund, and civil war broke out in Naples between the supporters of
Ladislas, [Sidenote: Ladislas and Louis II.] Charles III.’s son, and
Louis II. of Anjou, who inherited the claims of his father. There is no
need to trace the details of the struggle, which after many fluctuations
of success ended in the victory of Ladislas. For a few years in the next
century Ladislas was one of the most influential and active princes of
Italy. On his premature death in 1414, the crown of Naples passed to his
sister Joanna II., in whom the direct line of the original Angevin house
of Naples came to an end.
It would be tedious, and perhaps impossible, to narrate in detail the
history of the Papal States during the residence of [Sidenote: Rome and
the Papal States.] the Popes at Avignon and the subsequent schism. Under
the strongest of the preceding Popes, there had never been any organised
central government in the territories which owned their sway. The Popes
had been the suzerains rather than the rulers of the States of the
Church. Every considerable city was either a republic with its own
municipal government, or was subject to a despot who had succeeded in
undermining the communal institutions. Even in Rome itself the bishop
could exercise little direct authority. Over and over again, the
turbulence of the citizens had driven successive Popes to seek a refuge
in some smaller town. In fact, the Romans might easily have shaken off
papal rule altogether but for two considerations. The Popes drew so much
wealth from Latin Christendom that they could afford to levy very light
taxes upon their immediate subjects. And the Romans gained enormous
indirect profit from the crowds of pilgrims and wealthy suitors who were
constantly drawn to the papal court. It is true that this profit was
diverted to Avignon in the fourteenth century, but though this was a
great grievance to the Romans, it was a reason for demanding the return
of the Popes rather than for making the separation permanent. The
government of Rome was in theory republican, but nothing survived from
the ancient republic except its memory and its disorder. A Senate had
been revived in the twelfth century only to prove a complete failure,
and the name of Senator had come to be applied to a temporary
magistrate, who was sometimes elected by the citizens but more often
nominated by the Pope. A central board of thirteen officers, one from
each _rione_ or district of the city, was intrusted with the municipal
administration, but it had little real authority. Every other commune in
Italy had found it necessary to restrict or abolish the privileges of
the feudal nobles. But in Rome the Colonnas, the Orsini, and other noble
families enjoyed the most lawless independence and treated the citizens
with the utmost contempt. The brawls of their retainers filled the
streets with disorder, and it was dangerous for the townspeople to
resist any outrage either on person or on property. The Popes had rarely
been successful in checking the lawlessness of the barons, and now that
the Pope was at a distance from Rome all restraint upon their licence
seemed to be removed.
It was in these circumstances that a momentary revival of order and
liberty was effected by the most extraordinary adventurer of an age that
was prolific in adventurers. [Sidenote: Rienzi.] Cola di Rienzi was born
of humble parents, though he afterwards tried to gratify his own vanity
and to gain the ear of Charles IV. by claiming to be the bastard son of
Henry VII. A wrong which he could not venture to avenge excited his
bitter hostility against the baronage, while the study of Livy and other
classical writers inspired him with regretful admiration for the glories
of ancient Rome. He succeeded in attracting notice by his personal
beauty and by the rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In
1342 he took the most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to
Clement VI., and though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome,
which at that time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the
evils of the time, he gained sufficient favour at Avignon to be
appointed papal notary. From this time he deliberately set himself to
raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he
disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and
extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck.
Rienzi with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal
vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to
the Capitol, and, amidst the applause of the mob, promulgated the laws
of the _buono stato_. He himself took the title [Sidenote: The ‘good
estate.’] of Tribune in order to emphasise his championship of the lower
classes. The most important of his laws were for the maintenance of
order. Private garrisons and fortified houses were forbidden. Each of
the thirteen districts was to maintain an armed force of a hundred
infantry and twenty-five horsemen. Every port was provided with a
cruiser for the protection of merchandise, and the trade on the Tiber
was to be secured by a river police.
The nobles watched the progress of this astonishing revolution with
impotent surprise. Stefano Colonna, who was [Sidenote: Rienzi’s triumph
and fall.] absent on the eventful day, expressed his scorn of the mob
and their leader. But a popular attack on his palace convinced him of
his error, and forced him to fly from the city. Within fifteen days the
triumph of Rienzi seemed to be complete, when the proudest nobles of
Rome submitted and took an oath to support the new constitution. But the
suddenness of his success was enough to turn a head which was never of
the strongest. The Tribune began to dream of restoring to the Roman
Republic its old supremacy. And for a moment even this dream seemed
hardly chimerical. Europe was really dazzled by the revival of its
ancient capital. Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples submitted their
quarrel to Rienzi’s arbitration. Thus encouraged, he set no bounds to
his ambition. He called upon the Pope and cardinals to return at once to
Rome. He summoned Lewis and Charles, the two claimants to the imperial
dignity, to appear before his throne and submit to his tribunal. His
arrogance was shown in the pretentious titles which he assumed, and in
the gorgeous pomp with which he was accompanied on public and even on
private occasions. On August 15, after bathing in the porphyry font in
which the Emperor Constantine had been baptized, he was crowned with
seven crowns representing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. His most
loyal admirer prophesied disaster when the Tribune ventured on this
occasion to blasphemously compare himself with Christ. And Rienzi’s
government deteriorated with his personal character. It had at first
been liberal and just; it became arbitrary and even treacherous. His
personal timidity made him at once harsh and vacillating. The heads of
the great families, whom he had invited to a banquet, were seized and
condemned to death on a charge of conspiracy. But a sudden terror of the
possible consequences of his action caused him to relent, and he
released his victims just as they were preparing for execution. His
leniency was as ill-timed as his previous severity. The nobles could no
longer trust him, and their fear was diminished by the weakness which
they despised while they profited by it. They retired from Rome and
concerted measures for the overthrow of their enemy. The first attack,
which was led by Stefano Colonna, was repulsed almost by accident; but
Rienzi, who had shown more cowardice than generalship, disgusted his
supporters by his indecent exultation over the bodies of the slain. And
there was one fatal ambiguity in Rienzi’s position. He had begun by
announcing himself as the ally and champion of the Papacy, and Clement
VI. had been willing enough to stand by and watch the destruction of the
baronage. But the growing independence and the arrogant pretensions of
the Tribune exasperated the Pope. A new legate was despatched to Italy
to denounce and excommunicate Rienzi as a heretic. The latter had no
longer any support to lean upon. When a new attack was threatened, the
people sullenly refused to obey the call to arms. Rienzi had not
sufficient courage to risk a final struggle. On December 15 he abdicated
and retired in disguise from Rome. His rise to power, his dazzling
triumph, and his downfall were all comprised within the brief period of
seven months.
For the next few years Rienzi disappeared from view. According to his
own account he was concealed in a cave in the [Sidenote: Rienzi in
exile.] Apennines, where he associated with some of the wilder members
of the sect of the Fraticelli, and probably imbibed some of their
tenets. Rome relapsed into anarchy, and men’s minds were distracted from
politics by the ravages of the Black Death. The great jubilee held in
Rome in 1350 became a kind of thanksgiving service of those whom the
plague had spared. It is said that Rienzi himself visited the scene of
his exploits without detection among the crowds of pilgrims. But he was
destined to reappear in a more public and disastrous manner. In his
solitude his courage and his ambition revived, and he meditated new
plans for restoring freedom to Rome and to Italy. The allegiance to the
Church, which he had professed in 1347, was weakened by the conduct of
Clement VI. and by the influence of the Fraticelli, and he resolved in
the future to ally himself with the secular rather than with the
ecclesiastical power, with the Empire rather than with the Papacy. In
August 1351 he appeared in disguise in Prague and demanded an audience
of Charles IV. To him he proposed the far-reaching scheme which he had
formed during his exile. The Pope and the whole body of clergy were to
be deprived of their temporal power; the petty tyrants of Italy were to
be driven out; and the emperor was to fix his residence in Rome as the
supreme ruler of Christendom. All this was to be accomplished by Rienzi
himself at his own cost and trouble. Charles IV. listened with some
curiosity to a man whose career had excited such universal interest, but
he was the last man to be carried away by such chimerical suggestions.
The introduction into the political proposals of some of the religious
and communistic ideas of the Fraticelli gave the king a pretext for
committing Rienzi to the Archbishop of Prague for correction and
instruction. The archbishop communicated with the Pope, and on the
demand of Clement VI. Charles agreed to hand Rienzi over to the papal
court on condition that his life should be spared. In 1352 Rienzi was
conveyed to Avignon and thrust into prison. He owed his life perhaps
less to the king’s request than to the opportune death of Clement VI. in
this year.
The new Pope, Innocent VI., was more independent of French control than
his immediate predecessors. The French king was fully occupied with
internal disorders, and with the English war. Thus the Pope was able to
give more attention to Italian politics, which were sufficiently
pressing. The independence and anarchy of the Papal States constituted a
serious problem, but the danger of their subjection to a foreign power
was still more serious. In 1350 the important city of Bologna had been
seized by the Visconti of Milan, and the progress of this powerful
family threatened to absorb the whole of the Romagna. Innocent
determined to resist their encroachments, and at the same time to
restore the papal authority, and in 1353 he intrusted [Sidenote:
Albornoz in Italy.] this double task to Cardinal Albornoz. Albornoz,
equally distinguished as a diplomatist and as a military commander,
resolved to ally the cause of the Papacy with that of liberty. His
programme was to overthrow the tyrants as the enemies both of the people
and of the Popes, and to restore municipal self-government under papal
protection. His attention was first directed to the city of Rome, which,
after many vicissitudes since 1347, had fallen under the influence of a
demagogue named Baroncelli. Baroncelli had revived to some extent the
schemes of Rienzi, but had declared openly against papal rule. To oppose
this new tribune, Albornoz conceived the project of using the influence
of Rienzi, whose rule was now [Sidenote: Rienzi’s return and death,
1354.] regretted by the populace that had previously deserted him. The
Pope was persuaded to release Rienzi from prison and to send him to
Rome, where the effect of his presence was almost magical. The Romans
flocked to welcome their former liberator, and he was reinstalled in
power with the title of Senator, conferred upon him by the Pope. But his
character was not improved by adversity, and his rule was more arbitrary
and selfish than it had been before. The execution of the _condottiere_,
Fra Moreale, was an act of ingratitude as well as of treachery. Popular
favour was soon alienated from a ruler who could no longer command
either affection or respect, and in a mob rising Rienzi was put to death
(October 8, 1354). But his return had served the purpose of Albornoz.
Rome was preserved to the Papacy, and the cardinal [Sidenote: Recovery
of the Papal States.] could proceed in safety with his task of subduing
the independent tyrants of Romagna. Central Italy had not yet witnessed
the general introduction of mercenaries, and the native populations
still fought their own battles. The policy of exciting revolts among the
subject citizens was completely successful, and by 1360 almost the whole
of Romagna had submitted to the papal legate. His triumph was crowned in
this year, when, by skilful use of quarrels among the Visconti princes,
he succeeded in recovering Bologna.
But the successes of Albornoz appeared more like the conquests of a
foreign power than the restoration of a legitimate authority. The long
residence in Avignon had alienated Italian sympathies from [Sidenote:
Return of the Popes to Rome.] the Papacy. The Visconti embarked in open
war with the Popes after the fall of Bologna, and they had many
advantages on their side. The ecclesiastical thunders which had
frightened Lewis the Bavarian into submission had no terrors for Italian
princes. When Bernabo Visconti received a bull of excommunication from
the Pope, he forced the legates to eat the parchment and the leaden
seal. It was evident that nothing but a return to Italy could render
permanent the restored secular authority of the Popes. Urban V., who
succeeded Innocent VI. in 1362, was induced by the arguments of Albornoz
and the personal influence of Charles IV. to disregard the prejudices of
the cardinals, and in 1368 he entered Rome, where he was joined by the
emperor. But Urban was soon discouraged by the death of Albornoz, and
the obvious weakness of imperial support. He had no natural interests in
Italy, which was a foreign country to him, and he found Rome quite as
uncomfortable a place of residence as it had been represented. In 1370
he embarked for Marseilles, and returned to Avignon. His departure had
the most disastrous results. Papal authority was repudiated by the
cities of Romagna, and the Visconti hastened to take advantage of the
altered conditions. Even Gregory XI., who had been chosen by the
cardinals as the least likely candidate to quit Avignon, found it
necessary to follow his predecessor’s example and return to Italy. But
his experience in Rome convinced him that the enterprise was hopeless,
and his departure was only prevented by his death (March, 1378). The
choice of an Italian, Urban VI., as his successor was a partial
concession to the violence [Sidenote: The Schism, 1378-1418.] of the
Roman mob. On the first pretext the French cardinals deserted their
nominee, and the election of a rival Pope, Clement VII., inaugurated the
Great Schism which lasted for forty years. During this period the
temporal authority of the Papacy was again annihilated, and it was not
till the Council of Constance had restored unity in 1418 that its
revival could once more be seriously undertaken.
The history of Florence in the fourteenth century is filled with a
continuous struggle of classes and families for political [Sidenote:
Florence.] ascendency. Though the details of the struggle are
complicated and wearisome, it is necessary to pay some attention to its
general character in order to understand the conditions under which the
later authority of the Medici grew up. The expulsion of the Duke of
Athens had been followed by a settlement by which the _grandi_ were
excluded from political power, which was to be shared between the
members of the greater and the lesser guilds. But as time went on, and
the memory of previous disasters was effaced, the _popolo grasso_ began
to aim at the [Sidenote: Class jealousies.] recovery of their former
preponderance in the city. To propose a direct change of the
constitution might provoke a rising of the artisans, so it was decided
to obtain the desired end by indirect methods. A law of 1301, of which
it was forbidden to propose the revocation under heavy penalties,
decreed that a Ghibelline, or any man suspected of not being a true
Guelf, was to be incapable of holding office. For the carrying out of
this law there grew up the practice of _ammonizio_, which has been
called the ostracism of Florence. If a charge of Ghibellinism were
brought against a man, and supported by six witnesses, who swore to
public report, the priors were bound to admonish the accused, and any
person thus admonished (_ammonito_) was excluded from office. His name
was not placed in the bags, or if it were already included, it was put
on one side when drawn out and another name drawn in its place. This
party device was now employed by the wealthy burghers to recover a
monopoly of power for their class. By systematically bringing a charge
of Ghibellinism against the members of the lesser guilds who were likely
to obtain office, their exclusion could be effected without any open
assertion of disqualification. In carrying out this policy the
plutocrats were aided by the organisation of the _parte Guelfa_ (_vide_
p. 35), which was the stronghold of oligarchical interests within the
republic. The accusations were managed by the captains of the _parte_,
and they could always find the necessary six witnesses. The pretext for
so strict an enforcement of the law against Ghibellinism was found in
the two Italian visits of Charles IV. in 1353 and 1368, though the
emperor did nothing whatever to excite the alarm of the Guelfs.
No sooner had the wealthy burghers won their victory by the abuse of
what should have been a legal proceeding, than they were divided by the
family quarrel of the Albizzi and the Ricci. Both families belonged to
the _popolo grasso_, and [Sidenote: The Albizzi and Ricci.] their feud
had at first none of the political significance which came to be
associated with it. In fact, the Ricci were the first to urge the harsh
enforcement of the anti-Ghibelline laws, hoping to discredit their
opponents, who came originally from the Ghibelline town of Arezzo. But
the Albizzi succeeded in gaining the support of the _parte Guelfa_, and
were thus enabled to turn the tables on their rivals. The _ammonizio_
was as useful a weapon against the Ricci faction as against the _popolo
minuto_. By 1374 the Albizzi and their supporters had got the government
into their hands. But the indiscreet violence of their proceedings
provoked serious opposition. The _ammoniti_, constantly increasing in
number, became more and more formidable. The desire for office, such a
passion among the Florentines, was not merely due to ordinary ambition,
but also to the fact that the taxes were assessed by the arbitrary will
of the state officials. The dominant faction, however, failed to
appreciate the dangers that confronted them, and in seven months of 1377
more than eighty persons were admonished. This recklessness brought
about their ruin. In May 1378, Salvestro de’ Medici, who belonged to the
Ricci party, was drawn as gonfalonier. The bags were so depleted that
the possibility of his selection was foreseen, but his attachment to
Guelf principles was so well known that it was considered unsafe to
accuse him. In his second month of office he proposed a law to lessen
the power of the _parte Guelfa_, and to facilitate the recovery of civic
rights by the _ammoniti_. As the scheme met with opposition in the
council, one of Salvestro’s supporters, Benedetto Alberti, called the
people to arms, and the law was carried under the pressure of mob
violence. The result was an unforeseen revolution. The Ricci had been
driven by common grievances into an alliance with the lesser guilds, but
the [Sidenote: Rising of the Ciompi, 1378.] demand for redress was taken
up by the _Ciompi_, the lowest class of all. They were influenced, not
so much by the wish to obtain political power as by the desire to extort
better terms from their employers. Their movement was half revolution
and half strike. The rising of the mob, which speedily passed beyond the
control of those who had called in its aid, might have destroyed the
foundations of the state but for the action of a poor wool-comber,
Michel Lando, who was raised to the office of gonfalonier by the
accident of popular caprice. He succeeded in suppressing disorder, while
he satisfied the more rational demands of his own class. A number of new
guilds were formed of artisans who had hitherto been unorganised. Of the
eight priors, three were to be taken from the _arti maggiori_, three
from the _arti minori_, and two from the new guilds. After effecting
this settlement, Lando, with a modesty as rare as the untaught
statesmanship he had displayed, resigned his office. His retirement left
the chief power in the hands of the party which had started the
movement, but had been unable to control its course. Salvestro de’
Medici had disappeared from public life. Though he was only a distant
relative of the later Medici, his career served to associate the family
name with the popular cause, and to give them a cue for the policy they
afterwards pursued. The leadership of his party fell into the hands of a
triumvirate, consisting of Benedetto Alberti, Tommaso Strozzi, and
Giorgio Scali. Alberti was a fairly moderate politician, but his two
associates were ambitious demagogues, who imitated the abuses of the
Albizzi, and employed the _ammonizio_ to rid [Sidenote:
Counter-revolution in 1382.] themselves of their personal enemies. The
inevitable reaction set in in 1382. A hostile _signoria_ came into
office, and a servant of Giorgio Scali was arrested on a charge of
bearing false witness. Strozzi fled from the city, but Scali, trusting
in the favour of the mob, determined to resist. His attempt to rescue
his servant was a failure, and he himself was seized by the priors. The
populace would not rise on his behalf, and he was put to death. A
counter-revolution undid all the changes of 1378. A _balia_ constituted
by a parliament abolished the new guilds, and decreed that the priors
should be chosen, four from the greater, and four from the lesser
guilds. The gonfalonier was always to belong to the former, who thus
secured a majority in the signory. The Albizzi and other exiles were
recalled to the city.
For the next fifty years after 1382, Florence was ruled by an
ever-narrowing oligarchy. First, the greater guilds [Sidenote:
Oligarchical rule in Florence.] recovered a practical monopoly of
office. Later, certain members of these guilds obtained such complete
ascendency that the government almost ceased to be a republic, and thus
the way was prepared for the absolutism of the Medici. In 1387 Benedetto
Alberti, the most blameless of the leaders in 1378, was driven into
exile. A new _squittinio_ filled the bags with the names of partisans of
the dominant faction. A separate bag was formed for the chief leaders of
the faction, and two priors were to be drawn from among them (_Priori
del Borsellino_). Six of the priors were to belong to the greater
guilds, and only two to the lesser. In 1393 Maso Albizzi, the leader of
the oligarchy, held the office of gonfalonier, and further measures were
taken to strengthen its supremacy. If a gonfalonier were drawn who was
displeasing to the rulers, another was to be drawn in his place, though
the former was to remain one of the priors. Three priors instead of two
were to be taken from the _borsellino_, or special bag. The signory was
allowed to raise troops, and to levy taxes for their payment, without
having to obtain the consent of the councils. These measures provoked a
rising among the artisans. The rioters repaired to the house of Vieri de
Medici, and invited him to lead them against the Albizzi. Vieri, who was
a kinsman of Salvestro de’ Medici, refused the offer of the mob, and the
movement was suppressed. In 1397 another rebellion, in which two members
of the Medici family were concerned, was also put down, and the rule of
the dominant oligarchy was more firmly established than ever.
The great characteristic of this period of oligarchical government is
the activity and aggressiveness of the republic [Sidenote: Growth of
Florentine dominions.] in its external relations. Before 1342 Florence
had acquired the rule of considerable territories beyond the limits of
its own _contado_, but most of these dominions were lost in the
disturbances which accompanied the expulsion of the Duke of Athens. The
great service which the oligarchy rendered to Florence was the recovery
of its ascendency in northern Tuscany. Prato, Pistoia, Volterra, San
Miniato, and several lesser towns were acquired between 1350 and 1368.
In 1387 the important town of Arezzo was sold to the Florentines by
Enguerrand de Coucy, who had held it as the lieutenant of Louis of
Anjou. For some years after this the growth of Florence was checked by a
desperate war against the encroachments of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who
threatened to unite Tuscany and Lombardy under his rule. It was in this
war that Sir John Hawkwood commanded for Florence against the Milanese
_condottiere_, Jacopo del Verme. After Hawkwood’s death in 1394, the
republic was for a time in serious danger. To save their independence,
the Florentines took the unusual step of appealing for German
assistance, and urged the Elector Palatine, Rupert, who had been elected
king of the Romans in opposition to Wenzel of Bohemia, to make war
against the lord of Milan. The defeat of the German army at the battle
of Brescia left Florence in greater straits than ever, when the sudden
death of Gian Galeazzo in 1402 not only saved the Florentines from
Milanese aggression, but enabled them to resume their policy of
expansion. Within the next twenty years Pisa, Cortona, and Livorno had
been added to the dominions of Florence.
In northern Italy the fourteenth century witnessed the final struggle
between the two great maritime republics, [Sidenote: Venice and Genoa.]
Venice and Genoa. Ever since the beginning of the Crusades they had been
rivals for commercial and political ascendency in the Levant. At first
the advantage had been on the side of the Venetians, and the diversion
of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 to attack the Eastern Empire had given
them a dominant position in the islands and coasts of the Ægean. But the
Genoese had their revenge in 1261, when they aided to overthrow the
Latin Empire, and to establish Michael Palæologus in Constantinople. As
a reward for their services they received the suburb of Pera with the
fortress of Galata, whence they could dictate to the occupants of the
imperial throne. The control of the straits enabled them to assume a
virtual monopoly of the trade of the Black Sea, and their port of Caffa
in the Crimea became one of the most flourishing cities in the east.
Pisa, which had once been the equal or even the superior of Genoa, lost
all maritime importance after the battle of Meloria (1284). For the next
century Venice and Genoa contended on fairly equal terms. In wealth and
maritime power they were evenly matched. Genoa had most of the northern
trade that passed through the Black Sea and Constantinople; but Venice,
which retained possession of Negropont, Crete, and other islands, had
the advantage in the other two channels of eastern trade, through Asia
Minor and Egypt. Genoa, however, was ready to seize any opportunity of
contesting this southern trade with her rival. The occupation of Chios
gave her a valuable port in the Ægean. Cyprus, which became an important
commercial centre after the fall of Acre (1291), was the scene of many
conflicts between the two republics. The people and the ruling house of
Lusignan were in favour of Venice, but the Genoese went to war to secure
their interests, and the seizure of Famagusta in 1373 gave them for some
time the upper hand in Cyprus. On the African coast they also succeeded
in establishing trade settlements. Farther west, the Genoese had several
things in their favour. The occupation of Corsica gave them a great
addition of maritime strength, though their dispute with Aragon for the
possession of Sardinia exposed them to the enmity of the Catalans, who
ranked after Venice and Genoa as the third naval power in the
Mediterranean. On the mainland the mountains which confined Genoa to a
narrow strip of coast, and prohibited territorial expansion, served also
to protect her from continental enemies. Venice, on the other hand, ever
since the war with Mastino della Scala had given her territories on the
mainland, was exposed to the hostility of her neighbours, especially the
kings of Hungary and the lords of Padua. If these states were allied
with Genoa, Venice ran the risk of being cut off from supplies both by
sea and land. As against this balance of strength in east and west,
there was one important difference between the two states which
ultimately turned the scales decisively in favour of Venice. By the
beginning of the century she had built up a constitution which, whatever
its narrowness and other defects, had the supreme merit of stability.
The so-called conspiracy of Marin Falier, which led to the execution of
the Doge in 1355, only served to prove the strength of the edifice which
he proposed to attack, and the impotence of the chief magistrate to
resist the Council of Ten. Genoa, on the other hand, was one of the most
turbulent and factious of Italian cities. For a long time the leaders of
these domestic feuds were the four noble houses of Doria, Fieschi,
Spinola, and Grimaldi, who disguised their family jealousies under the
names of Ghibelline and Guelf. In 1339 the Genoese, weary of their
factions, adopted for their chief magistracy the title of Doge, and
conferred it by acclamation upon an eminent citizen, Simone Boccanegra.
After the fashion of Florence and other Tuscan communes, the nobles were
disqualified from holding political office. But in Genoa the remedy
proved wholly illusory. The nobles continued to command the military and
naval forces of the republic, and were thus enabled to retain their
predominance in the state. The offices, which they could not hold
themselves, were conferred upon their plebeian adherents, as the Adorni
and Fregosi, who for a long time succeeded each other in the dogeship
according to the fluctuations of power among their noble patrons. As
Commines tells us, ‘the nobles in Genoa could appoint a doge, though
they could not hold the office themselves.’ Thus Genoa continued to be
distracted by factions, and when the citizens sought a brief interval of
repose, the only method by which they could secure it was to sacrifice
their liberty to a foreign ruler—sometimes to Milan, and sometimes to
France.
The attempt of the Genoese merchants at Caffa to exclude the Venetians
from the lucrative free trade with the Tartars led to numerous quarrels
in the Black Sea, and [Sidenote: War of Venice and Genoa, 1350-5.]
ultimately to open warfare between the two states. Venice secured the
support of John Cantacuzene, the Greek emperor, who disliked Genoese
dictation at Pera, and of Peter of Aragon, who was contending with Genoa
for the possession of Sardinia. In 1352 Niccolo Pisani, with a powerful
fleet of Venetian, Greek, and Catalan vessels, sailed to attack Pera,
which was defended by the Genoese admiral, Paganino Doria. In the narrow
waters of the Bosphorus the allies were unable to make full use of their
numbers, and a furious storm threw their vessels into such disorder that
they did more harm to each other than to the enemy. Pisani was forced to
retire, but Doria, though victorious, had suffered such losses that he
was superseded by Antonio Grimaldi. In 1353 the Aragonese, who had fewer
interests in the Levant than their allies, insisted upon transferring
hostilities to the coast of Sardinia. In the open water off Cagliari the
Venetians and Catalans gained a complete victory, and Grimaldi with
difficulty escaped to carry the news of this crushing disaster to Genoa.
Pisani was too weakened by the encounter to venture a direct attack upon
Genoa, but the Genoese were so panic-stricken that they offered the
lordship of the city to Giovanni Visconti, in order to gain the aid of
Milan. Venice replied to this move by an alliance with the opponents of
Milan on the mainland, but the struggle continued to be fought out at
sea. Paganino Doria, restored to the command after Grimaldi’s defeat,
once more carried the war into eastern waters. Pisani, after an
uneventful campaign in 1354, had retired into winter quarters at
Portolungo on the coast of the Morea, under the shelter of the island of
Sapienza. There the Venetians were surprised by Doria, and their fleet
was completely annihilated (November 4, 1354). The battle of Sapienza
was the most decisive engagement of the struggle. It was followed by the
conspiracy and death of Marin Falier, and the Venetians were so
discouraged by the combination of external defeat and domestic treason
that they concluded peace with Genoa in 1355. All demands for
concessions in the Black Sea were abandoned, and Genoa retained its
superiority in the northern trade.
For the next twenty years the two republics remained at peace with each
other. Genoa succeeded in throwing off the Milanese yoke in 1356, with
the result that the factions resumed their quarrels. Venice became
involved in a war with Lewis the Great of Hungary (1356-8), in which
Dalmatia was lost and Treviso was only retained with difficulty. This
was followed by a revolt in Crete which was put down (1364), and by
almost continuous quarrels with Francesco Carrara of Padua. These events
forced the Venetians to maintain a policy of peace in the east. Even the
war of 1373 in Cyprus, which subjected that island to the suzerainty of
Genoa, failed to provoke more than a verbal protest from Venice. But
events in the Eastern Empire at last drove the two republics to resume
hostilities. John Palæologus had promised to Venice the rocky island of
Tenedos, which commanded the entrance to the Hellespont. The Genoese,
regarding this as threatening their security in Pera, organised a palace
revolution in Constantinople, and seated Andronicus on the throne in
place of his father. In return for this aid the usurper ceded Tenedos to
his allies. But the governor of the island refused to recognise the
authority of Andronicus, and handed his charge over to the Venetians.
This was the immediate occasion for war. Vettor Pisani, in 1378,
defeated the Genoese fleet off Cape Antium, and cleared the Adriatic of
[Sidenote: War of Chioggia, 1378-81.] the pirates who plundered Venetian
commerce. The winter he spent in the harbour of Pola, and was still
there when he was confronted by Luciano Doria in command of another
Genoese force (May 7, 1379). In the battle which followed Pisani was
completely defeated, and was sentenced by the indignant Venetians to six
months’ imprisonment and exclusion from any command for five years.
Pietro Doria, the successor of Luciano who had been killed in the
engagement, led the victorious fleet to the lagoons of Venice. The town
of Chioggia, which commanded one of the main entrances from the open
sea, was taken after an obstinate defence, and the way was opened to
Venice itself. A prompt attack would probably have been successful, but
Doria preferred the slower and surer method of a blockade. In this he
reckoned upon the aid of Francesco Carrara, who eagerly welcomed the
opportunity of humbling the formidable republic, and undertook to
prevent the transit of supplies from the mainland. Never had the
Venetians been in such a strait, but the courage of the citizens rose to
meet the danger. Every vessel in Venetian waters was equipped and
manned, and Vettor Pisani, the idol of the sailors, was released from
prison to assume the chief command. Messengers were sent eastwards to
recall Carlo Zeno, who had been despatched to the Levant at the
beginning of the war with the second Venetian fleet. Meanwhile Pisani
undertook the defence of Venice, and gradually drove the Genoese back to
their stronghold of Chioggia. There he determined to shut them in by
blocking the main outlets to the sea. Ships full of stones were sunk in
the channels of Brondolo, Chioggia, and Malamocco, and thus the
blockaders were in their turn blockaded. But Pisani’s force was hardly
strong enough to maintain the blockade during the storms of winter. If
reinforcements came from Genoa he would be forced to retire, and Venice
would once more be in imminent danger. So conscious were the Venetian
leaders of the risk of ultimate defeat that they even discussed the
possible abandonment of their islands and the transference of the
republic to Crete. On the 1st of January 1380 sails were seen in the
distance, but as they approached they proved to be the long-expected
fleet of Zeno. This sealed the fate of the Genoese in Chioggia. Every
effort to force a passage, or to cut a canal through the low-lying
barrier between them and the sea, was foiled by the vigilance of the
besiegers, and on June 24 the whole of the Genoese force was compelled
to capitulate.
By the fall of Chioggia Venice secured a magnificent and permanent
triumph over her great Italian rival. The naval [Sidenote: Decline of
Genoa.] power of Genoa never recovered from the blow which it then
received, and commercial superiority could only be maintained by
maritime ascendency. Chagrined at such a sudden change from anticipated
triumph to humiliating defeat, distracted by domestic feuds, and
perpetually endangered by the aggressive policy of Milan, the Genoese
sought to escape from their troubles by accepting the suzerainty of
Charles VI. of France, and admitting a French governor into the city
(1396). For the next century Genoa enters into history mainly as an
object of contention between France and Milan, and the greatness of the
republic perished with its independence.
But Venice had to pay more than one heavy penalty for her success. In
the east the war of the two republics had been [Sidenote: Venice after
the War.] suicidal. In their mutual jealousy they had completely lost
sight of their common interest in upholding the Eastern Empire against
the Turks. The struggle between Venice and Genoa was among the chief
causes of the rapid growth of the Ottoman power, which was destined to
be fatal to both the contending states. The more Venice gained in the
east by the decline of Genoa the more she stood to lose to the advancing
Turks; and nearer home the struggle was costly to Venice. By the peace
of Turin, in 1381, she had to confirm the cession of Dalmatia to
Hungary, to resign the island of Tenedos, which had been the occasion of
the war, and to give up Treviso and all other possessions on the
mainland of Italy. All that she had gained in the contest with the
Scaligers was lost again. It is true that Treviso was ceded to Leopold
of Hapsburg in order to disappoint Francesco Carrara, whose
aggrandisement would be much more dangerous to Venice. But Leopold had
too much to engage his attention in Germany to be keenly interested in
Italian territories. Five years later he sold Treviso, with Feltre and
Ceneda, to Carrara, who thus obtained that control over the approaches
to the Alpine passes which had driven Venice to make war on Mastino
della Scala. For the second time Venice was forced by the same danger to
take an active part in the politics of northern Italy. There was one
obvious method of humbling the house of Carrara, and that was to invite
the intervention of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who required the annexation
of Padua to complete his supremacy in Lombardy. On the other hand, such
a policy involved the equally obvious danger that the lord of Milan
would prove a far more formidable neighbour than the lord of Padua. To
understand the course of action adopted by Venice in this dilemma it is
necessary to turn to the history of Milan.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the lordship of Milan was
disputed by two families, the della Torre and the [Sidenote: The
Visconti in Milan.] Visconti. The supremacy of the latter was
established in 1312 when Henry VII. conferred the title of imperial
vicar upon Matteo Visconti. Of Matteo’s numerous family four sons
deserve mention: Galeazzo, Lucchino, and Giovanni, who all ruled in
Milan, and Stefano, who died in 1327 without obtaining power, but whose
children subsequently came to govern. Galeazzo, the eldest son, who
succeeded his father in 1322, was deposed by Lewis the Bavarian in 1327,
and died in the following year at the siege of Pistoia. His son Azzo
recovered, in 1329, the sovereignty of Milan, and the tide of imperial
vicar. He proved a successful ruler, and by joining in the successive
leagues against John of Bohemia and Mastino della Scala, he extended his
authority over the greater part of central Lombardy. On his early death
in 1339 his uncle Lucchino succeeded to the lordship over Milan,
Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Lodi, Piacenza, Vercelli, Novara, and a less
complete sovereignty over Pavia. To these dominions Lucchino added Parma
in 1346, and Tortona, Alessandria, and Asti in 1347. On the west these
territories were bounded by the dominions of the Marquis of Montferrat
and the Count of Savoy; while on the east they were separated from
Venice and the States of the Church by the possessions of four tyrants
of lesser power—the Gonzagas in Mantua, the house of Este in Ferrara,
the della Scala in Verona and Vicenza, and the Carrara in Padua. On the
death of Lucchino in 1349 his dominions passed to his younger brother
Giovanni, who had entered the Church, and had received from Benedict
XII. the archbishopric of Milan. In spite of his ecclesiastical position
Giovanni did not scruple to aggrandise himself at the expense of the
Papacy. In 1350 he induced the Pepoli, who had made themselves lords of
Bologna, to cede that city to him. This advance from Lombardy into
central Italy made a profound impression on contemporaries, and
completely altered the position of the Visconti. It marked the beginning
of a prolonged quarrel with the Papacy, and it alarmed Florence and the
Tuscan communes for their independence. In 1353 the defeat of Genoa in
her naval war with Venice led to the temporary submission of the
Ligurian republic to Milanese rule. This was the last great triumph of
the militant archbishop, who died suddenly in 1354.
The house of Visconti was now represented by the three sons of Stefano:
Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. They agreed to divide their uncle’s
dominions between them, but to keep the two chief cities of Milan and
Genoa under their joint rule. Matteo, who was vicious and debauched even
[Sidenote: Bernabo and Galeazzo Visconti.] beyond the standard of the
Visconti, was assassinated by order of his brothers in 1355, and Bernabo
and Galeazzo divided his share between them. On the whole their joint
rule was wonderfully harmonious, though in later life they fell rather
apart and adopted different residences—Bernabo in Milan and Galeazzo in
Pavia. Few pictures are more repulsive than that which has been handed
down of the domestic government of the two brothers. In the midst of
lavish profusion and ostentatious patronage of men of letters, they
ruled their subjects with a rod of iron. State criminals, instead of
immediate execution, were publicly tortured for forty days according to
a fixed daily programme. The game laws were enforced with atrocious
severity even for those days. A peasant who had killed a hare was given
to Bernabo’s hounds to be devoured by them. Yet these bloodthirsty
despots, belonging to an upstart family and without any recognised or
legal title in their dominions, were allowed to ally themselves by
intermarriage with the greatest dynasties in Europe. They were the
richest rulers of their time, and their wealth induced even kings to
shut their eyes both to the cruelty of their rule and to their ignoble
origin. Bernabo married his daughter Verde or Virida to the Leopold of
Hapsburg who afterwards fell in the battle of Sempach. Galeazzo obtained
for his son, Gian Galeazzo, the hand of Isabella, daughter of John of
France, with the county of Vertus in Champagne; and his daughter
Violante was married to Lionel of Clarence, the second son of Edward
III. of England.
In spite of these alliances, which gave to the Visconti a unique
position among the despots of northern Italy, the [Sidenote: Milanese
reverses.] rule of the two brothers was by no means uninterruptedly
successful. Genoa revolted in 1356 and recovered its freedom. Cardinal
Albornoz, who was engaged in restoring papal authority in the Papal
States, organised a league among the northern despots, the Gonzagas, the
della Scala, the Marquis of Montferrat, and all who were jealous of
Visconti ascendency. Pavia recovered its independence for two years
under the encouragement of a republican monk, Jacopo Bussolari, but was
compelled to surrender to Galeazzo in 1359. Asti, Novara, Como, and
other western towns were for a time wrested from Visconti rule by the
Marquis of Montferrat. A more serious loss was that of Bologna. Giovanni
d’Oleggio, who had been appointed governor of the city by Giovanni
Visconti, refused to acknowledge the authority of the latter’s nephews.
When Bernabo endeavoured to compel his submission in 1360, Oleggio
baulked him by surrendering Bologna to Albornoz. The successes of the
papal legate and the return of Urban V. to Rome seemed for a moment to
render hopeless any extension of the rule of the Visconti beyond the
limits of Lombardy. But Albornoz died in 1368, Urban returned to Avignon
in 1370, and a general revolt in Romagna against papal rule restored to
the Visconti the advantages which for a moment they had lost. It was
not, however, Bernabo Visconti who profited by these changes, but a new
and more famous member of the family.
In 1378—an eventful year in Italian history—Galeazzo Visconti died,
leaving his share of the family dominions to his only son, Gian
Galeazzo. Fearing the ambition [Sidenote: Gian Galeazzo Visconti.] of
Bernabo, who might well desire to provide for his numerous children at
his nephew’s expense, the young prince ruled in Pavia with such
ostentation of piety and moderation that his uncle deemed him a harmless
simpleton. Having thus disarmed all suspicion, Gian Galeazzo decoyed his
uncle from Milan to a friendly interview, consigned him to a prison
which he never left alive, and reunited the territories of Bernabo with
his own (1385). To the cruelty and unscrupulousness of his predecessors,
Gian Galeazzo added a dogged resolution and a capacity for intrigue
which enabled him to attain a height of power beyond their most sanguine
dreams. Personally he was so timid that a sudden sound excited a terror
which he could not conceal. But his lack of courage—an unusual defect
among Italian tyrants—proved no bar to his ambition. His wealth enabled
him to attract to his service most of the ablest _condottieri_ of the
age, and to purchase from them a fidelity which was quite uncommon.
Himself the husband of a French princess, he drew closer the connection
with France by marrying his daughter, Valentina, to Charles VI.’s
brother, Louis of Orleans (1389). The bride not only brought to the
Orleans family the town of Asti as her dowry, but also an eventual claim
to the succession in Milan which was fraught with most momentous
consequences to Europe. A few years later Gian Galeazzo succeeded in
removing one great defect in the dignity of the Visconti by obtaining
from Wenzel, king of the Romans, the formal creation in his favour of a
hereditary duchy of Milan (1395).
The great ambition of Gian Galeazzo Visconti was to found a kingdom of
northern Italy, and circumstances were [Sidenote: His schemes.] so
extraordinarily favourable that he very nearly succeeded in gaining his
object. The two great Guelf powers, Naples and the Papacy, might
naturally be expected to oppose such a design. But the Papacy was in the
throes of the Schism, and Naples was the scene of civil strife between
the two houses of Anjou. Of the three leading republics whose
independence was directly threatened, Genoa was powerless. Florence was
hampered by the jealousy of Siena, Perugia, and other communes in
Tuscany and Romagna, while Venice had for the moment more immediate
enemies than Milan, and might be bribed to aid in their destruction. The
empire was in the feeble hands of Wenzel, France in the equally feeble
hands of Charles VI., and both princes were allied with the Visconti.
There seemed to be hardly any danger either of foreign intervention or
of efficient resistance in Italy.
The first task which Gian Galeazzo undertook was the reduction of
eastern Lombardy. A quarrel between Francesco Carrara and Antonio della
Scala gave him his opportunity. [Sidenote: Conquest of Verona and
Padua.] He offered his aid to both princes, but ultimately concluded a
treaty with Carrara in 1387 by which Verona was to go to himself and
Vicenza to Padua. Both cities were easily taken by Gian Galeazzo’s
troops, and the once famous house of della Scala was ruined. But the
lord of Milan kept Vicenza as well as Verona, and Carrara perceived too
late that he had only hastened his own downfall. Venice was eager to
punish the neighbour who had done all he could for her destruction in
the wars both with Hungary and with Genoa. In spite of the obvious
danger of aggrandising Milan, Venice agreed to a partition of the
territories of Carrara. Resistance to such a combination was hopeless;
Padua was compelled to surrender to Milanese rule, and Treviso and the
marches were handed over to Venice (1388). The supremacy of Gian
Galeazzo in Lombardy was now uncontested. The remaining princes of
Savoy, Montferrat, Mantua, and Ferrara, were all, for one reason or
another, his humble vassals.
In 1389 Gian Galeazzo was free to turn his attention to Tuscany and
Romagna, where his ambition seemed to be equally favoured by internal
dissensions. Siena, Perugia, and a number of petty lords in Romagna
[Sidenote: War with Florence, 1390-2.] joined in a league against
Florence, whose fall would have assured the supremacy of Milan. But the
Florentine oligarchy served the republic faithfully in this hour of
danger. Sir John Hawkwood was taken into the service of Florence, and
the Count of Armagnac was bribed to bring a body of French troops to aid
the republic. Visconti had engaged the most eminent Italian leaders,
Jacopo dal Verme, Facino Cane, and others, and the numerical superiority
of their troops might have gained an ultimate victory. Armagnac was
defeated and slain, and this disaster compelled Hawkwood, who had
invaded Lombardy as far as the Adda, to conduct a difficult and
hazardous retreat. But the balance was turned against Milan by a wholly
unexpected reverse in the north. The younger Francesco Carrara, who had
been imprisoned with his father after the fall of Padua, succeeded in
escaping. After hairbreadth escapes and the most romantic wanderings
over Europe, he succeeded in getting supplies of money from Florence and
of men from Bavaria. With a small body of followers he entered Padua by
the bed of the Brenta in June 1390. The citizens welcomed his return,
and the rule of Milan was overthrown. This revolution in Padua was a
great blow to Gian Galeazzo. It compelled him to withdraw part of his
forces from Tuscany, and in 1392 he decided to postpone his southern
enterprise and to conclude a treaty. Padua was left in the hands of
Francesco Carrara on condition of paying tribute to Milan; Florence was
to abstain from intervention in Lombardy, and Gian Galeazzo from
intervention in Tuscany.
The treaty of 1392 was followed by a few years of troubled peace, broken
by only a brief renewal of hostilities in 1397, which was ended by
another treaty in 1398. During these years Gian Galeazzo continued to
prosecute his schemes by diplomacy and intrigue. [Sidenote: Successes of
Gian Galeazzo.] In 1394 a revolution was effected in Pisa and the
lordship of the city acquired by Jacopo d’Appiano, who was notoriously
in the pay of Milan. Five years later, Appiano’s son completed the
bargain by handing over Pisa to Gian Galeazzo in return for the
principality of Piombino. Genoa only escaped a similar fate by a
voluntary submission to France in 1396. Siena in 1399, Perugia and
Assisi in 1400 sought to escape the disorders of faction by accepting
the rule of Milan. Everywhere republican liberties seemed destined to
give way to the advance of despotism. Paolo Guinigi, with the help of
Milanese gold, made himself lord of Lucca in 1400, and in the next year
Giovanni Bentivoglio became the master of Bologna. Slowly but surely the
coils were being drawn round Florence, and the league which she had
formed for the defence of liberty was wholly broken up. Hawkwood had
died in 1394, and no leader of equal merit could be found except in the
service of Milan. A momentary prospect of relief was offered when the
princes of Germany in 1400 deposed the incapable Wenzel and gave the
kingship of the Romans to the Elector Palatine, Rupert III. Rupert
undertook to invade Italy and to crush the upstart ruler of Milan whom
his rival had raised to the rank of duke. But the German troops were no
match either in skill or in discipline for the mercenaries of Italy, and
were utterly routed at Brescia by Jacopo dal Verme (October 24, 1401).
The last hope of Florence disappeared when Giovanni Bentivoglio, who had
turned against Milan, was compelled to surrender, and the Bolognese
welcomed the substitution of a foreign for a native despot (July, 1402).
But death intervened to thwart an [Sidenote: His death in 1402.]
ambition which human opposition had failed to check. On September 3,
1402, Gian Galeazzo was carried off by the plague at the age of
fifty-five. The kingdom of northern Italy perished with the man who had
practically created it.
Footnote 9:
See Genealogical Table I, in Appendix.
CHAPTER IX
THE SCHISMS IN THE PAPACY AND EMPIRE, 1378-1414
Decline of German Monarchy—Dangers to Germany—Policy of Charles
IV.—Return of the Papacy to Rome and election of Urban
VI.—Election of Clement VII. and beginning of the Schism—The
German towns and their hostility to the nobles—Weakness of
Wenzel—The town-war—Peace of Eger—The Succession to Hungary and
Poland—The Jagellon House is established in Poland, and
Sigismund in Hungary—Opposition to Wenzel in Germany—Troubles in
Bohemia—France and the Schism—Meeting of Wenzel and Charles
VI.—A Schism is created in the Empire—The idea of a General
Council—Negotiations between the rival Popes—Europe and the
Schism—The Council of Pisa—The Triple Schism—Alexander V. and
his successor John XXIII.—Death of Rupert of the Pale—Election
of Sigismund—Jobst—Death of Jobst—Second election of
Sigismund—Sigismund and Pope John XXIII.—Summons of the Council
of Constance.
With the year 1378 begins a period of anarchy and confusion
characteristic of the decay of an old organisation, and the inevitable
precursor of a new system. In that year died Gregory XI. and Charles
IV., the representatives of secular and ecclesiastical authority as
conceived in the Middle Ages. Of the two claimants to universal rule,
the Papacy and the Empire, the former was immeasurably the stronger. It
possessed a large revenue and an admirable administrative system. The
Empire had neither. Its claims to rule over Christendom were no longer
acknowledged. Even in Italy its suzerainty was recognised as a legal
form, but in actual politics little regard was paid to it. And the
German monarchy had fallen with the grandiose and unreal dignity to
which it was attached. The imperial domains had been seized or
squandered. The central administration and jurisdiction were hardly
existent. Such authority as the king [Sidenote: Decline of German
monarchy.] possessed rested upon the territorial powers which he held
independently of his kingship. His nominal vassals—ecclesiastics, lay
princes, knights and cities—enjoyed practical independence. If they
quarrelled with each other, they fought the quarrel out as if they had
been independent states. If the Emperor intervened, it was as a partisan
rather than as an arbiter. There was no parliamentary organisation, as
in England, where the interests of the various estates could find
effective expression. There was no overwhelming national sentiment, such
as was created by the Hundred Years’ War in France, to enable the
monarchy to gain ascendency and to crush rival pretensions.
The dangers of this growing disunion were sufficiently obvious in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It seemed [Sidenote: Dangers to
Germany.] almost inevitable that Germany would lose all semblance of a
state, and that as it fell to pieces foreign powers would seize upon the
fragments. In the south-east the Turks were gradually establishing
themselves on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and threatened to
advance up the valley of the Danube into the heart of southern Germany.
Further north a powerful Slav kingdom was erected in Poland under the
House of Jagellon, whose mission seemed to be to annihilate the progress
which German influences had effected by means of the Teutonic knights.
The Slav kingdom of Bohemia, which under the House of Luxemburg had
become almost the capital of Germany, revolted against the rule and the
religion of its kings, and the Hussite victories revealed more clearly
than any other single event the rottenness and impotence of the existing
system in Germany. In the north, the Union of Kalmar brought the three
Scandinavian states under a single ruler, and threatened to deprive the
German Hansa of the ascendency in northern waters which Lübeck and its
associates had gained by their victory over Waldemar III. of Denmark. In
the south, the Swiss Confederation was tending to free itself from even
nominal dependence on the Empire, and there were other leagues in Swabia
and on the Rhine which were not unlikely to follow its example. In the
west, German weakness had already allowed France to swallow a great part
of the old kingdom of Arles, and though France was for a time crippled
by the war with England and by internal dissensions, a new and more
pressing danger was created by the rapid growth of the Valois dukes of
Burgundy, who absorbed one imperial fief after another, and at one time
almost succeeded in building up a middle kingdom along the Rhine, which
would have excluded Germany from all real influence on the development
of western Europe.
Charles IV., the greatest ruler of the fourteenth century, had clearly
grasped both the dangers of the situation and [Sidenote: Policy of
Charles IV.] the only remedies which could be applied. Either Germany
must be organised as a federation which should combine some measure of
local independence with joint action for common interests, or a single
family must collect such an aggregate of territories in its hands as
might become the nucleus of a new territorial monarchy. Charles had kept
both expedients before him. He had laid the foundations of a federal
organisation by conferring corporate powers and privileges upon the
electors. At the same time he had made the Luxemburg family the
strongest in Germany, and had placed it in a position to do for Germany
what the Capets had done for France. It is a common error to maintain
that Charles IV.’s policy was a complete failure; that what he meant to
be a temporary expedient proved permanent, while his ultimate aims were
never achieved. It is true that a territorial monarchy was not
established, and that such unity as Germany has since possessed has been
federal rather than monarchical. But what really held Germany together
from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century was not the federal system,
but the territorial power of the house of Hapsburg. And that territorial
power was, in the main, founded by Charles _IV._ It is as the heirs of
the Luxemburg family that the Hapsburgs assumed their unique position in
Germany. Charles IV. achieved more lasting results than he has been
credited with, but the fruits of his policy were gathered by others than
his own descendants.
One very obvious source of weakness to Charles IV. had been his failure
to control the ecclesiastical system, owing to the residence of the
Popes at Avignon. [Sidenote: Return of the Papacy to Rome.] Charles
himself had gained the German monarchy to some extent as the papal
nominee; but he had found it necessary to resist papal intervention in
Germany as long as that intervention was dictated by a foreign power. It
was obviously Charles’s duty and interest to restore the Papacy to Rome,
where alone it could exercise impartial authority. He had induced Urban
V. to transfer his residence to Rome, but his hopes had been
disappointed by the Pope’s speedy return to the banks of the Rhône. Once
again his influence had been successful, and in 1377 Gregory XI. had
left Avignon for the Eternal City. But both Pope and cardinals found
Rome too turbulent to be an agreeable abode, and they were preparing for
another flitting when the death of Gregory compelled the conclave to
meet for a new election within the Vatican. The mob surrounded the
palace and demanded the choice of a Roman Pope. The majority of the
cardinals were Frenchmen, but they were divided among themselves, and
they were afraid of the violence of the citizens. As a compromise, they
chose a Neapolitan, the archbishop of Bari, [Sidenote: Election of Urban
VI., 1378.] who took the name of Urban VI. So little confidence had the
cardinals that their decision would please the people, that they escaped
in disguise and left the news of the election to become known gradually.
This fact is sufficient to prove that the election was not altogether
compulsory, and as soon as the mob had shown itself acquiescent, the
cardinals were unanimous in acknowledging Urban.
But this unanimity was very short-lived. Urban VI. had never been a
cardinal, and was personally unknown to most of his electors. He proved
to be a man of violent temper and rough manners, eager to exercise his
unexpected authority, and reckless of opposition or advice. The
cardinals, who had hoped for a pliant and grateful tool, found
themselves confronted with a master who announced that he would begin
the reform of the Church with its chief dignitaries. He silenced
remonstrances by the rudest sarcasms, and declared that he would never
return to Avignon. Disappointed and indignant, many of the cardinals
quitted Rome for Anagni. Encouraged by the support of France and Naples,
they declared that Urban’s election was invalid on account of the
intimidation of the mob, and on September 20, 1378, proceeded to elect
Robert of Geneva, a militant ecclesiastic who had succeeded Cardinal
Albornoz as commander [Sidenote: Election of Clement VII.] of the papal
troops in Italy. The Antipope assumed the name of Clement VII., and his
election commenced a schism in the Church which lasted for forty years.
Charles IV. had watched these events in Italy with the greatest chagrin.
He gave unhesitating support to Urban VI., and urged the European
princes to resist the revival of French dictation in the Church. But his
death on November 29 removed the one statesman who might possibly have
checked the progress of the schism. His son and successor, Wenzel,
pursued his father’s policy, but he was too young, and, as it proved,
too incapable, to exercise the same influence. He threatened Joanna I.
of Naples with the imperial ban if she did not give up the cause of
Clement; and this threat was the more formidable because the Neapolitans
themselves favoured their fellow-countryman Urban. But the only result
was to aggravate the schism. Finding that residence on Neapolitan soil
was no longer safe, Clement VII. and his [Sidenote: The schism in the
Church, 1378-1417.] cardinals left Italy for Avignon. There Clement was
secure of French support, and before long he was also recognised by the
Spanish kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. Germany, England, and
most of the northern kingdoms gave their allegiance to Urban VI., and
after his death to his successors, Boniface IX. (1389-1404), Innocent
VII. (1404-5), and Gregory XII., elected in 1405. Clement VII. lived
till 1394, when he was succeeded by a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, who took
the name of Benedict XIII.
The schism in the Church was by no means the only difficulty which
Wenzel had to face. In Germany, as in [Sidenote: The German towns.]
other countries, the feudal system, in which social and political
relations depended upon the tenure of land, had been modified by the
growth of towns, whose interests lay in industry rather than in
agriculture, while their desire to maintain peace conflicted with the
military habits and traditions of the noble landholders. In England and
in France the monarchy had advanced its own interests by taking the
rising towns under its patronage and by aiding the growth of municipal
self-government. At one time, under Lewis the Bavarian, a similar policy
had seemed possible in Germany. At the diet of Frankfort in 1344 the
speaker of the town deputies had used the memorable words: _civitates
non possunt stare nisi cum imperio: imperii lesio earum est destructio_.
But Charles IV., guided by his experiences in Italy, had distrusted the
towns: he had suspected them of aiming at independence rather than the
strengthening of the monarchy: and in the Golden Bull he had
deliberately opposed the development of the towns while he had conceded
great powers to the electors. But his policy in this respect had not
been altogether successful even during his own lifetime. The Hanse towns
in the north had risen to the zenith of their power in 1370, and Charles
had found it politic to conciliate them by a personal visit to Lübeck.
In the south the Swabian League had been formed under the leadership of
Ulm, had defeated the warlike Count of Würtemburg, and had compelled the
old emperor to allow them the right of union, of which they had been
deprived by the Golden Bull.
The death of Charles IV. and the accession of the feeble and
self-indulgent Wenzel enabled the towns to take bolder measures. In 1381
an alliance was concluded at [Sidenote: Hostility of towns and nobles.]
Speier between the Swabian League and the towns on the Rhine; and its
object was not merely mutual defence, but ‘to scourge and punish their
mutual enemies.’ The league thus formed contained seventy-two towns, and
could supply a military force of ten thousand men-at-arms. And this
force was by no means their only or their most effective weapon. By
granting a modified form of citizenship (_Pfahlbürgerthum_), they
annexed whole villages in their neighbourhood, thus depriving the lords
at once of subjects, revenue, and territory. If the landholder tried to
recover his loss, he only devastated his own property, while the
offending citizens were safe within walls that until the general use of
gunpowder were almost impregnable. It was no wonder that the princes
resented the growth of a power which seemed likely to rival their own.
But the class which was most immediately threatened by the towns was
that of the knights or lesser tenants-in-chief. Their chief occupations
were warfare and pillage, and the towns were resolute in putting a stop
to practices which ruined their trade. Single-handed the knights were
powerless against the civic forces, and they were driven to form
leagues, such as the famous League of the Lion, for their own defence.
There was little love lost between the knights and the princes, but
class prejudices and associations tended to draw them together against a
foe whom they both detested and contemned. The materials were prepared
for a great war of classes in Germany.
Wenzel had neither the ability nor the experience to enable him to deal
successfully with such a problem, and his attention was also occupied by
family affairs in the east and by the quarrel in the Church. His only
expedient was to form associations for the maintenance of the peace in
which both princes and cities should be included. By this means he
succeeded in postponing but not in preventing a war. The quarrel of
Leopold of Hapsburg with the Swiss precipitated matters. The Swiss
confederation differed from the Swabian and Rhenish leagues in that it
included village communities of peasants as well as towns. When in 1385
an alliance with the Swabian League was proposed, the original forest
cantons refused to take any part in the matter, and only the towns,
Bern, Zürich, Zug and Luzern were parties to the compact. The battle of
Sempach was won mainly by the peasants, and the Swabian towns sent no
assistance. But the fall of Leopold of Hapsburg, the champion of
princely interests, was hailed as a triumph by the towns, and had the
natural effect of increasing their pride and pretensions. In 1387 the
war which had been on the verge of outbreak since 1379 at last began.
There was little that was notable in the actual hostilities, except
their extent. The [Sidenote: The town war, 1387-9.] war was merely a
simultaneous explosion of the numerous feuds which had often been waged
before between a noble and a too powerful town. As long as the citizens
stood on the defensive, they were successful, and the armies of the
princes and knights were repulsed from their walls. Emboldened by these
successes, they determined to leave their walls and to invade the
territories of their old enemy, Eberhard of Würtemburg. But the German
towns had no such soldiers as the peasants of the Alps, and no such
geographical advantages as the Swiss had. In the open field their forces
were cut to pieces by the feudal cavalry. On August 24, 1388, the united
troops of the Swabian League suffered a severe defeat at Döffingen. The
weakness of their position was now apparent. They could resist
aggression, but they could not themselves take the offensive. The
Rhenish towns were defeated with great loss at Worms, and Nürnberg, the
latest and the most important recruit of the Swabian League, was reduced
to submission by the Burggraf.
But the triumph of the nobles was incomplete. Though they had been
victorious in the field, they were as unable as before to carry on siege
operations. Their defensive strength enabled the towns to negotiate the
peace of Eger (1389) [Sidenote: Peace of Eger, 1389.] on fairly equal
terms. By this treaty all leagues and unions were to be abrogated on
both sides. All future disputes between the towns and the nobles were to
be settled by arbitration. For this purpose four commissioners were
appointed in Swabia, Franconia, Bavaria, and the Rhenish provinces. Each
commission was to consist of four nobles, four citizens, and a president
to be appointed by the Emperor. It is obvious that the towns, though
defeated, had not been wholly unsuccessful, and had secured a position
of equality with their opponents. But the real importance of the war is
the discredit which it cast upon the monarchy. Wenzel had been unable
either to prevent the war or to influence its course. And the
organisation created for the maintenance of the peace was a local and
representative organisation, in which the central authority had little
more than a nominal share.
While Germany was convulsed with the town war, the House of Luxemburg
had made an important territorial acquisition in the east. Lewis the
Great, king of Hungary and Poland, the head of the original House of
Anjou in Naples, had died in 1380. He left a widow, Elizabeth, and two
daughters, Maria and Hedwig. In spite [Sidenote: Succession in Hungary
and Poland.] of the natural prejudices against female rule, he had
induced his subjects to recognise his daughters’ claim to the
succession. If they were passed over, the nearest male heir was Charles
of Durazzo,[10] who was engaged in a struggle for the crown of Naples
with Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of France. Maria, the elder
of the two daughters, was betrothed to Sigismund, the second son of
Charles IV. She was accepted by the Hungarians, and Sigismund was eager
that his future wife should also gain the crown of Poland. But the
Poles, influenced by the growing Slav sentiment, were unwilling to
continue the connection with Hungary or to accept a German ruler. They
insisted upon electing the younger sister Hedwig, and upon choosing a
husband for her. Hedwig was sent to Poland in 1385, and in the next year
was married to Jagello, prince of Lithuania, who was baptized as a
Christian under the name of Ladislas. The union of Poland and Lithuania
under the Jagellon house founded a powerful Slav state to the north-east
of Germany, and led to the downfall of the Teutonic Knights, who could
no longer claim to conduct a crusade when their foes had accepted
Christianity (see p. 459).
Meanwhile Sigismund, disappointed in Poland, came near to losing Hungary
as well. Elizabeth, the late king’s widow, [Sidenote: Sigismund’s
accession in Hungary, 1387.] unwilling to surrender authority to an
ambitious son-in-law, tried to break off Maria’s engagement, and to
bring about a marriage with a French prince. But her schemes were
suddenly checkmated by a revolt of the Hungarian nobles, who offered the
crown to Charles of Durazzo, now established on the throne of Naples.
Charles accepted the offer, and landed in Dalmatia in 1385. This
unexpected danger forced Elizabeth to appeal for assistance to
Sigismund, whose long-delayed marriage was hastily solemnised in October
1385. The bridegroom hurried off to raise troops for the defence of his
wife’s crown, and among his expedients for gaining money he pawned a
great part of Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst of Moravia. Meanwhile
events in Hungary moved with kaleidoscopic rapidity. Charles of Naples,
after having apparently secured his kingdom, was assassinated by the
emissaries of Elizabeth in February 1386. Elizabeth recovered authority
in her daughter’s name, and at once quarrelled with her son-in-law,
whose assistance seemed to be no longer needed. But the nobles of
Croatia determined to avenge the death of Charles. They seized Elizabeth
and Maria, and carried them off to the fortress of Novigrad. When the
fortress was besieged, the former was put to death, and Maria was
threatened with the same fate. In the general anarchy, the Hungarian
nobles determined to offer the crown to Sigismund, who was crowned in
1387, and soon afterwards succeeded in effecting his wife’s release. His
accession added a new province to the Luxemburg possessions, and at the
same time founded the dynastic connection between Hungary and Bohemia
which still exists.
The acquisition of Hungary did nothing to strengthen the position of the
House of Luxemburg in Germany, while it increased the jealousy with
which its overgrown territories were regarded. The western princes,
representing the original German duchies of Bavaria, Franconia, and
Swabia, resented the transference of power to a dynasty whose
possessions lay mostly in the east, and some of them outside Germany
altogether. The House of Wittelsbach, from whose hands Charles IV. had
snatched the imperial dignity, were the foremost in raising this outcry
of the west against the east. And the malcontents were not [Sidenote:
Opposition to Wenzel in Germany.] without more serious grounds of
complaint. Wenzel had done nothing to terminate the ecclesiastical
schism. His feeble and vacillating conduct during the town war had
disgusted the princes; and after the peace of Eger he had practically
withdrawn from German politics, and had left the kingdom in a state of
anarchy. Even in the east he incurred difficulties and humiliations
which brought discredit upon his person and his office.
Charles IV. had had two sources of strength which his successor entirely
lacked. He could rely upon the enthusiastic loyalty of the Bohemians,
and he was the undisputed head of the Luxemburg family. Neither of his
brothers had ever ventured to oppose his will. But under Wenzel Bohemia
enjoyed neither the prestige nor [Sidenote: Troubles in Bohemia.] the
good government which had endeared Charles to his subjects, while there
was a growing feeling that it was degrading to a Slav people to be ruled
by a German prince and by German methods. The sentiment of race which
had led Poland to unite with Lithuania under Jagello was beginning to be
powerful in Bohemia, in spite of its long and intimate association with
Germany. Wenzel himself was not personally unpopular. The very
coarseness of his character and manners, which degenerated in time into
brutish gluttony and drunkenness, seems to have evoked a rude sympathy,
at any rate among the lower classes. But his reckless passion led him
into gross political blunders, his unconcealed contempt alienated the
clergy, while his patronage of unworthy favourites exasperated the
nobles. A series of disorderly revolts began in 1387, and followed each
other in rapid succession. And Wenzel’s kinsmen, instead of assisting
the head of their house, rather added to his embarrassments. The evil
genius of the family was his cousin, Jobst of Moravia, a man who
anticipated the Italians of the next century in his selfish cunning and
his complete disregard of moral rules. Jobst had already gained
Brandenburg by trading on the pecuniary difficulties of Sigismund, and
he hoped by discrediting Wenzel to obtain for himself the Bohemian and
the imperial crowns. In 1394 he was at the head of a baronial revolt, in
which Wenzel was seized and imprisoned by the rebels. The most loyal
member of the family, John of Görlitz, who succeeded in releasing his
brother, was treated by Wenzel with gross ingratitude, and died in 1396,
not without grave suspicions of poison. Sigismund, though absorbed in
the pursuit of his own ends, was less cynically selfish than Jobst, and
showed some regard for the dignity and interests of his house. But he
was prevented from giving Wenzel any real assistance or guidance by the
necessity of defending his own kingdom of Hungary against the Turks. In
1396 he led a large crusading army to be cut to pieces by the forces of
Bajazet I. on the field of Nicopolis. But for the advance of the Tartars
under Timour, eastern Europe would have been at the mercy of the
victorious sultan.
The scandals in Bohemia and the quarrels among the Luxemburg princes
seem to have convinced the western princes that Wenzel was as little to
be feared as respected. He had given them a new grievance in 1395 by
granting the title of Duke of Milan and thus raising to princely rank
the aggressive Ghibelline leader in northern Italy, Gian Galeazzo
Visconti. And three years later he gave them a pretext for throwing off
their allegiance by his action with regard to the [Sidenote: France and
the schism.] schism in the Church. From the first the University of
Paris, then by far the most influential university in Europe, had set
itself against a schism which the French government had done much to
bring about. At first the king had silenced the university, but
gradually he had come to share its views. France found it extremely
expensive to support a schismatic Pope who had little but French
contributions to look to for the maintenance of himself and his court.
Popular sympathy was cooled when a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, was chosen
to succeed the French Pope Clement VII. Under the guidance of the
university leaders, Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, Charles VI. and his
ministers determined to end the schism by ‘the way of neutrality,’
_i.e._ by withdrawing allegiance from the two rival Popes, and thus
forcing them to abdicate, when a new election could restore unity to
Christendom. To give effect to this scheme, it was necessary to secure
simultaneous action on the part of the supporters of the Roman Pope
Boniface IX., and of these the most exalted was the King of the Romans.
Wenzel seems to have inherited some of the traditional attachment to
France of the Luxemburg [Sidenote: Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI.]
dynasty, and he had quarrelled with Boniface about the appointment of an
Archbishop of Mainz. The two kings, the one a confirmed drunkard and the
other subject to fits of insanity, met at Rheims in 1398 to discuss the
most pressing problem of the age. Their personal intercourse cannot have
been very edifying. On one occasion Wenzel was invited to a banquet with
the French king, and when the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri came to escort
the guest, they found that he had already dined, and was lying under the
table in a drunken sleep. But the interview resulted in a more or less
formal agreement that France should extort the resignation of Benedict,
while Wenzel was to do the same by Boniface.
The Elector Palatine had already warned Wenzel that if he withdrew his
allegiance from the Pope who had confirmed his title, his subjects would
no longer be bound [Sidenote: Schism in the Empire, 1400.] to him. The
interview at Rheims had the effect of hurrying the execution of a plan
which had been for some time in contemplation. Boniface IX., though
careful to avoid committing himself to the conspiring princes, was not
unwilling to checkmate Wenzel by encouraging his opponents in Germany.
Of the seven electors, two, representing Bohemia and Brandenburg,
belonged to the Luxemburg house, while the Duke of Saxony held aloof.
The other four, whose territories bordered on the Rhine, met in 1400 at
Lahnstein, decreed the deposition of Wenzel, and elected one of their
own number, the Count Palatine, Rupert III. But the Rhenish electors,
like the recalcitrant cardinals in 1378, had no power to enforce their
decree of deposition, and the only result of their action was to create
a schism in the Empire side by side with the schism in the Church.
Rupert was a far wiser ruler and a far better man than his rival, and if
to his other virtues he had added the slightest military capacity, he
might have gained a complete triumph. Wenzel continued to quarrel with
[Sidenote: The rival Kings of the Romans.] his brother and his cousins,
and during a revolt in Hungary Sigismund was for five months a prisoner
in the hands of his barons. If Ladislas of Naples had not been occupied
in his contest with Louis II. of Anjou, he might have enforced the
claims of the House of Durazzo to the Hungarian crown, as his father had
done in 1385. But the difficulties of the Luxemburg princes were not
enough to enable Rupert to profit by them. He invaded Bohemia, and
actually reached Prague, where Jobst and the malcontent nobles offered
him their support. But at the first slight reverse he withdrew, and his
opportunity was lost when Sigismund escaped from captivity and came to
govern Bohemia for his incompetent brother. Then Rupert tried to obtain
an indirect triumph by crushing Wenzel’s _protégé_, Gian Galeazzo
Visconti. He hoped thus to restore German influence in Italy, which the
two last Luxemburg rulers had allowed to decay, and also to receive the
imperial crown from the gratitude of Boniface IX. Florence and all the
opponents of the Milanese despot promised to aid him with men and money.
But his Italian expedition was even more unsuccessful than his invasion
of Bohemia. His army was utterly routed by the mercenary forces of Gian
Galeazzo under the walls of Brescia (October 21, 1401), and he returned
to Germany the laughing-stock of Europe. His failure encouraged Wenzel
to plan a journey to Italy to obtain his long-delayed coronation, and
Sigismund undertook to escort him. Boniface IX., who was now committed
to the cause of Rupert, sought to foil the scheme by urging Ladislas of
Naples to an invasion of Hungary, which proved unsuccessful. But the
project was perforce abandoned on the news of the death of Gian Galeazzo
(September 3, 1402). From this time the rival Kings of the Romans
abstained from direct attacks on each other, and contented themselves
with their respective obedience, the one in the west and the other in
the east. Germany was so accustomed to dispense with any active exercise
of the royal authority that the schism created little excitement and
less inconvenience.
The schism in the Church was far more important to Europe, though the
chief actors were hardly more imposing than the rival emperors. The
position of the Papacy was necessarily shaken by the contentions of two
old men, each claiming to exercise divine authority, and each cursing
the other with human petulance. The religious were shocked by such a
spectacle: the irreligious laughed and mocked. A contemporary remarks
that for a long time Christians had had an earthly god who forgave their
sins, but now they have two such gods, and if one will not forgive their
sins, they go to the other. The prolonged scandal forced men to change
their conception of papal power, and to contend that such power does not
exist for its own ends, but for the sake of the whole Church. If
therefore that power is grossly abused, it is the right and even the
duty of the Church to interfere on behalf of its suffering [Sidenote:
The idea of a General Council.] members. Hence arose the conciliar idea,
which dominates all other ecclesiastical conceptions in the first half
of the fifteenth century. The Church, as represented by a General
Council, is superior to the head, as the whole body is superior to any
member. This idea found its main support in the Universities, especially
in Paris, Oxford, and Prague. The schism in the Empire and the
prominence of the University of Paris enabled France to take the
foremost place in urging the summons of a Council to put an end to
ecclesiastical anarchy. France had already adopted a policy of
neutrality in 1398, and had gone so far as to besiege Avignon and to
make Benedict XIII. a prisoner. But a reaction had set in when no other
power followed the example of France, and the Orleanist party, in
opposition to the Duke of Burgundy, had espoused the cause of Benedict.
In 1402, to the great chagrin of the University of Paris, France
returned to its allegiance, and Benedict, released from his captivity,
journeyed to the coast of Provence and opened negotiations with his
rival in Rome. The last two Roman Popes, Innocent VII. and Gregory XII.,
had only been elected on the express condition that they would resign as
soon as their opponent did the same. Gregory XII. went so far as to make
an agreement [Sidenote: Negotiations between the two Popes.] with
Benedict, by which the two Popes pledged themselves to create no new
cardinals, and to meet together at Savona in 1407. The agreement was
probably insincere on Gregory’s part, and at any rate there were
powerful influences at work to prevent its execution. Gregory XII. might
be old and unambitious, but his relatives were eager to profit by his
elevation, and he was too feeble to disregard their wishes. And Ladislas
of Naples, who had become almost supreme at Rome under Innocent VII.,
had his own interest in prolonging the schism. A Roman Pope with a rival
at Avignon was bound to support him against the Angevin claimant to
Naples: but a new Pope, chosen at Savona under French influence, would
be sure to espouse the cause of Louis of Anjou. None of the princes of
Europe wished France to recover the ascendency in Church matters which
it had enjoyed from 1305 to 1378, yet this would probably be the result
if France were allowed to take the lead in terminating the schism. So
the negotiations between the two Popes remained ludicrously futile.
Gregory came as far north as Lucca, and Benedict as far south as
Spezzia, yet they could not agree to meet. ‘The one,’ said Leonardo
Bruni, ‘like a land animal, refused to approach the sea; the other, like
a water-beast, refused to leave the shore.’
But Europe was not prepared to allow its interests to be any longer
sacrificed by the selfish procrastination of two aged priests. In France
Benedict’s chief supporter, the Duke of Orleans, had been removed by
assassination in 1407, and Charles VI. was induced by the University to
withdraw his allegiance once more. Benedict replied by a bull of
excommunication against the French bishops, but the bull was burned, on
the proposal of the University. This boldness convinced Benedict that he
could no longer trust in France, and he fled to Perpignan, in his native
state of Roussillon. But meanwhile an important event had taken place in
Italy. [Sidenote: The Cardinals desert the Popes.] The cardinals who had
supported the respective Popes shared the general disgust at the
obstinate refusal of their masters to fulfil their oft-repeated pledges.
Though the Popes had never met, they had come near enough to allow their
cardinals to confer together. The result was that most of them abandoned
the Popes, put themselves under Florentine protection, and summoned a
General Council to meet at Pisa.
The European states were invited to approve the action of the cardinals
by sending delegates to Pisa. The support of [Sidenote: The attitude of
Europe.] France was assured, and England readily agreed to acknowledge
the Council. The Spanish kingdoms, on the other hand, remained passively
loyal to Benedict XIII., and Germany was divided. Wenzel, who had never
done anything to carry out the policy of neutrality which he had
promised France to adopt in 1398, agreed to support the Council on
condition that his title as King of the Romans was formally recognised.
But Rupert, although many of his chief supporters were inclined to
favour the cause of the cardinals, remained obstinate in his allegiance
to the Roman Pope. Within Italy, Ladislas of Naples showed his
determination to enforce his own interests by occupying Rome with his
troops. The two Popes, threatened with general desertion, made a tardy
effort to conciliate public opinion by each summoning a council of his
own. But very few prelates could be induced to attend, and the Council
of Pisa only gained in importance by comparison with these
_conciliabula_.
At Pisa the Council was opened on March 25, 1409. The [Sidenote: The
Council of Pisa, 1409.] delegates present may be divided into two
parties. The majority, including the cardinals who had summoned the
assembly, desired merely to end the schism and to restore the old
organisation in the Church. But some of the more enlightened
ecclesiastics, such as d’Ailly and Gerson, wished to take advantage of
an exceptional opportunity, and to effect such reforms in the Church as
would render similar scandals impossible in the future. Thus the
programme of the Council came to be divided into the _causa unionis_ and
the _causa reformationis_. It was agreed to take the more pressing
question of unity first, but to conciliate the reformers it was given to
be understood that the Council should not separate until it had
considered the reformation of the Church, both in its head and its
members. After this matters proceeded without any hurry, but without any
conflict of opinion. Charges against the two Popes were drawn up and
publicly read. Gregory and Benedict were cited to appear and answer
before the Council. After the third summons they were declared
contumacious, and deprived of their usurped office and dignity. It is
noteworthy that the Popes were not deposed simply on the ground of
public advantage, or because they were not canonically elected; but
distinct charges were brought against them, and the Council claimed the
right to impose the punishment of deposition. It was a novel spectacle
for Europe to see the principles of constitutional government applied in
the Church as they had been enforced in the English state in the cases
of Edward II. and Richard II. With the ground cleared by the decree of
deposition, the cardinals proceeded to a new election, and after eleven
days’ deliberation, their choice fell upon the Archbishop of Milan, who
took the name of Alexander V. (June 26, 1409). The question of reform
was adroitly postponed for the consideration of a new council which was
to meet in 1412, and the Council of Pisa was dissolved on August 7,
1409.
The Council broke up under the impression that it had accomplished at
any rate the most important part of its programme. But it was soon
evident that the schism was as far from an end as ever. Neither Gregory
nor Benedict would acknowledge the legality of the Council and its
proceedings: and indeed it was not hard to question [Sidenote: The
triple schism.] the legality of proceedings that were undoubtedly
revolutionary and without precedent. The Council had no coercive power
to enforce its edicts, and as long as the Popes could find any princes
interested in supporting them, so long they would cling to their titles.
The only difference that the Council had made was that, whereas before
there had been two rival Popes, there were now three. The pontificate of
[Sidenote: Alexander V.] Alexander V. only lasted ten months. During
that period he succeeded in recovering Rome from Ladislas, but only by
reviving civil war by the recognition of Louis of Anjou’s claim to
Naples. His only ecclesiastical measure was a bull which endeavoured to
settle an old quarrel in favour of the mendicant orders. Alexander
himself was a Franciscan, and he recognised the full rights of the
friars to receive confession and to administer the sacraments. The bull
provoked a storm of opposition from the parish clergy, whose rights were
infringed by the intruding friars, and from the University of Paris,
always at war with the Franciscans. The University, which had so
recently welcomed the Pope’s election, now expelled all mendicants, and
demanded that they should renounce the privileges conferred upon them by
the bull. In the midst of this general disapproval, Alexander V. died
(May 8, 1410), and the cardinals elected as his successor the clerical
_condottiere_, Baldassare [Sidenote: Election of John XXIII.] Cossa, who
took the name of John XXIII. The new Pope had rendered great services in
the protection of the Council and the recovery of Rome, and he seemed to
be the only man who could be trusted to resist the threatening power of
Ladislas of Naples. But he had no pretensions to piety, or even to
respectability, and the elevation of a licentious soldier to the highest
ecclesiastical dignity was in itself a scandal to Christendom almost as
great as the schism itself.
The apparent failure of the Council of Pisa seemed to bring discredit
upon its supporters and to justify the action of those who had held
aloof. But Rupert was not able to profit by any improvement this might
[Sidenote: Death of Rupert.] have made in his position, as he died on
May 18, 1410, a few days after Alexander V. His death forced upon the
western electors the problem of a new election, and ten years’
experience had so fully convinced them of the difficulty of overthrowing
the House of Luxemburg, that no candidate outside that house seems to
have been considered. There were now three surviving Luxemburg princes:
Wenzel, who still claimed to be King of the Romans; Sigismund, who had
gained a considerable reputation by the success of his recent rule in
Hungary; and the ambitious Jobst, who had added Brandenburg and Lausitz
to his inheritance in Moravia, and was now the chief adviser of his
cousin in Bohemia. On the great question of the Church these princes had
taken opposite sides: Wenzel and Jobst had acknowledged the Council,
while Sigismund had never withdrawn his allegiance from Gregory XII. The
four Rhenish electors, who alone had voted in the election of Rupert,
were equally divided on the same question. The Archbishop of Trier and
the Elector Palatine were adherents of the Roman Pope, while the
Archbishops of Mainz and Köln supported Alexander V. and his successor.
As none of them were inclined to stultify their action in 1400 by
recognising Wenzel, the ecclesiastical differences decided their votes.
The electors of Mainz and Köln were in favour of Jobst, and the other
two were inclined to support Sigismund.
Sigismund was the first to bring forward his claims, and he had much to
recommend him. He had compelled Bosnia to submit to his rule: the
Servians acknowledged the suzerainty of Hungary; and he had reduced
[Sidenote: Election of Sigismund.] the greater part of Dalmatia, always
inclined to set up a Neapolitan prince. Thus he could offer Germany the
most efficient protection against the Turks, while as heir to Bohemia he
seemed the only man who could mediate in the growing hostility of
Germans and Slavs. As he could not come to Germany in person, he
intrusted his cause to Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burggraf of Nürnberg,
who had saved his life at the battle of Nicopolis, and had since become
his most intimate adviser. But in spite of Sigismund’s distinguished
reputation, his chances of election seemed small if he could only secure
two votes, and if Jobst gave the Brandenburg vote in his own favour. To
get rid of this difficulty Sigismund determined to repudiate the bargain
by which Brandenburg had been pledged to his cousin, and to claim and
exercise the vote himself. He appointed Frederick of Hohenzollern to act
as his proxy: and on September 1, 1410, the latter appeared with the
four Rhenish electors at Frankfort. This last move on Sigismund’s part
found his opponents unprepared. Jobst had made up his mind to stand by
the cause of Wenzel and to secure his own election on his cousin’s
death. He and Rudolf of Saxony had declined to attend the meeting on the
ground that there was no vacancy. The electors of Mainz and Köln did all
they could to delay matters, but on September 20 the Elector Palatine
and the Archbishop of Trier refused to wait any longer. Punctiliously
fulfilling all the customary forms, they examined and approved the
powers of the Burggraf of Nürnberg, and declared Sigismund to be
unanimously elected. By the letter of the Golden Bull the election was
incontestably valid, and even the doubtfulness of his claim to
Brandenburg could hardly be urged against it.
But Sigismund’s opponents had numbers on their side, and were eager to
atone for the blunder they had made in allowing a march to be stolen
upon them. Jobst induced [Sidenote: Election of Jobst.] Wenzel to make
an agreement by which the latter was to be recognised as Roman Emperor,
and in return confirmed Jobst in the possession of Brandenburg and
promised to give the Bohemian vote in favour of his election as King of
the Romans. In October Frankfort witnessed a new election. Five
electors, either in person or by proxy, gave their votes in favour of
Jobst of Moravia. Thus for the second time events in the Empire copied
the example of those in the Church. The first schism between two rival
Popes had been followed by a schism between two rival Kings of the
Romans. In 1409 a third Pope was added, and the next year witnessed the
unique spectacle of three princes of the same family each claiming the
highest temporal dignity on earth. There could be no clearer proof of
the unsuitability of mediæval conceptions to the conditions of Europe in
the fifteenth century.
The triple schism in the Empire was, however, of short duration.
Sigismund was preparing to attack his rival, when [Sidenote: Death of
Jobst.] Jobst suddenly died on January 12, 1411. His removal rendered
possible an agreement between the two brothers. Sigismund recovered his
inherited fief of Brandenburg, and intrusted its administration to
Frederick of Nürnberg. Moravia was annexed to the Bohemian crown, and
has never since been severed from it. As regards the imperial dignity,
Wenzel agreed to give his own vote for Sigismund, as he had given it the
previous year to Jobst, on condition that his own title should be
recognised and that he should have a prior claim to be made emperor. The
support of the Archbishops of Mainz and Köln Sigismund purchased by
changing his attitude on the Church question and abandoning the cause of
Gregory XII. On July 21, 1411, a third election took place at [Sidenote:
Second election of Sigismund.] Frankfort, when the five votes which had
been given for Jobst were unanimously registered in favour of Sigismund.
The Elector Palatine and the Archbishop of Trier took no part in the
matter, as they refused to cast a slur on the legality of their previous
election.
Sigismund was now to all intents and purposes the only King of the
Romans, as Wenzel made no attempt to busy [Sidenote: Sigismund and John
XXIII.] himself with anything but Bohemian affairs. In his new capacity
Sigismund displayed the bustling activity and the readiness to turn from
one great scheme to another which had always characterised him. He began
by making war on the Venetians, who had encroached upon Dalmatia. When
this war was ended by a truce in 1413, he entered Italy to reconquer
Lombardy from the Visconti. But he found the power of Filippo Maria too
strongly established to be easily overthrown, and he was about to retire
when fortune threw another and more distinguished enterprise in his way.
John XXIII. had succeeded to his predecessor’s alliance with Louis II.
of Anjou and to the war with Ladislas of Naples. The defeat of the
Neapolitan king at Rocca-Secca (May 19, 1411) induced him to conclude a
treaty by which he was to abandon Gregory XII. and John was to desert
the Angevin cause. But Ladislas had more ambitious aims than merely to
secure his position in Naples. He desired to build up a kingdom of
Italy, and for this purpose to seize upon the States of the Church which
lay between him and the northern principalities and republics. No sooner
had John XXIII. disbanded his mercenary forces than Ladislas resumed
hostilities, occupied Rome, and drove the Pope to find refuge in
Florence. In this strait John looked eagerly round for support, and the
most obvious ally was Sigismund, who had his own reasons for checking
the aggrandisement of Ladislas. But Sigismund would only give his
assistance on condition that the Pope should summon a new Council to
some German city in order to put an end to the schism. John saw clearly
the danger of such a proceeding to his own position, and strove to alter
the place of meeting to some town south of the Alps. Sigismund, however,
stood firm, the Pope’s difficulties were pressing, and at last a formal
summons was issued for a Council [Sidenote: Summons of the Council of
Constance.] to meet at Constance on November 1, 1414. Before the dreaded
date arrived, the death of Ladislas (August 6) freed the Pope from his
most immediate difficulties and caused him to repent of his too hasty
acquiescence. Sigismund had apparently gained a signal triumph. He had
ousted the French monarchy from the lead of the reforming movement in
Europe, and if he could conduct the Council to a successful issue, he
would have done much to restore the prestige both of the imperial
dignity and of the German kingship. Men were reminded of the days when
the early emperors, Otto the Great and Henry III., had dominated the
Church as well as the State.
Footnote 10:
See Genealogical Table I, in Appendix.
CHAPTER X
THE HUSSITE MOVEMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE, 1409-1418
Questions before the Council of Constance—The Hussite Movement—Its
Political Aspect—Exodus of Germans from Prague—Hus at the Council of
Constance—Parties at Constance—Hus imprisoned—Attacks on John
XXIII.—His flight—Triumph of Sigismund—Deposition of John XXIII.—The
Council during Sigismund’s absence—Sigismund’s journey—Dissensions
in the Council—Election of Martin V.—Dissolution of the Council.
The Council of Constance, like that of Pisa, had two very [Sidenote:
Questions before the Council of Constance.] obvious questions to
consider: (1) the restoration of unity; and (2), if the reforming party
could have its way, the reform of the Church in its head and members.
But circumstances forced the Council to consider a third question, which
had never been even touched in the discussions at Pisa. This was
reformation in its widest sense: not merely a constitutional change in
the relations of Pope and hierarchy, but a vital change in dogma and
ritual. This question was brought to the front by the so-called Hussite
movement in Bohemia. The fundamental issues involved were those which
have been at the bottom of most subsequent disputes in the Christian
Church. How far was the Christianity of the day unlike the Christianity
to be found in the record of Christ and His Apostles? And the
difference, if any, was it a real and necessary difference consequent on
the development of society, or was it the result of abuses and
innovations introduced by fallible men? The orthodox took their stand
upon the unity and authority of the Church. The Church was the true
foundation of Christ and the inheritor of His spirit. Therefore what the
Church believed and taught, that alone was the true Christian doctrine:
and the forms and ceremonies of the Church were the necessary aids to
faith. The reformers, on the other hand, looked to Scripture for the
fundamental rules of life and conduct. Any deviation from these rules,
no matter on what authority, must be superfluous, and might very
probably be harmful.
The Hussite movement was older than Hus, and it was [Sidenote: The
Hussite movement.] partly native and partly foreign in its origin. The
first impulse to religious reform is to be found, in Bohemia as in
England, in the dissensions between the parish clergy and the mendicant
orders. The latter, being in immediate dependence upon the Papacy, were
not subject to the ordinary authority of the bishops, and soon learned
to consider themselves superior to the parish clergy. The bishops
usually supported their own dependants, while the friars often found a
powerful ally in the Pope. One result of this long-standing quarrel was
that the people learned to question the authority of their
ecclesiastical superiors. Wherever it is necessary or possible to take
one of two sides, a certain amount of thought and independence is called
into exercise by the choice. This first questioning spirit among the
Bohemians was taken advantage of by a series of reforming teachers in
the fourteenth century, of whom the best known are Konrad Waldhäuser,
Milecz of Kremsier, and Mathias of Janow. These men attacked the
degradation of the Church, the vices of monks and friars, the wealth and
worldliness of the higher clergy. But it was not until the rise of Hus
that there was any system in the demand for reform, or any cohesion
among the reformers. And the systematic teaching of Hus was for the most
part derived from the great English teacher, John Wyclif. It was a rule
in the University of Prague that Bachelors of Arts might not deliver
their own lectures, but must expound the teaching of distinguished
professors either of Prague, Paris, or Oxford. The marriage of Anne of
Bohemia, Wenzel’s sister, with Richard II. led to considerable
intercourse between England and Bohemia. Many Bohemian students, notably
the friend and disciple of Hus, Jerome of Prague, completed part of
their course in Oxford, and returned to their native land carrying with
them Wyclif’s treatises, or the record and recollection of his oral
teaching. Wyclif, like the Bohemian reformers, had begun by quarrelling
with the friars and denouncing the vices of the clergy. The disputes
with the Avignon Popes had led him on to attack the extreme claims of
papal authority: and gradually he had come to question some of the most
prominent dogmas of the Church, notably that of transubstantiation. Hus
was at first reluctant to accept all the conclusions of Wyclif, but he
advanced step by step in the same direction, and in the end it was as
the avowed disciple of the English reformer that he became the leader of
a religious party in Bohemia.
But it is important to remember that the Hussite movement had a secular
as well as an ecclesiastical side. Bohemia [Sidenote: Political aspect
of the Hussite movement.] was a Slav state, and for centuries there had
been a conflict between Slavs and Germans. At one time the Slavs had
advanced along the southern shores of the Baltic almost as far as the
North Sea. But, harassed by the attacks of the Magyars, they had been
unable to hold their own, and had gradually been subdued or driven
eastwards by German influences, represented by the Dukes of Saxony, the
Margraves of Brandenburg, the Hanseatic League, and finally the
crusading order of the Teutonic Knights. At the end of the fourteenth
century this steady eastward advance of the Germans met with a severe,
and to some extent a permanent, check. No doubt the chief agency in
effecting this was the success of the Jagellon kings of Poland in their
war with the Teutonic Order. But the Hussite movement belongs to the
same Slav reaction, and for a time contributed almost as directly as
Polish victories to assure the successful resistance of the Slavs. Hus
himself, born of humble parentage in the village of Husinec, was
profoundly imbued with popular sympathies, and lost no opportunity of
identifying himself and his teaching with the national cause. And in
this aim he was served by events in the University of Prague, where he
early rose to a distinguished position. Founded in the days of Bohemian
ascendency under Charles IV., the University had from the first
attracted a large number of German teachers and students, and had become
far larger and more distinguished than any purely German university.
Like the Paris University, on which it had been modelled, it was divided
into four nations—Bohemians, Poles, Bavarians, and Saxons. After the
foundation of a Polish university at Cracow, the Polish nation at Prague
had come to be composed mainly of Germans from Silesia, Pomerania, and
Prussia. Thus to all intents and purposes the University was composed of
two nations, Germans and Bohemians, of whom the former had three times
as much power as the latter. In all questions which were decided by the
vote of the nations, the Germans had three votes to one, and as offices
went in rotation to the four nations, they had three turns to the
Bohemian one. As the divergent interests of Slavs and Germans became
accentuated by political and religious differences, the inferiority of
the Bohemians in their own University became more and more of a
grievance. It was on religious questions that the quarrel was most
embittered. The majority of the orthodox party in the University
consisted of Germans, and they denounced the growth of Wycliffite
heresy. A German teacher brought forward a number of propositions which
had been attributed to Wyclif and condemned by a Synod in London. In
spite of the opposition of Hus and his Bohemian supporters, the majority
in the University voted that the doctrines were heretical, and
prohibited their teaching. Wenzel, who was at this time supporting the
rebellious cardinals, was anxious that his intervention should not be
weakened by the charge of the prevalence of heresy in his dominions, and
was at first inclined to support the majority. But when he applied to
the University for their approval of the Council of Pisa, he found the
Bohemians ready to acquiesce, while the Germans were mostly on the side
of the Roman Pope. At this moment the so-called ‘contest of the three
votes’ was at its height, and Hus had adroitly come forward as the
champion of the cause of his fellow-countrymen. In the hope of
forwarding his ecclesiastical policy, Wenzel was induced to intervene in
the University quarrel. In January 1409 he issued an edict that
henceforth the Bohemians should have three votes and three turns in
office, while the foreign nations were only to have one between them.
The Germans protested vigorously, and as they failed to obtain redress,
determined to leave Prague. The roads were crowded with the emigrants,
and it was reckoned that on one day two thousand Germans took their
departure.
The exodus of the Germans from Prague is an important [Sidenote: Exodus
of the Germans from Prague.] historical event. For sixty years Prague
had been the capital of Germany, partly as the residence of the Emperor,
and partly as the seat of the leading University. With the students had
come German traders, who had made Prague a commercial as well as an
intellectual centre. All this came to a sudden end in 1409. Prague lost
its prominence among German towns. Other universities were strengthened
by the addition of the exiles from Bohemia; and a large number of them
founded a new university at Leipzig. Germany received a great
intellectual impulse, which was strengthened rather than weakened by the
loss of a general centre. And for Bohemia the consequences were no less
important. The German element in the country received a blow which was
fatal to its further development for two centuries. At the same time the
great dam which had hitherto impeded the spread of the new religious
doctrines was removed. The rapidity with which the people received the
Wycliffite or Hussite teaching shows not only that the soil was already
well prepared for the seed, but also the strength of the national
antipathy to foreigners.
With the departure of the Germans, all opposition to the recognition of
the Council of Pisa by Bohemia came to an end. But the religious dispute
was as far from a settlement as ever. Although the people were inclined
to regard Hus as the champion of the national cause, there was still a
large orthodox party among the upper classes, and the clergy were
resolutely opposed to doctrinal reform. Alexander V. issued a bull
ordering the Archbishop of Prague to put down heresy, and Wyclif’s
writings were publicly burned. Hus appealed from the Pope ill-informed
to the Pope when he should be better informed. In 1412 the quarrel was
envenomed. John XXIII. had proclaimed a crusade against Ladislas of
Naples, and endeavoured to raise money by the sale of indulgences. Hus
protested against such an iniquity as vigorously as did Luther a century
later, and the papal bull was burned in the public square. Riots broke
out in Prague, and Bohemia seemed to be on the verge of civil war.
Wenzel could only obtain a temporary truce by persuading Hus to retire
for a time into the country. Meanwhile Sigismund had succeeded in
inducing John XXIII. to summon a General Council, and anxious to pacify
his future kingdom, he invited Hus to attend. The reformer’s friends
warned him of the danger he would run in accepting the invitation, but
Hus was eager to state his opinions before an assembly of Christendom,
and on receiving a promise of [Sidenote: Hus invited to Constance.] a
personal safe-conduct from Sigismund, he arrived in Constance on
November 3, 1414.
The Council of Constance is one of the most notable [Sidenote: The
Council of Constance.] assemblies in the history of the world. In the
number and fame of its members, in the importance of its objects, and
above all, in the dramatic interest of its records, it has few rivals.
It is like the meeting of two worlds, the old and the new, the mediæval
and the modern. We find there represented views which have hardly yet
been fully accepted, which have occupied the best minds of succeeding
centuries: at the same time, the Council itself and its ceremonial carry
us back to the times of the Roman Empire, when Church and State were
scarcely yet dual, and when Christianity was co-extensive with one
united Empire. At Constance all the ideas, religious and political, of
the Middle Ages seem to be put upon their trial. If that trial had ended
in condemnation, there could be no fitter point to mark the division
between mediæval and modern history. But the verdict was acquittal, or
at least a partial acquittal; and the old system was allowed, under
modified conditions, a lease of life for another century. It must not be
forgotten that there were great secular as well as ecclesiastical
interests involved in the Council. Princes and nobles were present as
well as cardinals and prelates. The Council may be regarded not only as
a great assembly of the Church, but also as a great diet of the mediæval
empire.
The man who had done more than any one to procure the summons of the
Council, and whose interests were most closely [Sidenote: Parties at
Constance.] bound up in its success, was Sigismund, King of the Romans
and potential Emperor. He was eager to terminate the schism, and to
bring about such a reform in the Church as would prevent the recurrence
of similar scandals. But his motive in this was not merely disinterested
devotion to the interests of the Church. He wished to revive the
prestige of the Holy Roman Empire, and to gratify his own personal
vanity, by posing as the secular head of Christendom and the arbiter of
its disputes. More especially he wished to restore the authority of the
monarchy in Germany, and to put an end to that anarchic independence of
the princes, of which the recent schism was both the illustration and
the result. In pursuing this aim he was confronted by the champions of
‘liberty’ and princely interests, who were represented at Constance by
the Archbishop of Mainz and Frederick of Hapsburg, Count of Tyrol. The
archbishop, John of Nassau, had been prominent in effecting and
prolonging the schism in the Empire. He was a firm supporter of John
XXIII., and had no interest in attending the Council except to thwart
the designs of the king, whom he had been the last to accept. Frederick
of Tyrol was the youngest son of that Duke Leopold who had fallen at
Sempach in the war with the Swiss. Of his father’s possessions Frederick
had inherited Tyrol and the Swabian lands, and the propinquity of his
territories made him a powerful personage at Constance. His family was
the chief rival of the House of Luxemburg for ascendency in eastern
Germany, and he himself seems to have cherished a personal grudge
against Sigismund. To these enemies Sigismund could oppose two loyal
allies, the Elector Palatine Lewis, who had completely abandoned the
anti-Luxemburg policy pursued by his father Rupert, and Frederick of
Hohenzollern, the most prominent representative of national sentiment in
Germany, who had already given in Brandenburg an example of that
restoration of order which he wished Sigismund to effect throughout his
dominions.
Of the clerical members of the Council the most prominent at the
commencement was the Pope John XXIII. He had been forced by his
difficulties in Italy to issue the summons, but as the time for the
meeting approached he felt more and more misgiving. His one object was
to maintain himself in office; but he was conscious that neither
Sigismund nor the cardinals would hesitate to throw him over if he stood
in the way of the restoration of unity. He therefore allied himself with
Sigismund’s opponents, the Elector of Mainz and Frederick of Tyrol, and
spared no pains to bring about dissension between Sigismund and the
Council.
The assembled clergy may be divided roughly into two parties: the
reformers, and the conservative or ultramontane [Sidenote: Clerical
parties.] party. The reformers were not in favour of any radical change
in the Church. They were if anything more vehemently opposed than their
antagonists to the doctrines of Wyclif and Hus. Such reform as they
desired was aristocratic rather than democratic. They had no intention
of weakening the authority of the Church; but within the Church they
desired to remove gross abuses, and to strengthen the hierarchy as
against the Papacy. Their chief contention was that a General Council
has supreme authority, even over the Pope, and they wished such councils
to meet at regular intervals. By this means papal absolutism would be
limited by a sort of oligarchical parliament within the Church. The
conservatives, on the other hand, consisting chiefly of the cardinals
and Italian prelates, had no wish to alter a system under which they
enjoyed material advantages. Their object, as it had been at Pisa, was
to restore the union of the Church, but to defeat, or at any rate
postpone, any schemes of reform.
The Council was opened on November 5, but the meeting was only formal,
and no real business was transacted for a month. Meanwhile Hus had been
followed to Constance by the representatives of the orthodox party in
Bohemia, who brought a formidable list of charges against the reformer.
John XXIII. at once saw in this an opportunity for embroiling the
Council with Sigismund. Adroitly keeping himself in the background, he
allowed the cardinals to take the lead in the matter. They summoned Hus
to appear before them, and in spite of his protest that he was only
answerable to the whole Council, they committed [Sidenote: Hus
imprisoned.] him to prison. The news that his safe-conduct had been so
insultingly disregarded reached Sigismund as he was starting for
Constance after the coronation ceremony at Aachen. He arrived on
Christmas day, and at once demanded that Hus should be released. The
Pope excused himself, and threw the blame on the cardinals. To the
king’s right to protect his subject the cardinals opposed their duty to
suppress heresy. In high dudgeon, Sigismund declared that he would leave
the Council to its fate, and actually set out on his return journey. The
Pope was jubilant at the success of his wiles. But Sigismund’s friends,
and especially Frederick of Hohenzollern, urged him not to sacrifice the
interests of Germany and of Christendom for the sake of a heretic. This
advice, and the feeling that his personal reputation was staked on the
success of the Council, triumphed. Sigismund returned to Constance, and
Hus remained a prisoner. From this moment John XXIII. began to despair.
The Pope’s position became worse when the Council, copying the procedure
of the universities, began to discuss matters, [Sidenote: Attacks on
John XXIII.] not in a general assembly, but each nation separately. This
deprived John of the advantage which he hoped to gain from the numerical
majority of Italian prelates attending the Council. Four nations
organised themselves: Italians, French, Germans, and English. Over the
last three John XXIII. had no hold whatever. To his disgust they treated
him, not as the legitimate Pope, whose authority was to be vindicated
against his rivals, but as one of three schismatic Popes, whose
retirement was a necessary condition of the restoration of unity. When
he tried to evade their demand, they brought unanswerable charges
against his personal character, and threatened to depose him. He tried
to disarm hostility by declaring his readiness to resign if the other
Popes would do the same. His promise was welcomed with enthusiasm, but
neither Sigismund nor his supporters were softened by it. In spite of
the vehement protests of the Elector of Mainz that he would obey no Pope
but John XXIII., the proposal was made to proceed to a new election.
John had to fall back upon his last expedient. If he departed from
Constance he might throw the Council into fatal [Sidenote: The Pope’s
flight.] confusion: at the worst he could maintain himself as an
Antipope, as Gregory and Benedict had done against the Council of Pisa.
His ally Frederick of Tyrol was prepared to assist him. Frederick
arranged a tournament outside the walls, and while this absorbed public
interest, the Pope escaped from Constance in the disguise of a groom,
and made his way to Schaffhausen, a strong castle of the Hapsburg count.
For the moment John XXIII. seemed not unlikely to gain his end.
Constance was thrown into confusion by the news of [Sidenote: Triumph of
Sigismund.] his flight. The mob rushed to pillage the papal residence.
The Italian and Austrian prelates prepared to leave the city, and the
Council was on the verge of dissolution. But Sigismund’s zeal and energy
succeeded in averting such a disaster. He restored order in the city,
persuaded the prelates to remain, and took prompt measures to punish his
rebellious vassal. An armed force under Frederick of Hohenzollern
succeeded in capturing not only John XXIII. but also Frederick of Tyrol.
The latter was compelled to undergo public humiliation, and to hand over
his territories to his suzerain on condition that his life should be
spared. No such exercise of imperial power had been witnessed in Germany
since the days of the Hohenstaufen, and Sigismund chose this auspicious
moment to secure a powerful supporter within the electoral college by
handing over the electorate of Brandenburg to Frederick of Nürnberg
(April 30, 1415). He thus established a dynasty which was destined to
play a great part in German history, and ultimately to create a new
German Empire.
The unsuccessful flight of John XXIII. not only enabled Sigismund to
assume a more authoritative position in the Council and in Germany: it
also sealed his own fate. The Council had no longer any hesitation
[Sidenote: Deposition of John XXIII.] in proceeding to the formal
deposition of the Pope (May 29, 1415). As the two Popes who had been
deposed at Pisa had never been recognised at Constance, the Church was
now without a head. But instead of hastening to fill the vacancy, the
Council turned aside to the suppression of heresy and the trial of Hus.
On three occasions, the 5th, 7th, and 8th of June, Hus was heard before
a general session. No point in his teaching excited greater
animadversion than his contention that a priest, whether Pope or
prelate, forfeited his office by the commission of mortal sin. With
great cunning his accusers drew him on to extend this doctrine to
temporal princes. This was enough to complete the alienation of
Sigismund, and after the third day’s trial he was the first to pronounce
in [Sidenote: Execution of Hus.] favour of condemnation. The last
obstacle in the way of the prosecution was thus removed, and Hus was
burned in a meadow outside the city walls on July 6, 1415.
With the death of Hus ends the first and most eventful period of the
Council of Constance. Within these seven or eight months Sigismund and
the reforming party, thanks to [Sidenote: The Council during Sigismund’s
absence.] the division of the Council into nations, seemed to have
gained a signal success. Sigismund had purchased his triumph by breaking
his pledge to Hus, and for this he was to pay a heavy penalty in the
subsequent disturbances in Bohemia. But for the moment these were not
foreseen, and Sigismund was jubilantly eager to prosecute his scheme.
Warned by the experience of its predecessor at Pisa, the Council of
Constance was careful not to put too much trust in paper decrees. John
XXIII. was not only deposed, but a prisoner. Gregory XII. had given a
conditional promise of resignation, and had so few supporters as to be
of slight importance. But Benedict XIII. was still strong in the
allegiance of the Spanish kingdoms, and unless they could be detached
from his cause there was little prospect of ending the schism. This task
Sigismund volunteered to undertake, and he also proposed to avert the
impending war between England and France, to reconcile the Burgundian
and Armagnac parties in the latter country, and to negotiate peace
between the King of Poland and the Teutonic Knights. It would indeed be
a revival of the imperial idea if its representative could thus act as a
general mediator in European quarrels. The Council welcomed the offer
with enthusiasm, and showed their loyalty to Sigismund by deciding to
postpone all important questions till his return. And this decision was
actually adhered to. During the sixteen months of Sigismund’s absence
(July 15, 1415, to January 27, 1417) only two prominent subjects were
considered by the Council. One was the trial of Jerome of Prague, which
was a mere corollary of that of Hus, and ended in a similar sentence.
The other was the thorny question raised by the proposed condemnation of
the writings of Jean Petit, a Burgundian partisan who had defended the
murder of the Duke of Orleans. The leader of the attack upon Jean Petit
was Gerson, the learned and eloquent chancellor of the University of
Paris. But so completely had the matter become a party question, and so
great was the influence of the Duke of Burgundy, that the Council could
not be induced to go further than a general condemnation of the doctrine
of lawful tyrannicide; and Gerson’s activity in the matter provoked such
ill-will that after the close of the Council he could not venture to
return to France, which was then completely under Burgundian and English
domination.
It is impossible to narrate here the story of Sigismund’s [Sidenote:
Sigismund’s journey.] journey, though it abounds with illustrations of
his impulsive character and of the attitude of the western states
towards the imperial pretensions. It furnished conclusive proofs, if any
were needed, that however the Council, for its own ends, might welcome
the authority of a secular head, national sentiment was far too strongly
developed to give any chance of success to a projected revival of the
mediæval empire. As regards his immediate object, Sigismund was able to
achieve some results. He failed to induce Benedict XIII. to abdicate,
but the quibbles of the veteran intriguer exhausted the patience of his
supporters, and at a conference at Narbonne the Spanish kings agreed to
desert him and to adhere to the Council of Constance (December 1415).
But Sigismund’s more ambitious schemes came to nothing. So far from
preventing a war between England and France, he only forwarded an
alliance between Henry V. and the Duke of Burgundy, and though he may
have done this in the hope of forcing peace upon France, the result was
to make the war more disastrous and prolonged.
When Sigismund reappeared in Constance (January 27, [Sidenote:
Dissensions in the Council.] 1417), he found that the state of affairs
both in Germany and in the Council had altered for the worse. Frederick
of Tyrol had returned to his dominions and had been welcomed by his
subjects. The Archbishop of Mainz had renewed his intrigues, and an
attempt had even been made to release John XXIII. With the Elector
Palatine, formerly his loyal supporter, Sigismund had quarrelled on
money matters, and it seemed possible that the four Rhenish electors
would form a league against Sigismund as they had done against Wenzel in
1400. Still more galling was his loss of influence in the Council. The
adhesion of the Spanish kingdoms had been followed by the arrival of
Spanish prelates, who formed a fifth nation and strengthened the party
opposed to reform. The war between England and France had created a
quarrel between the two nations at Constance, and the French deserted
the cause they had once championed rather than vote with their enemies.
Sigismund could only rely upon the English and the Germans: and the
question which agitated the Council was one of vital importance. Which
was to come first, the election of a new Pope, or the adoption of a
scheme of ecclesiastical reform? The conservatives contended that the
Church could hardly be said to exist without its head; that no reform
would be valid until the normal constitution of the Church was restored.
On the other hand, it was urged that no reform was possible unless the
supremacy of a General Council was fully recognised; that certain
questions could be more easily discussed and settled during a vacancy;
that if the reforms were agreed upon, a new Pope could be pledged to
accept them, whereas a Pope elected at once could prevent all reform.
Party spirit ran extremely high, and it seemed almost impossible to
effect an agreement. Sigismund was openly denounced as a heretic, while
he in turn threatened to imprison the cardinals for contumacy. But
gradually the balance turned against the reformers. Some of the leading
German bishops were bribed to change their votes. The head of the
English representatives, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, died at the
critical moment, and the influence of Henry Beaufort, the future
cardinal, induced the English nation to support an immediate election.
It was agreed that a new Pope should be chosen at once, and that the
Council should then proceed to the work of reform. But the only
preliminary concession that Sigismund and his party could obtain was the
issue of a decree in October 1417, that another Council should meet
within five years, a second within seven years, and that afterwards a
Council should be regularly held every ten years.
For the new election it was decided that the twenty-three cardinals
should be joined by thirty delegates of the Council, six from each
nation. The conclave met on November 8, and three days later their
choice [Sidenote: Election of Martin V., Nov. 11, 1417.] fell upon
Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. Even the defeated
party could not refrain from sharing in the general enthusiasm at the
restoration of unity after forty years of schism. But their fears as to
the ultimate fate of the cause of reform were fully justified. Soon
after his election Martin declared that it was impious to appeal to a
Council against a papal decision. Such a declaration, as Gerson said,
nullified the acts of the Councils of Pisa and Constance, including the
election of the Pope himself. In their indignation the members made a
strong appeal to the Pope to fulfil the conditions agreed upon before
his election. But Martin had a weapon to hand which had been furnished
by the Council itself. It was the division into nations that had led to
the fall of John XXIII., and it was the same division into nations that
had ruined the prospects of reform. The Pope now drew up a few scanty
articles of reform, which he offered as separate concordats to the
French, Germans, and English. It was a dangerous expedient for a Pope to
adopt, because it seemed to imply the separate existence of national
churches; but it answered its immediate purpose. Martin could contend
that there was no longer any work for the Council to do, and he
dissolved it in May 1418. He set out [Sidenote: Dissolution of the
Council, May, 1418.] for Italy, where a difficult task awaited him.
Papal authority in Rome had ceased with the flight of John XXIII. in
1414. Sigismund offered the Pope a residence in some German city, but
Martin wisely refused. The support of his own family, the Colonnas,
enabled him to re-enter Rome in 1421. By that time almost all traces of
the schism had disappeared. Gregory XII. was dead: John XXIII. had
recently died in Florence: Benedict XIII. still held out in his fortress
of Peniscola, but was impotent in his isolation.
CHAPTER XI
THE HUSSITE WARS AND THE COUNCIL OF BASEL, 1419-1449
Sigismund and Germany—Hussite parties in Bohemia—Crusades against
the Hussites—Bohemian victories—Bohemia and Poland—Attempted
reforms in Germany—The Crusade of 1427—Reforms of 1427—The Crusade
of 1431—Summons of the Council of Basel—Its procedure—Its quarrel
with Eugenius IV.—His submission—The Compacts with Bohemia—Civil
war in Bohemia—Battle of Lipan—Sigismund acknowledged king of
Bohemia—The Council of Basel and reforms—Divisions within the
Council—Negotiations with the Greeks—Quarrel of the Pope and
Council—Council of Ferrara or Florence—Attitude of France and
Germany—The Pragmatic Sanction—Deposition of Eugenius IV.—Election
of Felix V.—The Council’s prestige declines—Triumph of Eugenius
IV.—Reconciliation of Germany to Eugenius IV.—Close of the Council
of Basel—Failure of the Conciliar Movement.
The ultimate failure of the reforming party at Constance had [Sidenote:
Sigismund and Germany.] ruined all Sigismund’s schemes for the
restoration of monarchical authority in Germany. Ready as he was to form
magnificent projects, he was equally easily discouraged and turned
aside. After quitting the Council he devoted himself to personal and
dynastic interests, to the defence of Hungary against the Turks, and to
the enforcement of his claim to succeed in Bohemia. Germany and German
interests he abandoned almost as completely as his brother had done. The
result was a gradual rupture of the friendship that had hitherto existed
between himself and Frederick of Brandenburg. The latter had made it his
life’s task to restore unity to Germany, in order to save that country
from internal dissolution and foreign attack. The desertion of Sigismund
from what had been a common cause forced him to change his means, but
not his end. Hitherto he had striven to unite Germany under the
monarchy, but that was impossible when the king would not undertake to
govern. Frederick was forced to scheme for a federal union of Germany
which should be independent of, and perhaps hostile to, the monarchy.
And the necessity of some such union was made more and more manifest by
events in Bohemia.
In Bohemia the news of Hus’s death had provoked a storm of indignation,
and had intensified the national sentiment of hostility to Germany.
Sigismund was regarded [Sidenote: Hussite parties in Bohemia.] with
special loathing as a perjured traitor as well as a party to a murder.
Even the sluggish Wenzel shared the sentiments of his subjects. He
bitterly reviled his brother for breaking his safe-conduct, ordered that
no Bohemian should henceforth appear before a foreign tribunal, and
showed special favour to the party which demanded vengeance for Hus’s
death. Under the leadership of Nicolas of Husinec, lord of the village
where Hus had been born, and of John Ziska, already known as a capable
military leader, the Hussites made great strides towards ascendency in
Bohemia. The chief doctrine which they advanced was the communion in
both kinds. They held that laymen were entitled to receive the cup in
the sacrament as well as the priests, and hence, as a religious party,
they received the name of Utraquists. But though they were united in
this contention, and also in common hostility to Germany and German
influences, there were important divisions among the Hussites. The
moderate party, or Calixtines, were in favour of a gradual reform, and
wished to separate political from religious questions. They were also
called Pragers, because they were strongest in the capital and in the
University of Prague. In 1420 their demands were formulated in the ‘four
articles of Prague,’ which became the avowed creed of the party. These
were: (1) complete liberty of preaching; (2) the communion in both kinds
for all Christians; (3) the exclusion of priests from temporal affairs
and the holding of property; (4) the subjection of clergy to secular
penalties for crimes and misdemeanours. But side by side with the
Calixtines was a radical and democratic party, known as the Taborites.
Like the Lollards in England, they mixed up social and religious
questions, and advocated republican and even communistic theories.
The death of Wenzel in 1419 added a new element of bitterness to the
quarrel between the Hussites and the [Sidenote: Crusades against the
Hussites.] champions of orthodoxy. The obvious heir to the crown was
Sigismund, the only surviving male of the Luxemburg house. But Sigismund
was regarded as peculiarly responsible for Hus’s death, and as the
representative of all that was foreign and anti-Bohemian. It was
inevitable that his claim should be resisted, or only accepted on very
stringent conditions. At the moment Sigismund was engaged in a Turkish
war, and left the government in the hands of Wenzel’s widow. But as soon
as possible he patched up a truce with the Turks, and prepared to take
possession of his new kingdom. Frederick of Brandenburg urged him to
adopt a conciliatory policy, to play off one party against the other,
and to gain over the moderates by a few concessions in religious
matters. But Sigismund was eager to secure the support of the Pope, who
was resolutely opposed to any tampering with heresy; and most of his
German advisers urged that any concessions to his subjects would make
them haughty and disobedient in the future. The counsel of Frederick of
Brandenburg was rejected, and in March 1420 Martin V. published a
crusade against the Hussites. A German army was to be raised to
prosecute the religious war. No decision could have been more
disastrous. Party divisions in Bohemia were at once reconciled, and all
classes joined in maintaining a national resistance against a common
foe. And this resistance [Sidenote: Bohemian victories, 1420-22.] was
completely successful. Ziska proved to be a general of the first rank.
Not only did he give to his troops the cohesion and discipline of a
standing army, but he introduced innovations which mark an epoch in the
history of mediæval warfare. Especially prominent is the excellence of
his artillery, and the use which he made of his baggage-waggons. These
were formed into a sort of movable fortress, equally formidable both for
defence and aggression. The German armies opposed to him were the feudal
levies, collected from various states, bound together by no common
interests or enthusiasms, and recognising no common discipline or
authority. In three successive campaigns—1420, 1421, and 1422—the
Germans were routed and driven from Bohemia, until at last the mere
rumour of Ziska’s approach was sufficient to drive his enemies into
disorderly and panic-stricken flight. A contemporary says that the
Germans were inspired with such a loathing for heretics that they could
not bring themselves to strike them, or even to look them in the face.
After the failure of the third crusade in 1422, Bohemia was left to
herself for five years. Nicolas of Husinec had died in 1421, Ziska was
carried off by the plague in 1424, and the leadership of the militant
party passed to a general of hardly less ability, Prokop. With the
removal of external danger, the bond which had held parties together was
broken, the old divisions and quarrels reappeared, and the country was a
prey to the horrors of civil war. An attempt was made to identify the
common interests of the Slav race in opposition to Germany by offering
the crown to [Sidenote: Bohemia and Poland.] Ladislas of Poland. But
Ladislas was afraid of compromising his position by an alliance with
heretics, and though his nephew Korybut was for a time sent into
Bohemia, the opportunity of forming a powerful Slav monarchy on the
frontier of Germany was allowed to slip.
Meanwhile the humiliation of successive and crushing defeats had made a
profound impression in Germany. The battle of Brescia (_v._ p. 196) had
already shown the weakness of German arms; but the failure to crush the
Hussites proved that the military and political systems of Germany were
equally [Sidenote: Attempted reforms in Germany.] rotten. The more
patriotic of the princes, like Frederick of Brandenburg, were driven to
consider the necessity of some drastic reform. The restoration of
monarchical authority was the most obvious remedy for disorder, but the
general distrust of Sigismund put that out of the question. The old
alliance of the Hohenzollerns with the Luxemburg kings had now come to
an end. In 1422 Albert III., the last of the Ascanian electors of
Saxony, died, leaving no obvious heir. His only daughter was married to
the eldest son of the Elector of Brandenburg. A few years earlier
Sigismund would have welcomed the opportunity of increasing the
territorial and political influence of his chief supporter in Germany.
But things had changed since the Council of Constance, the Hohenzollern
claims were disregarded, and the vacant electorate was conferred by
Sigismund upon Frederick of Meissen, the founder of the Wettin line in
Saxony, which rules there in the present day. This marks the final
rupture between Sigismund and the Elector of Brandenburg; and in
attempting to reform the constitution of Germany the latter found
himself in opposition to his former patron. In 1422 it had been proposed
at a diet at Nürnberg to raise a mercenary army in place of the feudal
troops, and to defray the expense by levying a general imperial tax of
one per cent., ‘the hundredth penny,’ as it was called. But this project
was foiled by the opposition of the towns, who feared that they would
have to pay the money while the princes would pocket it. In 1424 the
electors formed a close league among themselves, and practically assumed
to act as if they were the joint heads of a federation. Sigismund was
furious at this open disregard of his authority, and prepared to go to
war against Frederick of Brandenburg and his associates. Hostilities had
actually broken out, when the news arrived that the Hussites, who had
hitherto been content with standing on the defensive, were invading the
neighbouring German provinces. The Pope was roused by this to make new
efforts for the success of a crusade, and he [Sidenote: The fourth
crusade, 1427.] appointed Cardinal Beaufort, the uncle of Henry VI. of
England, to act as papal legate. At the same time another attempt was
made to strengthen the military organisation of Germany. At a diet at
Frankfort (April 1427) the old mode of levying troops was abandoned, and
it was agreed that one out of every twenty adult males should be chosen
by lot. In this way it was hoped to eradicate the provincial jealousies,
which had hitherto been a fatal source of discord. Frederick of
Brandenburg was to act as commander-in-chief. But the financial
difficulty was still in the way. None of the proposed taxes could be
carried, and at last they had to fall back upon the tenths granted by
the Pope and a poll-tax on the Jews. The army collected was the largest
that had yet been employed in the war; but the result was all the more
ignominious. On the news that Prokop and his dreaded Taborites were at
hand, the crusaders fled in headlong confusion. On the frontier they
were met by Cardinal Beaufort, who implored them to return, and in his
rage tore the imperial standard to pieces, and trampled it underfoot.
But it was all in vain, and the legate was swept away with the
panic-stricken mob.
This was the most ignominious reverse yet experienced, and under the
impression which it produced a new diet at [Sidenote: Reforms of 1427.]
Frankfort hastened to adopt the most far-reaching reforms. A regular
income-tax was imposed, and a general poll-tax graduated according to
rank. The revenue thus derived was to be collected by local delegates,
and paid to the central power. But this central power was not the German
monarchy. The two commanders-in-chief, Cardinal Beaufort and Frederick
of Brandenburg, were to be aided by a council of nine, consisting of one
nominee of each of the six electors, and three representatives of the
imperial towns. This body was authorised to raise fresh troops, or to
levy additional taxes. Such an arrangement amounted to a practical
deposition of Sigismund, whose authority was transferred to this new
federal council. But the reform was little more than a paper scheme. The
forces of disunion were too strong to be readily overcome. Much of the
money remained unpaid, and in consequence the troops could neither be
raised nor equipped. Frederick of Brandenburg was forced to fall back
upon the policy of negotiation which he had always favoured. He saw
clearly that every invasion of Bohemia strengthened the extreme party,
and that the only prospect of settlement lay in gaining over the
moderates to the German side. But the negotiations were foiled by the
irresolution of Sigismund, the discord among the German princes, and the
obstinacy of the Pope. Cardinal Beaufort was ordered to lead a new
crusade in 1429, but he found it necessary to disarm domestic opponents
by sending the troops he had raised to serve in France. Martin V. was
furious but impotent. In 1430 he appointed a new legate, Cardinal
Cesarini, in [Sidenote: Fifth crusade, 1431.] place of Beaufort, and in
1431 a German army was at last collected on the principles laid down in
1427. In August it crossed the frontier, and encamped under the walls of
Tauss. But on the news of Prokop’s approach, the old panic set in, and
the troops fled in confusion. With the so-called battle of Tauss the
fifth crusade, the last effort to crush the Hussite by force of arms,
came to an end. The war had lasted twelve years, and had given
convincing proofs of the evils of provincial disunion, but it had come
two centuries too late to inspire the Germans with a sense of national
duties and interests. From this time the only hope of restoring peace in
eastern Europe lay in the proceedings of the General Council, which had
already been summoned to meet at Basel.
One of the most important decrees of the Council of Constance had
provided for the sequence of future councils; and [Sidenote: Summons of
the Council of Basel, 1431.] though Martin V. looked upon the
arrangement with profound mistrust, he dared not wholly disregard it.
The first of these assemblies met in 1423, first at Pavia and then at
Siena. It was attended only by Italian prelates, who were easily
manageable, and it was dissolved without passing any important
enactments except that its successor was to meet in 1431 at Basel. As
the time approached Martin began to be filled with dread of another
Council beyond the Alps. But the condition of Europe was too disturbed,
and the danger too great of allowing Bohemian heresy to spread, for him
to run the risk of alienating Germany by changing the place of meeting.
On February 1 he ordered the Council to meet on March 4, and appointed
Cardinal Cesarini to preside as his representative. On February 20
Martin V. died, leaving his successor Eugenius IV. to face the dangers
and difficulties which he foresaw.
Very few prelates appeared in Basel at the appointed date; but the
defeat of the Germans at Tauss suddenly gave great importance to the
Council, as offering the only prospect of the conclusion of peace. In
September Cesarini arrived from Bohemia, and from this time numbers
rapidly increased. The first matter for consideration [Sidenote:
Procedure of the Council.] was the method of procedure. It was decided
to abandon the division into nations, which had been tried at Constance,
on the ground that national jealousy weakened the unity of the Council.
Instead, the Council was to be divided into four deputations, composed
of representatives from each nation. Each deputation was to consider a
separate subject: (1) the restoration of peace; (2) matters of doctrine
and faith; (3) the reform of the Church; (4) the general business of the
Council. When a matter had been discussed in a deputation, it was to be
brought before the whole Council, and votes were to be taken by
deputations. If they were equally divided, the deputations were to be
re-formed, and the question debated afresh. A committee of twelve was
formed to arrange the division into deputations, and to decide on the
right of any individual to take part in the Council. From the first this
committee took a very broad view in this matter, and the result was that
the Council soon began to assume a democratic character. At Constance
the great prelates and university dignitaries had been the dominant
force: at Basel power tended to fall into the hands of the mass of the
clergy.
The most pressing business of the Council was to negotiate with the
victorious Hussites, and under the influence of Cesarini it was decided
to invite the Bohemians to send delegates to Basel. This gave the
greatest umbrage in Rome, where the dangers from Bohemia were less
keenly felt, and the prejudice against any dealings [Sidenote: Quarrel
with Eugenius IV.] with excommunicated heretics was strongest. Eugenius
IV., who was much less prudent and statesmanlike than his predecessor,
determined to check such dangerous proceedings at the outset. On
December 18, 1431, he issued a bull dissolving the Council, and
summoning another to meet in eighteen months at Bologna. The bull
dropped like a bomb-shell in the peaceful deliberations of Basel, where
no thought of the possible displeasure of the Pope had been entertained.
But after the first feeling of dismay, it was resolved to resist.
Cesarini was profoundly convinced that the dissolution of the Council
would result in the complete alienation of Germany and the triumph of
the Hussite heresy, and he wrote an earnest letter to explain his views.
Sigismund and all the princes whose interests demanded peace were
inclined to support the Council, which was thus emboldened to make a
firm stand against the Pope. In February 1432 it was decided that a
General Council could not be dissolved without its own consent; and in
April the Pope and cardinals were ordered to present themselves at Basel
within three months. A new schism seemed likely to break out, not as
before between rival heads of the Church, but between the Church itself
and its head. The contest was between parliamentary and despotic
authority, and it was as difficult in the Church as in the State to
reconcile their rival pretensions.
In the end the Pope was forced to give way, partly by the pressure of
secular interests, and partly by the difficulties in which he was
involved in Italy. In 1432 Sigismund came to Rome to receive the
imperial crown from the Pope, and [Sidenote: Submission of the Pope.]
refused to abandon the cause of the Council, which he hoped might secure
his tardy recognition in Bohemia. In 1433 the partiality of Eugenius for
his native city of Venice involved him in a quarrel with Filippo Maria
Visconti. The mercenary troops of Milan, aided by the Colonnas, whom
Eugenius sought to abase from the position Martin V. had given them,
laid siege to Rome, and the Pope could only save himself from
imprisonment by an ignominious flight to Florence. In these
circumstances he could hardly hope for a victory over the recalcitrant
Council, and in December 1433 he abandoned the unequal contest. He
declared the Council of Basel to be a lawful œcumenical council, and
confirmed its decrees.
The papal recognition came in time to give increased importance and
authority to the Council’s negotiations with [Sidenote: The Compacts
with Bohemia.] the Bohemians, which had been carried on without
interruption during the quarrel with Eugenius. Bohemian deputies,
including Prokop himself—as redoubtable a theologian as he was a
general—had been admitted to Basel at the end of 1432, and had carried
on for three months a disputation with the speakers of the Council. The
basis of discussion was supplied by the four articles of Prague, and,
thanks to the conciliatory temper of Cesarini, the controversy had
rarely gone beyond the decencies of orderly debate. No definite
agreement was arrived at at Basel, but it was agreed that delegates from
the Council should in their turn proceed to negotiate with the diet at
Prague. There, after infinite labour, a rudimentary compromise was
arranged in what are called the _Compactata_. On the great question of
the cup the Council had to give way, and the Bohemians and Moravians
were to be allowed to receive the communion in both kinds. Liberty of
preaching was nominally conceded, but it was added that priests must be
ordained by their ecclesiastical superiors, and that the authority of
bishops must be obeyed. Clergy were to be punished for crimes ‘according
to the law of God and the ordinances of the fathers.’ On the question of
clerical property the Council gained the day. The right of the Church to
possess and administer heritable property was fully recognised, and it
was declared sacrilege for a layman to interfere with it.
The _Compactata_ were very far from being an authoritative treaty, but
their importance lies in the fact that they secured [Sidenote: Civil war
in Bohemia.] the approval of the nobles and moderate party in Bohemia,
who had long desired the restoration of peace and order. The Taborites
and the army, on the other hand, were resolute in condemning the
proposed terms, and the quarrel developed into open war. At Lipan, in
April [Sidenote: Battle of Lipan, 1434.] 1434, the Taborites found
themselves confronted by men who had learned tactics in the same school
as themselves. They were enticed from their waggon-fortress by a feigned
flight, while a troop of cavalry cut off their retreat. Prokop himself
was slain, and the army, which had been so long the terror of Europe,
was almost wholly cut to pieces. With the downfall of the extreme party
the chief difficulty in the way of the restoration of the monarchy was
removed. But the nobles were not prepared for an unconditional
submission to Sigismund. They demanded, among other things, a complete
amnesty and the exclusion [Sidenote: Sigismund acknowledged in Bohemia.]
from office of all who refused to receive the communion in both kinds.
Sigismund found it necessary to at any rate feign compliance, and in
August 1436 he made his formal entry into Prague. As a European question
the Hussite movement may be regarded as having come to an end. Not that
Bohemia was really pacified, or that the doctrines of Hus had been
abandoned, but all danger of any general adoption of these doctrines in
central Europe had disappeared. As long as the Hussites were supported
by the forces of national enthusiasm they had been irresistible: their
defeat was due to their own dissensions.
In 1434 the Council of Basel was at the height of its power and
reputation. Eugenius IV. had been forced to recognise its authority. Its
negotiations with the Bohemians had not [Sidenote: Reforming activity of
the Council.] indeed produced a definite treaty, but they had resulted
in dividing the moderate from the extreme party, and the defeat of the
latter had brought a peaceful settlement within measurable distance.
Encouraged by these successes, the Council undertook with energy the
task of reforming the Church. A series of decrees show how strong was
the dislike of the despotic rule of the Papacy. Papal reservations, by
which the right of patrons to appoint to benefices were evaded, was
declared illegal. The establishment of diocesan and provincial synods
was recommended. Appeals from the decision of a bishop to Rome were
forbidden. But these measures were surpassed in boldness by an edict of
June 1435, which forbade the payment of annates, or the first year’s
revenue of a bishopric or benefice. This threatened to deprive the Pope
of his chief source of revenue, and provoked a violent outcry from the
cardinals and officials of the Curia. But Eugenius IV., still an exile
from Rome, did not feel strong enough to resist. He accepted the decree,
only asking that some compensation in the way of national contributions
should be given him. This pusillanimity encouraged the Council to
further attacks on the papal power. The unrestricted right of the
chapters to elect bishops was confirmed: all papal commendations were
done away with: appeals from a General Council to the Pope were declared
to be heretical.
The extreme measures of the Council were fatal to its unity. It was felt
that many of the decrees were inspired by French and German antipathy to
Italian preponderance in the Church. At the same time the numerical
[Sidenote: Divisions in the Council.] majority of the lower clergy was
regarded with growing mistrust by the bishops and other dignitaries.
Reforms might begin with the Papacy, but were not likely to stop there.
Cesarini and other moderate men, who had supported the Council as long
as the Bohemian negotiations were at a critical stage, were now inclined
to rally to the cause of the Pope. This growing papal party found an
active and unscrupulous leader in the Bishop of Taranto, whose aim was
to bring about an irreconcilable quarrel between the Pope and the
Council. On the other side, the reforming and anti-Italian party was
headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Arles, a prelate of unquestioned
piety and learning, but a resolute antagonist of the Papacy and perhaps
a personal enemy of Eugenius IV. On the same side was a man destined to
play an important part in the history of the Council and of Christendom,
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini. He was a native of Siena who had come to
Basel in the suite of the Bishop of Fermo, and had since acted as
secretary to various prelates. He had made a name for himself by his
oratorical powers, the purity of his Latin style, and his diplomatic
ability. He had attached himself to the reforming party, but no one
suspected him of having any firm convictions, and those who knew his
easy and pleasure-loving nature can have had little expectation that he
would one day rise to the headship of the Church. Between the two
extreme parties at the Council was a moderate section, headed by a
Spaniard, John of Segovia, but it was neither numerous nor important.
The quarrel within the Council and the growing hostility between the
Council and the Pope were both brought to a [Sidenote: Negotiations with
the Greeks.] head by the negotiations with the Greeks. The eastern
Emperor, John VI., though not actually at war with the Ottoman Turks,
felt that they were closing round him on every side, and that an attack
on Constantinople was before long inevitable. In his despair he appealed
for the assistance of western Europe, and was prepared to purchase it by
sacrificing the independence of the Greek Church. The idea of uniting
the Eastern and Western Churches had long been cherished by the Popes,
and Eugenius IV. was the more eager to take the matter up as it offered
the prospect of a triumph over the hated Council of Basel. But the
Greeks were fully aware of the divisions in the Western Church, and sent
envoys to the Council as well as to the Pope. Hence arose an eager
competition as to which should gain control of the negotiations. The
Council offered to send a fleet to bring the Greek prelates to the
coast, and to pay all the expenses of their stay at Basel. To raise the
money necessary for the fulfilment of these promises, the Council
usurped a papal prerogative and issued indulgences to those who would
contribute to the union of the Churches. Eugenius, on his side, issued a
memorial to the princes of Europe, in which he enumerated the misdeeds
of the Council, and promised to undertake the reform of the Church with
the aid of another Council, which for the sake of the Greeks would be
held in some Italian city.
Meanwhile the Greek question had provoked violent disputes in Basel. The
papal legates proposed that for the convenience of the Greeks they
should adjourn either to Florence or to Udine in the territories of
Venice. The moderate party suggested Pavia, [Sidenote: Open quarrel
between Pope and Council.] as being less dependent upon the Pope, and
this received the support of Æneas Sylvius, who was beginning to veer
round to the papal side. But the extreme party would not hear of either
proposal. The Archbishop of Arles moved that the Council should remain
at Basel or, if the Greeks preferred it, should adjourn to Avignon. The
debates were marked by the most unseemly behaviour, and it was with
difficulty that the reverend fathers could be restrained from laying
violent hands upon each other. The motion of the anti-papal party was
carried by more than three-fifths of the Council; but the next morning
it was discovered that this had been abstracted, and that the decree of
the papal minority, duly signed and sealed, had been put in its place.
This audacious piece of trickery was attributed to the Archbishop of
Taranto, and so great was the indignation against him that he found it
advisable to flee to Italy, where he was rewarded by Eugenius with the
cardinal’s hat. And the anger of the majority was not diminished when
they learned that the Greeks had been persuaded to accept the papal
invitation to attend a Council in Italy. The Council was driven to the
most extreme measures to try and discredit the Papacy. In July 1437 the
Pope and cardinals were summoned to appear at Basel within sixty days to
answer the charges brought against them. On October 1 Eugenius was
pronounced contumacious for not having obeyed the summons. The Pope, on
his side, had issued a bull (September 18) dissolving the Council at
Basel, and summoning an assembly to meet at Ferrara in order to effect
the union of the Churches. There was no longer any room in Basel for
partisans of the Papacy, and by the beginning of 1438 Cesarini and all
who were frightened by the extreme measures of the Council had crossed
the Alps.
Eugenius presided at the Council which met at Ferrara in 1438 and on the
outbreak of the plague was transferred to [Sidenote: Council of Ferrara
or Florence, 1438-9.] Florence. Months were spent in futile debates on
the differences between the two Churches. By far the most prominent
subject of discussion was the great _filioque_ controversy. The Latin
Church had added these words to the original wording of the creed as
fixed at the Council of Nicæa, while the Greek Church had never adopted
them. The other differences which gave rise to debate were the use of
leavened or unleavened bread in the sacrament, the doctrine of
purgatory, and the papal supremacy. The Greek Church, as the petitioning
body, was ultimately forced to accept, without being convinced, the
Roman views on all four questions. A decree for the union of the two
Churches was drawn up, and Eugenius thought he was celebrating the
crowning triumph of the Papacy (July 6, 1439). But, as far as actual
results went, the triumph was premature. The Greeks at home refused to
accept the decision of their representatives, and clamoured that they
had been betrayed. Nor did John VI. gain any aid to make up for the
unpopularity he had incurred. Western Europe was fatally divided against
itself, and paid little heed to the safety of Constantinople. The union
of the Greek and Latin Churches remained a mere document.
The quarrel between the Pope and the Council of Basel had become
irreconcilable when the latter was deserted by all the adherents of
Eugenius, and when Cesarini was succeeded [Sidenote: Attitude of France
and Germany.] as president by the Archbishop of Arles. The result of the
quarrel could only be decided by the adhesion of the secular states to
one side or the other. The two states to which the Council chiefly
looked for support were Germany and France, the countries from which
most of the remaining members were drawn. But these two states, instead
of warmly espousing the cause of the Council, seemed rather inclined to
take advantage of the schism to establish their own ecclesiastical
independence. In 1438 a synod of French clergy accepted the [Sidenote:
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 1438.] famous Pragmatic Sanction of
Bourges, the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church. This
measure adopted, in the special interests of France, most of the decrees
against the papal power which had been carried in the Council as
applying to the whole Church. France was beginning to recover from the
prolonged wars with Burgundy and England, and the Pragmatic Sanction
offered the supreme advantage of checking the drain of French wealth to
fill the coffers of the Pope. In Germany Sigismund had died in 1437, and
the electors and leading princes began by adopting a policy of strict
neutrality between the Council and the Papacy. But the policy adopted by
France offered temptations both to lay and clerical princes, and a diet
at Mainz drew up what was practically the German equivalent of the
Pragmatic Sanction [Sidenote: Pragmatic Sanction of Mainz, 1439.] of
Bourges. Annates were to be abolished, papal reservations and provisions
forbidden, provincial and diocesan synods organised. The conception of
national churches, which had been encouraged by Martin V.’s concordats
at Constance, seemed in 1439 to be strong enough to rend the Church in
pieces.
The loss of temporal support and the apparent success of the rival
assembly in Italy did not soothe the temper of the councillors at Basel.
In spite of the vigorous opposition of the moderate party, they
proceeded to accuse Eugenius IV. of heresy and schism, and by a decree
of June 25, 1439, he [Sidenote: Deposition of Eugenius IV., 1439.] was
formally deposed. It was now determined to proceed to a new election. As
the Archbishop of Arles was the only cardinal at Basel, it was decided
that he should be aided by thirty-two delegates from the Council. The
task of election was a difficult one, as the poverty of the Council made
it necessary to choose a Pope who could afford to defray his own
expenses. At the fifth scrutiny it was found that twenty-six votes had
been given for the Duke of Savoy, who was declared Pope, with the name
[Sidenote: Election of Felix V.] of Felix V. From the first he
disappointed the hopes of his electors. Although he had been living in
retirement since the death of his wife and had amassed a considerable
treasure, he had no intention of maintaining himself and the Council
from his private funds. He demanded that he should receive a revenue as
Pope, and the Council was forced to go back on its own decrees and to
grant him a fifth of ecclesiastical revenues for a year. This measure
was certain to alienate all who had supported the Council in the hope of
diminishing clerical taxes, and as a matter of fact the tax was only
paid within the territories of Savoy. From all points of view the
election was a very disadvantageous step. It disgusted those who had
hoped for a substantial [Sidenote: Declining prestige of the Council.]
measure of reform from the Council of Basel. As long as the dispute was
between a General Council and the Pope, there were certain principles at
stake which might induce men to give energetic support to one side or
the other. But by its last act the Council had merely revived a personal
schism, of which Europe was already profoundly weary. The Council of
Basel continued to exist for nine years after the election of Felix V.,
but every year its numbers and its influence steadily declined. Even the
Antipope quarrelled with the assembly to which he owed his appointment.
In 1444 Felix quitted Basel and took up his residence at Lausanne.
The ultimate victory of Eugenius IV. was assured by the mistakes of his
opponents. It only remained for him to [Sidenote: Triumph of Eugenius
IV.] complete his triumph by securing the support of the temporal powers
of Europe. While he resided in Florence his legates succeeded in
restoring the papal supremacy in Rome, and in 1443 he was able once more
to return to his capital city. He was careful to avoid the mistakes in
Italian politics which had cost him so dear in 1433. Even his
arch-opponent, Filippo Maria Visconti, was gained over to his side. The
recognition of France was purchased by the countenance which the Pope
gave to the Angevin cause in Naples. But when the Neapolitan war ended
in the victory of Alfonso of Aragon, Eugenius adroitly changed sides
without forfeiting the French allegiance. He had thus put an end to all
serious opposition in Italy. England and the Spanish kingdoms took
little interest in the schism, and had no motive for supporting Felix V.
There remained Germany, which had openly declared for a policy of
neutrality. Until the German king and princes could be gained over, the
revival of papal authority was incomplete. The task of effecting the
reconciliation of Germany was undertaken and accomplished by one man,
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini.
The kingship of the Romans was transferred on the death of Sigismund to
his son-in-law, Albert of Austria. But Albert died within two years of
his elevation, and in 1440 the choice of the electors fell upon another
Hapsburg, Frederick _III._, Duke of Styria and Carinthia, and guardian
in Austria of Albert’s infant son, Ladislas Postumus. As soon as
Frederick had settled family affairs in the east, he came to Germany in
1442 [Sidenote: Reconciliation of Germany to the Roman Pope.] to receive
the crown at Aachen and to consider the question of the schism. Envoys
from Basel and from Eugenius IV. had already appeared before the German
diet, but their exhaustive arguments had not led to any decision, and
the neutrality was still observed. In 1442 Frederick III. visited Basel,
and there took into his service Æneas Sylvius. The latter was convinced
that the cause of Council and Antipope was hopeless, and determined to
win his own pardon and advancement by rendering some conspicuous service
to Eugenius IV. His diplomacy was as successful as it was unscrupulous.
By 1445 he had succeeded in arranging terms between his master and the
Pope. Frederick undertook to restore Germany to its obedience to Rome;
and Eugenius in return promised to give him the imperial crown, to allow
him the nomination to certain bishoprics and benefices, and to grant him
a substantial bribe from the ecclesiastical revenues. It was a
disgraceful treaty, and in spite of the secrecy with which it was
negotiated, it became known that some such agreement was being made. The
German princes were indignant at what they considered a betrayal, and
were resolute to vindicate their own independence of their elected king.
The electors of Trier and Köln, together with a number of electoral
princes, determined, as a protest against Frederick’s conduct, to adhere
to Felix V. Thus the policy of neutrality was abandoned, and Germany was
split into parties on the question of the schism. To make matters worse,
Eugenius IV., emboldened by his treaty with the King of the Romans,
issued a bull in February 1446 declaring the Archbishops of Köln and
Trier to be deprived of their sees as heretics and traitors. This rash
act seemed to make reconciliation impossible. But Æneas Sylvius was
equal to the occasion. The electors issued the most extreme demands:
that the Pope should withdraw his bull against the two archbishops, that
he should confirm the Pragmatic Sanction of 1439, acknowledge the
supremacy of General Councils, and summon a new council to meet in
Germany in 1447. Æneas Sylvius journeyed to Rome, where he persuaded
Eugenius to restore the two archbishops, and to return a moderate answer
to the electoral demands. Then he proceeded to Germany as papal envoy,
bribed the Archbishop of Mainz to desert the electoral league, and did
not hesitate to alter the wording of the papal answer in order to
conciliate German pride. By these means he avoided an open rupture, and
induced the diet at Frankfort to agree to terms, in spite of the
protests of the Archbishops of Köln and Trier. Then Æneas Sylvius
hurried back to Rome, with envoys from the diet, in order to explain and
justify his conduct to the Pope. He found Eugenius IV. on his death-bed,
and it was necessary to hasten matters in order to avoid the
complications that might arise with a new election. A provisional
concordat was patched up. A new council was to meet in some German town,
but only if the German princes were agreed. The supremacy of a council
was recognised, but in the most general terms, so as to avoid any
reference to the assembly at Basel. The Pragmatic Sanction and the
suspension of annates were temporarily confirmed, until some final
arrangement could be agreed upon. These terms were accepted by Eugenius
on February 23, 1447, and four days later he died. His successor was the
famous scholar and collector, Thomas of Sarzana, who took the name of
Nicolas V. He was wise enough to follow the recent policy of his
predecessor in German affairs. Æneas Sylvius returned to Germany to
complete his work. The malcontent princes were gained over by separate
negotiations. When the obstinate Archbishop of Trier was induced to
acknowledge Nicolas V., opposition in Germany was at an end. The final
concordat was arranged in 1448, and was based upon the provisional terms
of the previous year. The clauses about the Council were accepted as
they stood, but on the other points the Pope gained substantial
advantages. Annates were restored, and the restrictions which had been
placed upon papal patronage by the Pragmatic Sanction were for the most
part repealed.
It only remained to get rid of the moribund Council of Basel. A few
bishops from Savoy and some clergy of humble [Sidenote: End of the
Council of Basel, 1449.] rank were the only members left. Frederick III.
sent an order for the dissolution of the Council to the civic
magistrates. The exiled members proceeded to Lausanne, and there, by the
mediation of France, made terms with the Papacy. Felix V., who had never
received the homage of a temporal sovereign, resigned the papal title in
exchange for the cardinal’s hat. The Archbishop of Arles returned to his
see, where he was universally beloved. He died in 1450, and in the next
century was canonised by Clement VII.
With the Council of Basel ended the conciliar movement for reform, which
had resulted from the scandal of the great [Sidenote: Failure of the
Conciliar Movement.] schism. It had failed, not from any lack of honest
purpose, or from the blunders of its adherents, but because it was out
of harmony with the conditions of the age. A few centuries earlier it
might have been possible to reform the Church, and at the same time to
retain its unity. But by the fifteenth century such a scheme was too
late. Political division had advanced so far as to bring with it
ecclesiastical divisions. The sentiment that was recognised in the
concordats of Martin V. and asserted in the Pragmatic Sanctions of
Bourges and Mainz, was stronger than the theory of the supremacy of a
general council over the Pope. The Reformation of the sixteenth century
was a series of national revolts against papal domination, and it owed
its success to its harmony with political conditions and interests.
The failure of the conciliar movement brought with it a revival of papal
authority. The reaction which had commenced under Martin V. seemed to be
complete under Nicolas V. The great jubilee which was held in Rome in
1450 was a fitting celebration of the papal triumph. But it proved to be
only a Pyrrhic victory. The Papacy learned neither wisdom nor toleration
from the trials through which it had passed. While continuing to trample
on the spirit of individual freedom, the Popes, in their greed for
temporal dominion, gave rise to scandals far more glaring from the moral
point of view than the senile bickerings of the schism. The Protestant
revolution more than avenged the defeat of the Councils of Constance and
Basel.
CHAPTER XII
MILAN AND VENICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, 1402-1494
Disruption of the duchy of Milan after the death of Gian Galeazzo
Visconti—Venice acquires Eastern Lombardy as far as the Adige—Wars
between Venice and Sigismund—Filippo Maria Visconti restores the
duchy of Milan—Wars between Venice and Milan—Venetian frontier
extended to the Adda—Death of Filippo Maria—Venice and Francesco
Sforza—Peace of Lodi—Deposition and death of Francesco
Foscari—Venice and the Turks—Treaty of Constantinople—War with
Ferrara—Acquisition of Cyprus—Decline of Venice—Francesco Sforza in
Milan—His relations with France—Galeazzo Maria Sforza—His
assassination—Regency of Bona of Savoy—Ludovico il Moro—His
relations with Naples—Calls in Charles VIII. of France.
The anarchy in the duchy of Milan, which followed the death of Gian
Galeazzo Visconti in 1402, illustrates at once [Sidenote: Disruption of
the duchy of Milan.] the ability of its founder and the difficulties
which he had succeeded in overcoming. He left his dominions to his two
legitimate sons, Gian Maria and Filippo Maria, who were to rule in Milan
and Pavia respectively under the guardianship of their mother. But the
widowed duchess, Caterina, proved wholly unable to wield the power which
her husband left in her hands. The _condottieri_, who had shown such
unwonted loyalty to Gian Galeazzo, seized the opportunity to carve out
principalities for themselves. In nearly every city of Lombardy the
lordship was seized by some adventurer, who sought to make himself
independent. In Milan itself the cruelties with which Caterina sought to
put down disorder provoked an insurrection. The duchess was imprisoned
and poisoned (1404), and Gian Maria was intrusted with the government
under the guidance of a council of citizens. But Gian Maria carried the
cruelty and debauchery of his predecessors to the verge of insanity. The
only use which he made of his power was to gratify his monstrous
passions by the torture of his fellow-creatures. At last some semblance
of order was restored by Facino Cane, one of the most eminent generals
in the service of Gian Galeazzo. On the death of his employer he had
made himself master of Alessandria, Tortona, and other western towns.
Later he had assumed the regency for Filippo Maria in Pavia, and he now
reduced Gian Maria to similar submission. This authority he held till
his death, when the Milanese nobles, rather than allow Gian Maria to
recover the government, assassinated that youthful monster in 1412.
These disorders in Lombardy naturally led to the loss of the southern
acquisitions of Gian Galeazzo. The hostility [Sidenote: Losses in
Romagna and Tuscany.] of Pope Boniface IX. had to be bought off by the
restoration of Bologna and Perugia to the papal states (1403). Siena
recovered its republican liberties in 1404, and Paolo Guinigi maintained
his rule in Lucca as an independent prince. Pisa, the most important of
the Milanese conquests, had been bequeathed by Gian Galeazzo to a
bastard son, Gabriele Maria. But Gabriele, finding himself unable to
face the double danger of Pisan rebellion and Florentine attack, became
the vassal of France in order to gain the aid of Marshal Boucicault, the
French governor in Genoa. Within a year, however, he had quarrelled with
his suzerain: the policy of France ceased to be hostile to Florence: and
so the strange spectacle was seen of Boucicault and Gabriele, in mutual
enmity, selling their sovereign rights to Florence, while the Pisans
repudiated the authority of both and reclaimed their old independence
(1405). The Florentine oligarchy was prompt to seize the opportunity
that had long been looked for, and a strict blockade forced Pisa to
surrender after an obstinate resistance of many months (October 9,
1406). By the reduction of the rival republic, Florence took the first
great stride towards the formation of the later grand duchy of Tuscany.
But the most notable result of the temporary decline of Milan was the
permanent establishment of Venetian dominion in Eastern Lombardy, an
event fraught with the most momentous consequences both for Venice
[Sidenote: Venice acquires Verona and Padua.] and for Italy. Francesco
Carrara, who had recovered Padua in 1390, and had been allowed to retain
it under tribute to Milan (see p. 180), was one of the first princes to
take advantage of Gian Galeazzo’s death to obtain both freedom and
aggrandisement. In alliance with the surviving members of the house of
della Scala he seized Verona, and then got rid of his allies in order to
keep his conquest to himself (1404). From Verona he advanced to the
siege of Vicenza, but the citizens offered the lordship to Venice, while
the duchess Caterina, beset with difficulties in Milan, also appealed
for aid to the maritime republic. This double invitation, together with
the traditional enmity to the Carrara family, overcame any reluctance on
the part of the Venetians. They agreed to aid the duchess on condition
that all Milanese territory to the east of the Adige should be ceded to
them. Caterina accepted the terms, hard as they were, and in June 1404
Venice declared war against the lord of Padua. Vicenza opened its gates
to the Venetians, and in the course of 1405 both Verona and Padua were
compelled to surrender to superior forces. Francesco Carrara was carried
off to die in a Venetian prison.
Venice had now recovered and enormously extended the territories she had
lost in the war of Chioggia. Not only [Sidenote: Venice at war with
Sigismund.] Treviso, Feltre, and Belluno, but Bassano, Verona, Vicenza,
and Padua acknowledged her sway. And before long she was in possession
of another province, Dalmatia, which she had gained from Hungary, and
lost again in the previous century. Pope Boniface IX., engaged in a
quarrel with Sigismund of Hungary, had stirred up Ladislas of Naples to
revive his father’s claim to the Hungarian crown (see pp. 154 and 191).
In 1402 Ladislas had landed at Zara in Dalmatia, and was crowned king by
the papal legate. But his early success was followed by reverses, and,
discouraged by the memory of his father’s fate, Ladislas returned to
Naples. But he was not unwilling to cause annoyance to his successful
rival, and in 1409 he sold his rights in Dalmatia to Venice. This led to
a prolonged war with Sigismund, who in 1411 was recognised as king of
the Romans, and desired to gain distinction and authority in Italy. In
1411 his troops occupied Feltre and Belluno, but they were defeated in
the open field by Carlo Malatesta in the service of Venice. In 1413 a
truce put an end to hostilities for a time, and Sigismund was enabled to
concentrate his attention on ecclesiastical questions and the council of
Constance. But the possession of Dalmatia was still a subject of
dispute, and war was renewed in 1418. Sigismund, however, was occupied
with the difficulties which the execution of Hus had excited in Bohemia,
and Venice met with little efficient opposition. By 1421 the province of
Friuli and almost the whole of the Dalmatian coast were subject to
Venetian rule.
Meanwhile important events had taken place in Milan. On the murder of
his elder brother, Filippo Maria Visconti [Sidenote: Filippo Maria
Visconti.] had emerged from the obscurity in which he had previously
lived, and showed himself not unfitted to fill his father’s place. With
even greater personal cowardice, which induced him to conceal himself
almost entirely from human vision, he combined the same subtle powers of
intrigue, and the same ability to discover and make use of military
talent in others. Only two defects of character prevented him from
achieving the same measure of success as had fallen to Gian Galeazzo. He
was less resolute in the pursuit of his ends, and momentary
discouragement led him at times to relinquish an object when it was
almost within his grasp. And his inveterate habits of suspicion involved
him not infrequently in serious danger by driving into opposition the
men who were capable of rendering him the most valuable services. It was
impossible to be loyal to a prince who distrusted a victorious general
even more than he dreaded to hear of a defeat.
The first act of Filippo Maria was to marry the widow of Facino Cane,
although she was twenty years older than himself. By this means he
acquired Alessandria, Tortona, Novara, and Vercelli, and also the
control of Facino’s numerous and disciplined [Sidenote: He restores the
duchy of Milan.] troops. With their aid he made himself master of Milan
and avenged his brother’s death. Once secure in his position, he did not
scruple to rid himself of his elderly benefactress, whose age rendered
her an unsuitable spouse. In the attack upon Milan he had noted the
courage and conduct of Francesco Carmagnola, who took his name from the
village near Turin where he had been born. He raised the Piedmontese
soldier to the command of his army, and employed him to reduce to
submission the cities which had formerly owned his father’s sway. One
after another the despots who had usurped authority since the death of
Gian Galeazzo were compelled to surrender, and by 1421 the duchy of
Milan extended from Piedmont in the west to the line of the Adige in the
east. Even Genoa, which had freed itself from French rule in 1411, was
forced after a prolonged struggle to acknowledge the suzerainty of
Filippo Maria.
Thus Venice, at the very moment of her successful expansion eastwards,
found herself confronted on her western border by a prince who could
advance weighty claims to the most valuable of her recently acquired
dominions. The republic was thus called upon to [Sidenote: Parties in
Venice.] solve one of the most serious problems of her whole history.
Hitherto power on the mainland had come to her in the course of events;
it had been the product of her obvious interest in protecting her trade
routes and the sources of her supply of food. There had not as yet been
any deliberate going out of her way to seek for territories. But her
most pressing interests were now secured, and the question at once arose
whether she could or would stop at the point which she had reached in
1421. Upon this question were formed the two great parties which divided
Venice during the remainder of the century. The Doge, Tommaso Mocenigo,
who held office from 1414 to 1423, urged the maintenance of the _status
quo_ as the only means of retaining that maritime supremacy which was
essential for the defence of the overwhelming interests of Venice in the
east. To enter into Italian politics as the avowed rival of Milan for
ascendency in Lombardy would inevitably result in handing over the
Levant to the Turks. And if Venice lost her commerce, she would find
territorial dominion, which she could only gain and keep by employing
hired foreigners in place of her own citizens, a very unsatisfactory
source either of wealth or of political greatness. On the other hand,
many of the younger nobles, headed by Francesco Foscari, laid stress
upon the undoubted interests of Venice on the mainland, and upon the
certainty that the duke of Milan would never abandon his claims to
Verona and Padua. They contended with vehemence that the western
frontier as it stood was hopelessly insecure, that a state must either
advance or lose ground, and that aggression is often the only means of
defence. But the policy of this party was really inspired less by these
arguments, sound as they were in some respects, than by the instinctive
greed for territory which had become the guiding motive of the great
Italian states.
The difference between the two parties was brought to a head in 1423 by
the appearance of successive embassies [Sidenote: Appeals from
Florence.] from Florence to demand aid against the duke of Milan.
Filippo Maria had resumed his father’s schemes of aggression in Tuscany
and the Romagna. Florence was forced into war to defend her
independence, and her troops suffered one defeat after another. Nothing
but the intervention of the great northern republic seemed likely to
arrest the duke’s progress, and the appeals to Venice became more and
more pressing. The first embassy in 1423 had been repulsed by the
influence of Mocenigo, but he had died later in the year, and his place
was filled by the election of his opponent, Foscari. Still, parties in
Venice were too evenly balanced to admit of a decisive intervention in
the war, and the Florentine envoys proceeded from prayers to threats. If
Venice would give no aid, Florence would seek her own safety by joining
with Milan. ‘When we refused to help Genoa, she made Visconti lord of
the city; if you refuse to help us, we will make him king of Italy.’ At
the critical moment the Florentine appeal was reinforced by the arrival
of Carmagnola, who had incurred the jealous suspicion of Filippo Maria,
and had been driven in disgrace from his service. His announcement that
the duke would never be satisfied till he had driven the Venetians from
Lombardy, and the prospect of utilising so distinguished a general
against his former employer, turned the scale in favour of Foscari and
his party. At the end of 1425 it was decided to join Florence in open
war against the duke of Milan.
The struggle opened with notable successes for Venice. Brescia was taken
in 1426, and in December Filippo Maria confirmed its cession by a formal
treaty. But the treaty was only a device to gain time and to collect
forces. In 1427 hostilities were renewed, [Sidenote: War between Venice
and Milan.] and three of the most famous _condottieri_ of the
day—Francesco Sforza, Niccolo Piccinino, and Carlo Malatesta—commanded
the forces of Milan. But Carmagnola gained a brilliant victory at Macalo
(October 11), and in 1428 Visconti again made peace by handing over
Bergamo in addition to Brescia. Thus in two campaigns the Venetian
frontier had been extended from the Adige to the Adda. But Filippo Maria
could hardly remain satisfied with an arrangement which brought his
enemies within striking distance of Milan itself. In 1431 the war was
renewed, and Carmagnola was induced by lavish payments and promises to
remain in the service of Venice. The republic had now to face the
difficulties and dangers of employing mercenary soldiers. From the first
the practice had been adopted of sending two native nobles to the camp
as _proveditori_. Nominally they were responsible for the commissariat,
but their real function was to keep a jealous watch on the conduct of
the general. Carmagnola had already incurred the suspicion of his
employers. Except in the battle of Macalo he had taken little personal
part in the war, and had shown himself more solicitous of his own
interests than of those of Venice. He had released his prisoners without
ransom, in accordance with the etiquette of his profession, and had
openly conducted an independent intercourse with the duke of Milan. It
seemed that he had no wish to go too far in crushing a prince whom he
had formerly served and might serve again. Still, as long as their arms
were successful, the Venetian oligarchy had kept their fears and
suspicion to themselves. But in 1431 came a series of reverses.
Francesco Sforza won a victory at Soncino, and the Venetian fleet on the
Po was destroyed through the failure of Carmagnola to come to its
support. Failure was taken as a proof of treachery, and the Council of
Ten determined to inflict an exemplary punishment.
They acted with characteristic duplicity and decision. Carmagnola was
invited to Venice to discuss the next campaign, and his distrust was
removed by a triumphal reception. But he was hurried from the palace
[Sidenote: Execution of Carmagnola.] to prison, and a secret trial
resulted in his condemnation and death (May 5, 1432). In the picturesque
history of the _condottieri_ of the fifteenth century the execution of
Carmagnola is one of the most famous episodes. He had done nothing that
was not in accordance with the traditions of his craft, but one state at
any rate ventured to give striking proof that she would not allow
independence to her hired defenders. It was a dangerous dilemma from
which Venice sought to extricate herself. A too eminent and successful
general might endanger her freedom, but it was difficult in the future
to induce the ablest men to serve a state which was ready to exact such
rigorous penalties.
The war continued for nine years after Carmagnola’s death. Florence was
allied with Venice, and thus the attention of Filippo Maria was engaged
in Tuscany as well as in Lombardy. This diversion was the salvation of
Venice, which was more than once on the verge of losing not only
Brescia, but also Verona. Fortunately for her, too, her rule was more
lenient than that of Milan, and her subjects were resolutely in favour
of their new against their former master. The struggle was complicated
by the action of Francesco Sforza, who throughout played his own game
and joined one side or the other as his private interest dictated. His
desire was to force Filippo Maria to give him the hand of his natural
daughter, Bianca, and to make this marriage the foundation of a
principality in Lombardy. He was at last successful in attaining his
end. The long siege of Brescia was raised by his intervention on behalf
of Venice, and a peace in 1441 secured to Venice the possession of
Brescia and Bergamo. In the same year Venice expelled the ruling house
of Polenta from Ravenna, and took possession of that city, a step which
brought the republic southwards towards the states of the Church and
prepared the way for a prolonged struggle with the papacy.
Filippo Maria had been compelled to give his daughter with the lordship
of Cremona and Pontremoli to Francesco Sforza, but he dreaded and
disliked his son-in-law and schemed to effect his ruin. Sforza, however,
showed himself as adroit an intriguer as the duke. He defeated Niccolo
Piccinino and his two sons, and induced Venice and Florence to renew
their war with Milan. At the head of the army of the republics he
reduced his father-in-law to such straits that he must concede all
demands. Just as he was prepared to desert his employers [Sidenote:
Death of Filippo Maria.] in order to earn the succession to Milan as his
reward, the news arrived of Filippo Maria’s death (August 13, 1447).
With Filippo Maria the male line of the Visconti came [Sidenote:
Succession in Milan.] to an end. There were three possible claimants
through females—Sforza through his wife, the duke of Orleans through his
mother Valentina Visconti, and Frederick of Styria through his
grandmother Virida Visconti. But none of these claims had any legal
validity, as the investiture by Wenzel had only recognised male
succession. The citizens of Milan, not unnaturally, deemed that
despotism was at an end and restored a republican government. These
events excited the keenest interest in Venice. For more than twenty
years the Venetians had been engaged in almost continuous war with
Milan, but since 1428 they had not gained a square yard of territory in
Lombardy. Foscari and his followers urged that advantage should be taken
of the confusion following Visconti’s death to establish Venetian
ascendency, and they carried the day. It was a fatal decision from the
point of view of the policy which they advocated. If the republic of
Milan had been allowed to establish itself, the result within a few
years would have been the alienation and revolt of the subject cities,
and in the troubled waters Venice could have fished with great advantage
to herself. But the hasty attack on the part of the Venetians forced the
newly formed republic to throw itself into the arms of the person who
was most dangerous both to Milanese independence and to Venetian
ambition. Francesco Sforza undertook to defend Milan against Venice, and
he showed equal promptness and ability. He destroyed the Venetian fleet
on the Po at Casalmaggiore and defeated their army with great loss at
Caravaggio. The Venetians, having made one false step, tried to redeem
it by doing still worse. They made a treaty with Sforza, by which he
[Sidenote: Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, 1450.] pledged himself to
hand over to them Crema and the Ghiara d’Adda on condition that they
would not oppose his designs. The wily general now turned his victorious
troops against his employers, who were wholly unprepared to cope with
such unexpected treachery. One city after another had to open its gates,
and in 1450 Milan surrendered and acknowledged its conqueror as duke.
Now the Venetians could realise the folly of their conduct. They had
found it hard enough to cope with Milan under the rule of the cowardly
Visconti, but they could have no chance of extending their rule in
Lombardy if the duchy were allowed to pass to the first soldier of the
age. They determined by a strenuous effort to overthrow Sforza before he
had securely established his authority. But they were unsuccessful in
the war which ensued, and the tragic news of the fall of Constantinople
compelled them to turn their attention from Italy to their imperilled
interests in the east. A peace was patched up with Milan at Lodi in
1454. Venice resigned her recent acquisitions, and her western frontier
was restored to the same limits as in 1428.
For half a century the history of Venice had been closely bound up with
that of Milan through their mutual rivalry for territorial expansion in
Lombardy. With the peace of Lodi this intimate connection ceased for
forty years. As long as the Sforza dynasty was secure in Milan, Venice
could not hope to do more than retain Brescia and Bergamo. And for a
time her interests in Lombardy were thrust entirely into the background
by the necessity of facing the absorbing problem of Turkish advance in
the east. The policy of Foscari, so gloriously attractive in the days of
Carmagnola’s early successes, had ended in disastrous failure. Men
forgot the annexation of Bergamo and Brescia, and remembered only that
Crema had been lost, and that while they were fighting for it
Constantinople had fallen. For some time the party hostile to the doge
had found a way of attacking him through the person of his son. Jacopo
Foscari had been condemned in 1445 for taking bribes and sentenced to
exile. Two years later the prayers of his father obtained leave for his
return. But in 1450 one of the judges [Sidenote: Deposition and death of
Foscari.] who had imposed the original sentence was murdered. Jacopo
Foscari was denounced to the Ten; and although there was no real
evidence against him, and torture failed to extract a confession, he was
again exiled. Conscious of his innocence, he made strenuous efforts to
escape, and was imprudent enough to correspond with the Turks and with
Francesco Sforza. On a charge of treason the exile was brought to
Venice, again subjected to terrible torture, and sent back to Candia,
where he died in 1457. These events shook the reason of the aged doge,
and his neglect of his official duties induced the Ten to demand his
abdication. Even the Venetians, trained by the constant fear of
denunciation to suppress their feelings, could not help murmuring as the
old man descended the steps of the palace. A few days later Foscari
died, listening, it is said, to the bells which announced the election
of his successor. He had served the state loyally, if mistakenly, for
thirty-four years, he had raised Venice to a lofty position among the
powers of Italy, and he met with the ingratitude which the instinct of
self-preservation impelled the Venetian oligarchy to show towards every
individual who exercised a commanding influence on the destinies of the
republic.
While these events were going on at home, Venice was keenly interested
in Eastern affairs. Now that Constantinople [Sidenote: Venice and the
Turks.] had fallen, it was no longer possible to pursue the old policy
of bolstering up the Eastern Empire as a buffer between the Turks and
Venetian possessions. Two alternative courses were open to the republic.
She might take the place of Constantinople and become the bulwark of
Christendom against the infidel. Or she might endeavour to secure the
continuance of Venetian commerce in the east by making an advantageous
treaty with the conquerors. The heroic policy was advocated by Foscari,
the more cautious and selfish policy by his opponents, and the declining
credit of the doge enabled them to carry the day. In April 1454 a treaty
was concluded with Mohammed II. On payment of a yearly tribute, the
Venetians were allowed to retain their ports and other possessions in
the east, and to continue their Levant trade in temporary security. A
district in Constantinople was assigned for the residence of Venetian
merchants under a Venetian bailiff. It was no small argument in favour
of this treaty that it enabled Venice to strike another blow at her old
rival Genoa. The Genoese had for some time aided the Turks in various
ways, and had received the promise of special trade privileges as their
reward. But the Sultan found it cheaper to buy off the hostility of a
possible foe than to pay the stipulated price for services already
rendered.
For a few years Venice profited by the treaty of 1454, and abstained
from giving aid to the struggling Christian populations, either of the
Balkan provinces or of Greece. But the Turkish conquests were too
extensive and rapid not to awaken serious misgivings. In spite of the
famous relief of Belgrad by Hunyadi, Servia was reduced, and Wallachia
and Bosnia were overrun without serious resistance. Only Albania, under
the heroic Scanderbeg, succeeded by desperate efforts in prolonging its
independence, and in extorting terms from the Sultan. It was more
alarming to the Venetians when the Turkish armies crossed the isthmus
into the Morea, and equipped a fleet for the conquest of Lesbos and the
other islands in the Ægean. The most strenuous opponents of war had to
admit the uselessness of a paper treaty to restrain a conqueror so
unscrupulous as Mohammed II. At this juncture, Pope Pius II. was making
strenuous efforts to rouse the princes of Western Europe to a crusade
against the Turks. Venice was convinced that the further maintenance of
peace was impossible; and if the pope could secure them allies in the
name of religion, their prospects of success would be improved. But
these hopes of assistance were doomed to disappointment, when, in 1464,
Pius proceeded to Ancona to welcome and bless the crusading host. The
Venetian fleet was the only efficient force which Christendom had
furnished in response to the demand of its ecclesiastical chief.
The war which Venice waged for sixteen years against overwhelming odds
is by no means the least heroic episode [Sidenote: Turkish war,
1463-79.] in the history of the republic. Occasionally, as when Niccolo
Canale failed to save Negropont in 1470, the Venetian commanders
hesitated to act with decision in the service of a state which allowed
little freedom to its subordinates, and was apt to punish failure as if
it were treason. But, on the whole, the war was waged with equal courage
and conduct. It could, however, have but one result. Mohammed II.
employed all the resources of Turkish diplomacy to prevent any coalition
of Italian powers, and Venice was not so popular that other states were
likely to deplore or to share her misfortunes. It is true that
Scanderbeg was induced to break his treaty with the Sultan, and to admit
Venetian garrisons into his fortresses of Kroja and Scutari. But
Scanderbeg died at the beginning of 1467, leaving the guardianship of
his son and his dominions to his ally. This proved to be a fatal
bequest. After the reduction of the Morea, a Turkish force entered
Albania and laid siege to Scutari. The fortress was heroically defended
by Antonio Loredano, Mohammed was engaged in Asia Minor, and the siege
had to be raised. But the triumph was only temporary. In 1478 Albania
was again invaded. Kroja was taken, and Scutari, though it repulsed all
attempts to storm the walls, was closely blockaded. Venice was worn out
with her prolonged and exhausting efforts, and in 1479 the peace of
Constantinople brought the war to a close. Venice gave up Scutari,
Kroja, Negropont, Lemnos, and her possessions in the Morea, but was
allowed to retain her Levant trade and her quarter in Constantinople on
payment of 150,000 ducats down and a yearly tribute of 10,000 ducats.
Two years later, the death of Mohammed II. and the accession of a
feebler sultan, freed the republic from immediate danger in the east.
The disasters of the Turkish war had a demoralising effect upon Venice.
In her eastern dominions the more ambitious and enterprising of the
Venetian nobles had found scope for an ability and an energy that at
home would be regarded with suspicion. These men had now to turn their
attention to Italian politics, and they urged the state to seek
compensation for losses in the Levant at the expense of its neighbours.
From this time the policy of Venice became far more openly grasping and
selfish than it had ever been before, and the enmities thus provoked
ultimately led to the league of Cambray. Aggression in Lombardy was
still blocked by the Sforza dynasty, and it was therefore necessary to
find some weaker power to attack. A quarrel with Ferrara about the
manufacture of salt gave the desired pretext, and Venice joined with the
turbulent pope Sixtus IV. in an alliance against Ercole [Sidenote: War
with Ferrara, 1482-84.] d’Este. Ferrara was powerless against such a
combination, and the Venetian forces seized Rovigo and the adjacent
territory. But an act of such unprovoked aggression excited the
misgivings of the other states; and Naples, Milan, and Florence formed a
league to maintain the balance of power against the attempts of Venice
and the papacy to disturb it. Alfonso of Calabria, who enjoyed an
unmerited reputation for military skill, advanced to the aid of Ferrara,
Sixtus deserted an ally who had obviously no regard for papal interests,
and Venice was compelled to conclude the peace of Bagnolo in 1484, by
which Rovigo was retained, but all other conquests were restored.
About this time Venice had the good fortune to make an acquisition in
the east, which was some set-off against her losses to the Turks. The
last king of Cyprus, James of Lusignan, had married a Venetian lady,
Catarina Cornaro. In order to exalt her to sufficient rank, the republic
of Venice had formally adopted her as a daughter of the state. The next
year, 1473, the king died, and Venice at once interfered as paternal
guardian [Sidenote: Venice acquires Cyprus.] of the widow and her
posthumous child. For some years Catarina ruled under Venetian
protection and control, but in 1488 she was half induced, half compelled
to abdicate, and the banner of St. Mark was hoisted in Famagusta.
Catarina Cornaro was allowed to retain the title of queen, and lived in
considerable magnificence at Asolo till the outbreak of war in 1508
drove her to seek a refuge in Venice, where she died in 1510.
But the insatiable greed of the Venetians for territory was by no means
appeased by the annexation of Cyprus, which [Sidenote: Venetian greed of
territory.] could not long be retained except under tribute to the
Turks. It was to Italy that the ambition of the republic was mainly
directed, and the Ferrarese war had taught her more than one lesson. If
her western boundary was to be extended, the Sforzas must be driven from
Milan; if territory was to be gained in the south, the triple league for
the maintenance of the balance of power must be broken up; and, above
all, the house of Aragon in Naples must be punished for its action in
1483, and rendered powerless for the future. How could these ends be
achieved? One solution of the problem offered itself in 1493, and that
was the intervention of a foreign state. A number of Neapolitan nobles,
driven into exile by the merciless rule of Ferrante and Alfonso, came to
Venice for advice as to how they might best overthrow the Aragonese
despots. The senate advised them to invite Charles VIII. of France to
claim Naples as representing the house of Anjou. The advice was taken,
and the invitation was acted upon in 1494. The motives of Venice are
perfectly obvious. A French invasion would weaken the house of Aragon;
it would dislocate the league of the great powers; and in the
disturbance which would follow, Venice, isolated and secure herself,
could sell her assistance for the price of ports in Apulia, which would
complete her ascendency in the Adriatic. Nor was this all. A French
prince—Louis of Orleans—was a claimant to the duchy of Milan. If the
French once entered Italy, this claim was sure to be advanced against
the Sforzas, and the dynasty, which had so long blocked any advance
towards Cremona or Milan, might be overthrown, or at any rate reduced to
comparative impotence. The reckoning was equally cold-blooded, selfish,
and astute. The immediate aims were achieved. After the first successes
of Charles VIII. Venice turned against France and received Otranto,
Brindisi, and other ports in Apulia, as a reward for helping to restore
the Aragonese line in Naples. The duke of Orleans, on becoming Louis
XII. of France, attacked Ludovico Sforza and purchased the alliance of
Venice by ceding Cremona and the Ghiara d’Adda. The fall of Cæsar Borgia
enabled Venice to annex a considerable part of the papal states, and
there was no Italian league to interfere. But Nemesis overtook
[Sidenote: Decline of Venice.] the republic a few years later, when
every state which had been at any time despoiled, combined to attack the
common enemy. The ruin of Venice, however, was not the work of the
league of Cambray, but of causes which she could not control. No
treaties with the Turks could keep the Levant trade as open as it had
been, and the people on the Atlantic seaboard set to work to find an
independent route to the east. In 1486 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the
Cape, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama continued the voyage to India. For three
centuries and a half the Mediterranean ceased to be the great highway of
commerce, and became merely a considerable inland sea. The marvellous
prosperity of Venice ceased with the conditions which had given rise to
it.
Until the invasion of Charles VIII. brought Venice and Milan once more
together, there had been little direct connection between the two states
since the treaty of Lodi gave leisure to Francesco Sforza to secure his
position [Sidenote: Francesco Sforza in Milan.] in his newly acquired
duchy. In this task he was as successful as he had been in the
unscrupulous methods by which he rose to power. From the first he
determined to sink the _condottiere_ in the prince. Peace, and not war,
became the primary object of his policy. With Cosimo de’ Medici he was
already on the most friendly terms, and as long as he or his descendants
retained their power no opposition was to be feared from Florence.
Venice had received a sharp lesson, and her attention was diverted to
the east. The popes had enough to do to maintain their recently
recovered authority in the papal states. The only other important state
in Italy was Naples. As a military leader Sforza had played a prominent
part in Neapolitan politics. He had been the champion of the house of
Anjou, and when the victory ultimately rested with Alfonso of Aragon,
Sforza had been deprived of his estates in Apulia and the Abruzzi. But
as duke of Milan, Francesco was eager to be on good terms with the king
of Naples. All his interests were now opposed to the Angevin claim on
Naples, which might easily be allied with the Orleanist claim to Milan.
A double marriage was arranged to cement the alliance between Naples and
Milan. Alfonso’s grandson, another Alfonso, was betrothed to Ippolita,
Sforza’s daughter, and one of Sforza’s sons was to marry Alfonso’s
granddaughter. When Alfonso’s death, in 1458, was followed by a renewed
attempt of the Angevins to gain Naples, Sforza gave his cordial support
to Ferrante, the natural son of the late king, and materially aided him
in defending his throne.
It was extremely fortunate for Francesco Sforza that his alliance with
the house of Aragon did not lead to a serious breach with France, which
had recovered the [Sidenote: Relations with France.] suzerainty of Genoa
in 1458. It was from Genoa that John of Calabria sailed to Naples in
1460 to maintain the cause of his father Réné, and one of the most
notable acts of Sforza in thwarting the Angevin pretensions was his
encouragement of a successful revolt of the Genoese in 1461. At this
critical moment Charles VII. of France died, and his successor, Louis
XI., not only had no love for the Anjou princes, but was an avowed
admirer and imitator of Francesco Sforza. The result was a treaty in
1464, by which the town of Savona and all French claims to Genoa were
ceded to the duke of Milan, and later in the year Sforza succeeded in
subjecting the Ligurian republic to his rule. When Louis XI. was hard
pressed in 1465 by the League of the Public Weal, Sforza not only sent
his eldest son with a considerable force to attack the duke of Bourbon,
he also repaid his obligations by the celebrated advice to Louis that he
should divide his enemies by conceding their demands and then reduce
them separately. French history tells how triumphantly the king followed
the counsel of his chosen model.
The government of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who succeeded in Milan without
opposition on his father’s death in March [Sidenote: Galeazzo Maria
Sforza, 1466-76.] 1466, was comparatively uneventful. The external
relations were maintained by Simonetta, who had been secretary to
Francesco, and remained in office under the son, on the same lines as
under the previous duke. The connection with France was drawn closer by
Galeazzo’s marriage with Bona of Savoy, the sister-in-law of Louis XI.
It is true that for a moment the growing power of Charles the Bold
attracted Milan to an alliance with Burgundy in 1475. But on the news of
the duke’s first reverse at the battle of Granson, Galeazzo hastened to
return to the French alliance. The wanton cruelty of Galeazzo’s rule in
Milan illustrates the demoralising effect of unbridled power upon a weak
and passionate nature. To the love of bloodshed, which had characterised
so many of the Visconti, he added a lustful debauchery which outraged
the honour of the noblest families of Milan. Against a lawless despotism
the only remedy is rebellion, and the revival of classical learning
tended to glorify tyrannicide by parading the examples of Brutus and of
Harmodius and Aristogiton. Three young nobles—Girolamo Olgiati, whose
sister Galeazzo had dishonoured, Carlo Visconti, and Andrea
Lampugnani—determined to win eternal fame by the murder of the tyrant.
Sacrilege had little terrors for Italians, and Galeazzo Maria fell
beneath their daggers in the Church of St. Stephen (December 26, 1476).
But the mass of the citizens were too accustomed to subjection to
espouse the cause of the rebels. Two of the assassins were slain on the
spot, and Olgiati was executed after suffering horrible tortures, which
he endured with the stoicism of an ancient Roman.
Galeazzo Maria Sforza left an only son, Gian Galeazzo, who was only
eight years old. He was immediately acknowledged as duke of Milan, under
the regency of his mother, [Sidenote: Regency of Bona of Savoy.] Bona of
Savoy, but the real government rested in the hands of Simonetta. The
latter succeeded in overcoming the first difficulties that the regency
encountered. A rising in Genoa was suppressed, and the brothers of the
late duke, who wished to oust their sister-in-law, were driven into
exile. But in 1479 wholly unexpected problems arose. Francesco Sforza
had leant on the alliance of Florence and Naples, and as long as those
two states were on friendly terms Simonetta pursued the same policy. The
conspiracy of the Pazzi, however, involved Florence not only in a
quarrel with Pope Sixtus IV., but also in a war with Naples. Bona of
Savoy, under Simonetta’s guidance, clung to the Florentine alliance, and
prepared to send forces to aid Lorenzo de’ Medici. Ferrante of Naples
determined to prevent the intervention of Milan. He stirred up a new
rebellion in Genoa, which succeeded in expelling the Milanese garrison
from the citadel. At the same time, he urged the uncles of the young
duke to resume their attack on the regency of Bona. Aided by divisions
in the government, the brothers contrived to secure their return to
Milan and to overthrow Simonetta, who was put to death at Pavia (1480).
Ludovico il Moro, the eldest surviving son of Francesco Sforza, now
succeeded without serious difficulty in prosecuting his schemes. The
young duke was declared of age in order to terminate his mother’s
regency, and Ludovico carried on the government in his nephew’s name.
The circumstances under which Ludovico had obtained his power seemed to
bind him closely to Ferrante [Sidenote: Ludovico il Moro.] of Naples,
who was now reconciled with Lorenzo de’ Medici, so that the triple
alliance was restored, and was able to interfere decisively in the war
of Ferrara (see above, p. 257). The young Gian Galeazzo was married to
Isabella, the daughter of Alfonso of Calabria, and granddaughter of
Ferrante. All would have been well if Ludovico’s ambition had been
satisfied with actual rule. But he was resolved to supplant his nephew
in the duchy, and if necessary to get rid of him by foul means. Such a
scheme was certain to meet with the determined opposition of the rulers
of Naples; and Ludovico, without venturing upon an open rupture, sought
for means to protect himself from their hostility. The first sign of
growing mistrust was visible in the war of Ferrara, when the
half-hearted action of Ludovico allowed Venice to escape with
comparatively favourable terms in the treaty of Bagnolo. Matters became
worse when Isabella of Naples openly complained to her father and
grandfather of the way in which her husband was treated by his uncle.
Even more bitter was her ill-feeling when Ludovico married Beatrice
d’Este, and a personal jealousy grew up between the nominal and the real
duchess. Isabella was furious that she should be compelled to live in
poverty and semi-captivity while her rival was the centre of a
magnificent court.
The rulers of Naples naturally espoused the cause of Isabella and her
husband, and Ludovico was conscious that an open quarrel could not be
long delayed. It was necessary for him to strengthen his position by
alliances, either within Italy or without. Venice was not a power that
could be trusted to act unselfishly in support of Milan. Florence was
the oldest ally of the house of Sforza, but Lorenzo de’ Medici died in
1492, and his son Piero showed a perilous inclination to prefer the
Neapolitan cause to that of Ludovico. In his despair Ludovico made up
his mind to turn to France. He had already established [Sidenote:
Ludovico calls in the French.] a connection with France when, after
reducing Genoa once more to submission to Milan, he agreed in 1490 to
hold the city under the suzerainty of the French king. In 1493 he
discovered that the Neapolitan exiles, acting on the advice of Venice,
were urging Charles VIII. to attack Naples. Ludovico sent an embassy to
support this appeal and to promise his co-operation. He had no
expectation or desire that the French should conquer Naples, but he
wished to have a French army between Milan and the southern kingdom
while he established himself as duke in the place of his nephew. When
once France had served his purpose, he was confident of his ability to
rid himself and Italy of an ally who was no longer needed. But cunning
as Ludovico was, he overreached himself. It is true that Gian Galeazzo
died at the required moment, that Ludovico became duke with an imperial
investiture, which no previous Sforza had received, and that the French
invasion prevented any opposition on the part of Naples. But among the
Frenchmen who entered Italy was Louis of Orleans, who seized the
opportunity to assert his claim to the duchy of Milan as the descendant
of Valentina Visconti. Ludovico succeeded for the time in defeating the
duke, who was not well beloved by Charles VIII. But a few years later
Louis himself became king of France, and one of his first enterprises
was the expulsion of the Sforzas from Milan. Ludovico had ample time to
repent of his short-sighted policy in calling in French aid while he lay
a prisoner in the castle of Loches, where he died in 1510.
CHAPTER XIII
NAPLES AND THE PAPAL STATES IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
The Papal States during the Schism and Ladislas of Naples—Martin V.
returns to Rome—Succession question in Naples—Troubles of Eugenius
IV.—War in Naples between Réné of Anjou and Alfonso of
Aragon—Victory of Alfonso V.—Last years of Eugenius IV.—Nicolas
V.—Calixtus III.—Death of Alfonso V. of Naples—Pius II.—Congress of
Mantua—War in Naples between Ferrante and John of Calabria—Death of
Pius II. at Ancona—Paul II.—Sixtus IV. and his nephews—War with
Florence—Relations with Ferrara and Venice—Disorders in
Rome—Innocent VIII.—Rising against Ferrante in Naples—Election of
Alexander VI.—His alliance with Naples.
Boniface IX. was the ablest and most successful of the Roman popes
during the Schism. The impotence into which [Sidenote: The Papal States
and Ladislas of Naples.] the temporal authority of the papacy had fallen
may be judged by the fact that Boniface found it advisable or necessary
to sell the vicariate, _i.e._ the right to exercise authority in the
Pope’s name, to the despots who had usurped lordship in the various
cities. Yet this very sale, though it seemed to legalise acts of
violence and rebellion, brought with it some advantages besides filling
the Pope’s coffers. The purchase of rights was in itself an
acknowledgment that the Pope possessed them, and this could be employed
some day against the purchasers. And in several ways Boniface directly
increased his power. He induced the citizens of Rome, always as greedy
of papal wealth as they were jealous of papal rule, to invite him to
take up his residence in his capital on terms which ruined the
foundations of republican liberties. He aided Ladislas of Naples to gain
his final victory over Louis II. of Anjou in 1399 (_vide_ p. 155), and
Ladislas repaid his obligation by helping the Pope to suppress
formidable risings of the Roman barons. On the death of Gian Galeazzo
Visconti, he succeeded in recovering for the papacy the towns of
Bologna, Perugia, and Assisi, which had fallen under the sway of the
duke of Milan. But Boniface bequeathed to his successors one very
serious difficulty. Ladislas of Naples, who owed his crown to papal
support, conceived the plan of extending his kingdom at the expense of
the papacy, and even of reducing the papal states under his personal
rule. His first attempt to stir up rebellion in Rome, in order that he
might intervene for his own profit in the struggle, resulted in the
expulsion of Innocent VII. and the sack of the Vatican, but the citizens
hastened to come to terms with the Pope when they discovered that the
only alternative to his rule was subjection to Naples (1405). Another
opportunity offered itself in 1407, when Gregory XII. left Rome in order
to simulate willingness to confer with Benedict XIII. for the closing of
the schism. Ladislas had no wish that the schism should end, not only
because its continuance facilitated his schemes of aggression, but also
because it strengthened his position in Naples. The movement for union
had its chief strength in France, and any successful intervention of
France in Italy would lead to a new attempt to gain Naples for the
younger house of Anjou. In 1408 Ladislas seized Rome, and practically
made himself master of the papal states. But to some extent his plan
miscarried. Gregory XII., it is true, pleaded events in Rome as a reason
for avoiding a conference, but his cardinals deserted him and joined
with those of Benedict to hold a council at Pisa (_vide_ p. 199). The
attempt of Ladislas to disperse the Council by invading Tuscany was
foiled by the resistance of Florence, and the Assembly proceeded to
depose the two existing popes and to elect Alexander V. Baldassare
Cossa, the papal legate in Bologna, who combined the training and habits
of a _condottiere_ with the office of cardinal, undertook the task of
recovering Rome and of punishing the prince who still adhered to the
cause of Gregory XII. Rome was captured at the beginning of 1410, but
Alexander V. died in May, and the all-powerful Cossa was elected to
succeed him as John XXIII. The new pope entered Rome in triumph in 1411,
and his first act was to despatch a powerful army under Braccio, Sforza,
and other famous generals, to support the cause of Louis of Anjou in
Naples. A great victory was won at Rocca-Secca (May 19, 1411), but the
delay of the conquerors enabled Ladislas to rally his forces, and before
long to gain the upper hand. Louis II. abandoned the enterprise in
despair. Attendolo Sforza deserted to the side of the Neapolitan king,
and John XXIII. made peace with his enemy in 1412, the one abandoning
the cause of Gregory XII., the other promising to disown the duke of
Anjou. But Ladislas had no intention of observing the peace. As soon as
his preparations were completed, he again marched upon Rome in 1413, and
drove John XXIII. in hasty and undignified flight to Florence. This
crushing disaster forced the Pope into those appeals for aid to
Sigismund, which ultimately led to the summons of the Council of
Constance and to his own ignominious deposition. But in August 1414,
before the Council had begun its session, Ladislas died, leaving his
crown to his sister, Joanna II., and the scheme of subjecting the papal
states to Naples perished with him. The citizens of Rome expelled Sforza
and his troops from the city, and welcomed the return of a papal legate.
When unity was at last restored to the Church by the election of Martin
V., the new Pope had a very cheerless prospect [Sidenote: Martin V.,
1417-1431.] before him. His obvious task was to restore to the papacy
some measure of the authority and influence which had been forfeited by
its experiences during the last hundred years. To do this he must find a
residence in which he would be more secure than his recent predecessors
from the dictation of secular rulers. Sigismund urged him to reside in
some German city, and the French would have welcomed him to Avignon. But
Martin, himself a Roman by birth, refused to find a home except in the
ancient capital of the world. Rightly or wrongly, he decided that
temporal dominion in a state of his own was necessary to secure the
independence of the Pope, and that to attain this he must recover and
consolidate the papal provinces in Italy. The whole history of the
papacy during the fifteenth century was moulded by this decision. The
popes became more and more absorbed in the extension of their temporal
power, even when their spiritual authority was weakened by it. Nepotism
and other evils were the result of this devotion to secular interests,
and a revolt of outraged and alienated opinion became inevitable.
But Martin had many difficulties to overcome before he could carry out
his intention of taking up his abode in Rome. [Sidenote: Martin returns
to Rome.] The departure of John XXIII. to Constance had left the papal
states in the condition of anarchy which had become chronic. Neapolitan
influence was still strong, but the policy of Naples was no longer
directed by the strong will of Ladislas. His sister and successor,
Joanna II., was devoid of political capacity, and abandoned herself to
sensual indulgence and the guidance of favourites. Through her
incompetence the chief influence over the destinies of Naples was
allowed to fall into the hands of the two great _condottieri_, Braccio
da Montone and Attendolo Sforza, who had been brought into rivalry by
their connection with Neapolitan affairs during the previous reign.
Braccio, who had quarrelled with Ladislas, and joined John XXIII., had
been left by that Pope as governor of Bologna. After the departure of
his employer he seized his native city of Perugia and set himself to
carve a private principality out of the states of the Church. In 1417 he
actually made himself master of Rome, and was besieging the castle of
St. Angelo, when Sforza was despatched from Naples to compel his
retirement. These events forced Martin V. on his accession to ally
himself with Joanna and Sforza, and a treaty was arranged in 1419 by
which Naples was to restore all that had been occupied in the papal
states. But a quarrel between Joanna and Sforza deprived this treaty of
all importance, and Martin determined to coerce and distract Naples by
encouraging internal feuds in that kingdom. As Joanna was childless, the
question of the succession to a crown [Sidenote: Succession question in
Naples.] which had already been so hotly disputed was certain to give
rise to difficulties. Louis II. of Anjou, the rival of Ladislas, had
died in 1417; but his eldest son, Louis III., was eager to enforce his
father’s claim and to purchase the support of the papacy. Martin V. and
Sforza declared their recognition of Louis as heir to the kingdom. But
Joanna, indignant at this attempt to force a successor upon her, turned
to a family whose rivalry with her own dynasty was older than that of
the younger house of Anjou. Alfonso of Aragon had become king of Sicily
in 1409, and was not likely to refuse the prospect of a notable increase
of his power in the Mediterranean by the acquisition of Naples. He
eagerly accepted the offer of Joanna to adopt him as her heir, and he
induced Braccio to enter his service in order to oppose Sforza. Thus
civil war was kindled in Naples, and its outbreak gave the Pope the
opportunity for which he had been waiting. Leaving Florence, where he
had resided since his departure from Constance, he made his way to Rome
in September 1420. There he set himself to put an [Sidenote: Rule of
Martin V.] end to disorders and to strengthen the foundations of papal
rule. The exhaustion of the combatants in Naples, and the successive
deaths of Braccio and Sforza in 1424, freed him from the danger of any
intervention from the south. Alfonso abandoned the contest for a time,
and Joanna agreed to recognise the claim of Louis of Anjou to be
regarded as her successor. Perugia and the other territories of Braccio
returned on his death to their allegiance to the Pope. In Rome itself
Martin had one source of strength in the support of his own family of
Colonna, though their advancement to places of dignity and importance
was certain to create difficulties for his successor. Once secure in his
temporal dominions, the Pope was free to turn his attention to the
general affairs of the Church. The first council which he was bound to
summon by the decrees of Constance met at Siena, and was adroitly
managed so as to avoid any further limitation of papal authority. By
putting himself at the head of the movement to crush the Hussites, and
by appointing a papal legate to lead the armies against the heretics,
Martin tried to recover for the papacy the position which it had enjoyed
in the time of the great crusades of the Middle Ages. But the crusading
spirit was dead in Europe, and the successive victories of the Bohemians
not only frustrated his designs, but also compelled him to summon a
Council to meet at Basel shortly before his own death on February 20,
1431.
Eugenius IV., who was unanimously elected to succeed Martin V., had a
troubled pontificate of sixteen years. He [Sidenote: Troubles of
Eugenius IV.] at once set himself to deprive the Colonna family of the
predominance which they had acquired in Rome through the favour of his
predecessor; but he could only accomplish this by an alliance with the
Orsini, and he thus revived the old feuds among the Roman barons which
it was the interest and the duty of the popes to check. Very soon after
his accession he engaged in a bitter quarrel with the Council of Basel,
and he completely failed in his endeavour to detach Sigismund from the
cause of the Council as the price of conferring the imperial crown upon
that prince. To make matters worse, he allowed his sympathies with his
native city of Venice to involve him in a quarrel with Filippo Maria
Visconti of Milan. In 1433 the climax of his misfortunes seemed to be
reached, when a combination of Milanese hostility with domestic
discontent drove him to fly in disguise from Rome, and to seek refuge in
Florence. These accumulated disasters compelled him to adopt a humbler
tone towards the Council of Basel, which was conducting negotiations
with the Bohemians as if its authority completely superseded that of the
Pope.
About this time the succession dispute in Naples gave rise to a
prolonged war. Louis III. of Anjou died in 1434, but [Sidenote: War of
Angevins and Aragonese in Naples.] Joanna made a new will in favour of
his younger brother Réné of Provence. Soon afterwards the queen herself
died, on February 2, 1435. Alfonso V. at once came forward to assert his
own claims against those of Réné, and the Neapolitan baronage was
divided into the factions of Anjou and Aragon. It was impossible for the
papacy to remain neutral in a struggle which so intimately concerned its
own interests. Eugenius began by claiming the kingdom as a fief which
had lapsed to its suzerain on the extinction of the line of papal
vassals. But he soon dropped this claim and reverted to the normal
policy of supporting the Angevin candidate. At first, events seemed to
turn decisively in favour of Réné. A Genoese fleet, fighting on his
side, won a great naval victory off the island of Ponza, in which
Alfonso himself was taken prisoner. But in a personal interview with
Filippo Maria Visconti, who claimed the captive by virtue of his
suzerainty over Genoa, Alfonso convinced him that it would be impolitic
either to strengthen the papacy which was allied with Venice, or to
establish French influence in Southern Italy. By these arguments he not
only secured his own release, but also laid the foundations of a durable
alliance between his own dynasty and the dukes of Milan. From this time
the fortunes of war turned steadily in favour of the Aragonese party,
though it was not till 1442 that Réné finally abandoned the contest, and
Alfonso V. was formally recognised as king of Naples. His accession
reunited for a time the crowns of Naples and Sicily, which had been
separated since the Sicilian Vespers in 1282 (see p. 25).
So far Eugenius had met with little but failure and disappointment. He
gained an apparent victory over the Council of Basel when he induced the
Greeks to conduct the negotiations for a union of eastern and western
churches at a rival council which met first at Ferrara, [Sidenote: Later
years of Eugenius IV.] and later in Florence. But the treaty which was
settled at the Council was repudiated by public opinion in Greece, and
the Pope gained little real advantage from the parade of negotiations
which proved abortive. Yet the later years of his pontificate were more
successful than seemed likely from the beginning. Rome did not long
enjoy the republican liberty which the citizens claimed to have
recovered on the Pope’s departure. The warlike Cardinal Vitelleschi
succeeded by 1435 in reducing the capital to submission. So successful
were the rigorous and cruel measures of the legate that Eugenius
suspected him of a design to establish his own power in the papal
states. In 1440 Vitelleschi was imprisoned and died, either from poison
or from the wounds he received in the struggle with his captors.
Scarampo, who took his place, maintained his authority by the same means
as his predecessor had employed. In 1443 Eugenius was able to quit
Florence and to return to Rome in perfect security. He gained the
alliance of Naples by recognising the title of Alfonso V. But his
greatest triumph was the inauguration of the negotiations with Germany,
through the medium of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, which led to the
failure and humiliation of the Council of Basel. The final treaty was
practically concluded, though still unsigned, when Eugenius died, on
February 23, 1447.
Thomas of Sarzana, who succeeded to the papacy as Nicolas V., had
already won a considerable reputation as a [Sidenote: Nicolas V.,
1447-1455.] student of ancient literature. Though he was rather a
diligent collector of manuscripts and works of art than an original
scholar, his patronage made Rome for a time the centre of humanist
culture. His greatest work was the foundation of the Vatican library. As
a politician Nicolas showed less ability and interest than as a student,
but he was a sincere lover of peace, and he was able to maintain the
position which Eugenius had won in his later years. He concluded the
concordat with Germany, which put an end to the revolt originating with
the Council of Basel, and the Council itself came to an ignominious end
in 1449. In 1450 Nicolas celebrated the restoration of unity, and
conciliated the Roman people, by a grand jubilee which brought the
wealth of Europe to the eternal city. In spite of this general
rejoicing, the next year witnessed a famous conspiracy against the
secular authority of the Pope. Stefano Porcaro was a Roman noble who had
won the favour of Nicolas by his devotion to ancient literature. But
these studies led Porcaro, as they had previously led Rienzi, to an
enthusiastic admiration of republican liberty. When he endeavoured to
inspire the people with his opinions he was banished by the Pope to
Bologna. Thence he returned secretly to Rome and organised a plot to
imprison the Pope and cardinals, and to restore the republic, with
Porcaro as tribune. More than four hundred persons were engaged in the
scheme, and the number proved fatal to secrecy. Porcaro and nine of his
followers were imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo and executed
without trial. After an interval of a few days harsh measures were
resumed, and a number of suspected persons shared the same fate. This
severity extinguished the last active desire to restore Roman liberty.
Papal rule was strengthened by the failure of the plot; but Porcaro’s
name, like that of Rienzi, lived long in the affections of the people.
No sooner was this crisis passed than the news came that Constantinople
had been taken by Mohammed II. in 1453. The empire had long ceased to
possess any general authority in Europe, but the papacy still claimed to
represent that unity of Christendom, whose disappearance had rendered
such a catastrophe possible. It was upon the papacy, therefore, that the
chief discredit fell of so notable a triumph for the infidel. But
Nicolas V. had no ability to cope with such a vast problem as was
involved in the union of the jarring interests of European states for
the purpose of joint resistance to the Turks. Unable to devise any
practical scheme, he gave himself up to despair, lamented that fate had
raised him from a private station, and died in 1455.
After the death of Nicolas V. the choice of the cardinals fell upon
Alfonso Borgia, who took the name of Calixtus III. [Sidenote: Calixtus
III., 1455-1458.] He was a native of the Aragonese province of Valencia,
and had been rewarded with the cardinalate for services rendered to the
papacy in negotiations with Alfonso V. Although over seventy years of
age, Calixtus showed creditable energy in urging the princes of Europe
to war against the Turks, and he had the consolation of hearing of the
signal victory of John Hunyadi, when Mohammed II. was repulsed from the
walls of Belgrad in 1456. But the pontificate of Calixtus is mainly
noteworthy for the elevation of a relative who was destined to involve
the papacy in the gravest scandals. Nepotism was a natural result of the
secular aims of the fifteenth century popes. As long as the popes had
been the active heads of Christendom their energies were fully employed
in carrying out a great task. But they were now little more than
temporal princes, and their position differed from that of other princes
in the impossibility of transmitting their power to a dynasty, and in
the brief period of rule which was possible for men elected in advanced
years. Hence there was a serious temptation to the popes to aggrandise
their relatives at the expense of the Church or of neighbouring princes,
and thus to confer those advantages upon their family which a secular
prince could bring about by the normal action of hereditary succession.
Calixtus had three nephews, the sons of a sister and a man called
Lenzuoli. These young men were allowed to take the maternal name of
Borgia, and their interests were vigorously forwarded by their uncle.
Two were appointed cardinals, to the great scandal of the College and of
Roman opinion; and one of these, Rodrigo Borgia, became the notorious
Pope Alexander VI. The third nephew received the title of duke of
Spoleto, and the offices of Gonfalonier of the Church and prefect of
Rome.
Before the death of Calixtus important events had taken place in Naples.
Alfonso V., after the prolonged war which secured him the throne, had
enjoyed a singularly peaceful reign. The personal charm which had
enabled him to gain over Filippo Maria Visconti also served to win the
affection of his subjects; and his court was rendered famous not only by
its magnificence, but also by the eminence of the scholars who were
attracted to Naples by royal patronage. But Alfonso’s death, in June
1458, threatened a revival of dynastic struggles in southern Italy. As
he had no lawful issue, his hereditary kingdoms of Aragon and Sicily
passed to his brother, John II. But Alfonso claimed the right to dispose
of Naples as a private acquisition of his own, and bequeathed the
kingdom to his illegitimate son, Ferrante. The Neapolitans themselves
were not at first inclined to resent an arrangement which freed them
from a connection with Aragon and Sicily which might be regarded as
subjection. But it was obvious that the accession of a bastard would
encourage the house of Anjou to revive its claim, while the legitimate
line in Aragon could always assert the same right to Naples which had
been vindicated by Alfonso himself. It was therefore of great importance
to Ferrante to obtain recognition from the Pope, who claimed to be
suzerain of Naples, and he had some right to demand it with confidence
from Calixtus, who was born a subject of Aragon. But the Pope, whether
he remembered the traditional Angevin alliance of the papacy, or whether
he sought in the spoils of Naples for new means of advancing his
nephews, refused to recognise Ferrante, and claimed to dispose of the
kingdom as a vacant papal fief. Before, however, he could make any
efficient opposition to the new king, he was removed by death on August
6, 1458.
The choice of the cardinals now fell upon the most remarkable Pope of
the century, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who adopted the Virgilian
epithet of Pius as his papal [Sidenote: Pius II., 1458-64.] name. In his
youth Æneas Sylvius had lived a gay and not too decorous life. The
author of the novel of _Euryalus and Lucretia_, and the confidant of the
amours of princes, he had first achieved political distinction at the
Council of Basel. There his literary and oratorical ability had given
him a position of recognised eminence; but when the cause of the Council
began to decline, he had entered the service of Frederick III., and had
played by far the most prominent part in effecting a reconciliation
between Germany and the papacy. For these services he had been rewarded
by Nicolas V. with the bishopric of Siena, his native city, and by
Calixtus III. with the cardinal’s hat. Raised to the papacy, he set
himself to destroy the last traces of conciliar opposition to Roman
supremacy, and with this object in view he strained every nerve to put
himself at the head of a great crusading movement against the Turks. His
career is full of strange contradictions, and the contrast has often
been drawn between his unscrupulous youth and early manhood and the
austere enthusiasm which he displayed as Pope. He himself was fully
sensible of the incongruity, and in his famous recantation he urged his
hearers to cast away Æneas and take Pius in his place: _Æneam rejicite,
Pium accipite_.
As peace was absolutely necessary for any action against the Turks, the
first act of Pius was to reverse the policy of his predecessor, and to
recognise Ferrante as _de facto_ king of Naples, though he was careful
to avoid any formal decision on the question of legal right. In 1459 he
summoned a congress of Western princes to meet at [Sidenote: Congress of
Mantua.] Mantua, in the confident hope that his eloquence would prove as
effective as that of Peter the Hermit in the eleventh century. On the
appointed date the Pope and his personal followers found themselves
alone in Mantua. After a month’s anxious delay, some ambassadors and a
few German and Italian princes appeared, and the Congress was declared
open. But the Pope soon discovered that his hopes had been far too
sanguine; and after much eloquence had been expended in invectives
against the Turks, the Congress broke up without achieving anything.
There is no need to seek far for the causes of the failure of the
Mantuan Congress. The growth of nations, with separate and often
conflicting interests of their own, had destroyed all the conditions
which had rendered possible the crusades of the Middle Ages. There were
also special causes at the time which rendered it difficult for Pius II.
to gain any real support for his schemes. The French were angry with the
Pope for having prejudiced the Angevin claims to Naples by his
recognition of Ferrante. Pius replied to the remonstrances of the French
envoys by attacking the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges; and though he
might claim a dialectical victory, such discussions were not conducive
to a good understanding with France. Even Frederick III., the old patron
of Æneas Sylvius, was at this time dissatisfied with the Pope for
refusing to support his claims to the Hungarian crown, which had gone to
the son of John Hunyadi, Mathias Corvinus. In Germany there were still
traces of that spirit of opposition to the papacy which had been both a
cause and a result of the conciliar movement; and Pius II. chose this
moment to exasperate the German princes who shared these opinions by
issuing from Mantua the bull _Execrabilis_, by which he condemned as
detestable heresy any future appeal from the bishop of Rome to a general
council.
Just at this very time there broke out the war in Naples, which the Pope
had endeavoured to avert. The Neapolitan [Sidenote: War in Naples.]
barons revolted against the harsh rule of Ferrante, and appealed for aid
to the house of Anjou. Réné le Bon was unwilling to quit his luxurious
life in Provence; but his son John, titular duke of Calabria, was at
once more capable and more ambitious. From Genoa, which was at this time
under French suzerainty, John sailed to the Neapolitan coast, and was
speedily joined by a large number of partisans. Hostilities in Naples
were fatal to the crusading schemes of Pius II. In spite of his desire
to avoid a quarrel with France, he could not withdraw his support from
Ferrante, and he was further attached to the Aragonese cause by the
influence of Francesco Sforza, who feared that an Angevin triumph in the
south might encourage the duke of Orleans to advance a claim to Milan.
But in spite of the aid of the Pope and of Sforza, the cause of Ferrante
did not at first prosper. John gained an important victory at Sarno on
July 7, 1460; and his general, Jacopo Piccinino, also succeeded in
defeating the Aragonese forces. But in the next year there was a very
decided turn of fortune. The death of Charles VII. gave the French
throne to Louis XI., who was ill disposed towards his Angevin relatives,
while he was a warm admirer of Francesco Sforza. Genoa had already
repudiated the French control, and before long Louis agreed to transfer
his claims over Genoa to the duke of Milan. Thus John of Calabria, who
had brought with him few men and little money, was deprived of the
prospect of aid from France. His Neapolitan supporters began to desert
him after his first reverse in 1462, and in 1464 John was compelled to
abandon the enterprise as hopeless and return to France. His brief but
adventurous career is full of incident. He sought to punish Louis XI.
for his desertion by joining the League of the Public Weal. When that
war was over, he carried on his quarrel with the house of Aragon by
joining the Catalans in their revolt against John II. In that quarrel he
met his death in 1469. Four years later his only son, Nicolas, also
died, and the male descendants of Réné of Provence came to an end. The
house of Anjou was now represented only by Réné himself; by his
daughters, Yolande and Margaret, who had married respectively Frederick
of Vaudemont and Henry VI. of England; and by his brother’s son, Charles
of Maine. Of the two daughters, Margaret had lost her only son, Edward,
at Tewkesbury in 1471; but Yolande had a son, called Réné after his
grandfather, who was engaged in defending the duchy of Lorraine against
the attacks of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. When the old Réné died in
1480, he disinherited this grandson, who was then his only descendant,
in favour of his nephew Charles of Maine, with the further provision
that on the extinction of the latter’s line the inheritance should pass
to the French crown. In the next year Charles of Maine died without
children, and by virtue of this will Provence and Bar were seized by
Louis XI. At a later date Charles VIII. was induced to found upon his
succession to the house of Anjou a claim to the crown of Naples, which
inaugurated a new epoch, not only in the relations between France and
Italy, but also in the international politics of Europe.
During the war in Naples Pius II. had despaired of a crusade, and with
characteristic ingenuity and self-confidence he devised a new scheme for
securing the victory of the cross over the crescent. The eloquence which
had failed to arouse the princes of Europe might prove more successful
with their heathen opponent. He drew up and despatched a lengthy epistle
to Mohammed II., urging him to become a Christian, and promising on that
condition to confirm him in possession of the eastern empire, as his
predecessors had given the empire of the west to Charles the Great. As
far as we know the Sultan returned no answer to this unique proposal.
But the pacification of Naples by the victory of Ferrante, and the
growing uneasiness of Venice at the continuance of Turkish aggression in
Greece and the Archipelago, encouraged the Pope to resume his more
warlike plans. In 1463 he concluded an alliance with the Venetians and
Mathias Corvinus of Hungary. He renewed his exhortations to a general
crusade, and declared his intention of leading it in person. In 1464 he
went to Ancona, which had been fixed for the meeting of the crusading
forces. Again the aged Pope met with a bitter disappointment. The only
crusaders at Ancona were a few adventurers who had nothing to lose, and
hoped to make their profit out of the papal treasures. At last, on
August 12, the Venetian fleet approached the harbour, and Pius was
carried to the window to witness its entry. This effort was [Sidenote:
Death of Pius II. at Ancona.] his last, and two days later he died,
straining his eyes eastward, and with his last breath urging the
prosecution of the crusade. The poignant contrasts of his career were
conspicuous to the last. Æneas Sylvius, careless, light-hearted, and
untroubled by moral scruples, had faithfully represented the new epoch
in which he lived. Pius II., enthusiastic, gloomy, and passionate, seems
to be the ghost risen from the Middle Ages, which were dead.
The pontificate of Paul II. was short and comparatively uneventful. He
belonged to the Venetian family of the [Sidenote: Paul II., 1464-71.]
Barbi, and his election seemed likely to cement that alliance between
the papacy and the maritime republic on which Pius II. had ultimately
relied for resistance to the Turkish advance. But Paul acquiesced
without much protest in the failure of his predecessor’s plans; and by
urging Hungary into war with the heretical George Podiebrad of Bohemia,
he rendered impossible even a league of eastern princes against the
infidel. Paul’s name is also associated with a so-called persecution of
the humanists, because he imprisoned some members of the Roman academy
who had talked vaguely and irresponsibly of a restoration of the
republic. But it is absurd to treat a simple measure of internal police
as evidence of a definite and far-reaching policy, or as marking a
reaction from the patronage of letters by Nicolas V. The whole episode
has attracted more attention than it deserves through the interested
emphasis of the chronicler, Platina, who has exaggerated both his own
sufferings and his own importance. Paul II. was a true Pope of the
Renaissance, looking at affairs from an intellectual rather than from a
spiritual point of view, and exulting both in his own handsome figure,
which led him to desire the name of Formosus, and in the beauty of the
jewels and carvings of which he was an industrious and intelligent
collector. But he was free from the grosser vices and crimes which have
given notoriety to his successors.
The name of Sixtus IV. might well have been handed down to posterity as
typifying the extreme degradation in which the [Sidenote: Nepotism of
Sixtus IV.] papacy was involved in this century by its absorption in
temporal interests, but that the bolder and more picturesque crimes of
Cæsar Borgia have secured that pre-eminence for the pontificate of
Alexander VI. The aims and actions of Sixtus were those of a secular
prince, and display that cynical disregard of moral considerations which
has been portrayed as the characteristic of the age in the pages of
Machiavelli. No previous Pope had ventured to show so reckless a
determination to use his office for the advancement of his relatives,
and to employ his relatives as a means of strengthening the temporal
power of the papacy. Three of his nephews were the sons of his brother,
Raffaelle della Rovere. The eldest, Lionardo, was made prefect of Rome,
and was married to a natural daughter of Ferrante of Naples. Giuliano
della Rovere, the most capable and vigorous of the family, was raised by
his uncle to be cardinal of San Pietro ad Vincula. After playing a
prominent part as the opponent of the two succeeding popes, he gained
the tiara himself as Julius II. The third son, Giovanni, succeeded
Lionardo as prefect of Rome, and Sixtus obtained for him the hand of
Joanna, daughter of Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, a marriage
which in the next generation gave the duchy to a della Rovere dynasty.
But the Pope’s most lavish favours were conferred upon the two sons of a
sister, Piero and Girolamo Riario. Piero was made a cardinal at the age
of twenty-five, and received so many preferments, including the
archbishopric of Florence, that he drew a princely revenue from the
Church. He only lived three years after his uncle’s accession, but
during that time he succeeded in startling Europe by the stories of the
extraordinary pomp and debauchery on which he squandered his wealth. The
promotion of Girolamo Riario, a layman, was effected within the papal
states, and had more lasting results. The papal treasure was employed to
purchase for him the lordship of Imola; he was married to Caterina, a
natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and on the extinction of the
Ordelaffi in 1480 his uncle’s support gained for him the city of Forli
with the title of duke. The whole policy of the Pope was directed for
years to the aggrandisement of a youth who proved no more worthy of his
elevation than his brother had been. In 1488 the people of Forli rose
and murdered him, and only the heroism of his widow secured for a time
the continuance of his dynasty.
The obvious intention of the Pope to extend his temporal power and to
abuse it for the aggrandisement of his nephew excited the misgivings of
the neighbouring states, and especially of Florence, which was at this
time under the guidance of Lorenzo de’ Medici. In order to remove this
obstacle from their way, Sixtus and Riario organised the famous
conspiracy of the Pazzi for the overthrow of the Medici rule. The Pope
asserted his ignorance of any scheme of assassination, but he must have
known that success could hardly be achieved without bloodshed, and his
denial of complicity was a merely formal attempt to save the credit of
the holy see. The plot very narrowly missed its aim: Giuliano de’ Medici
was killed in the cathedral of Florence, but Lorenzo escaped with a
severe wound, and the chief conspirators, including the archbishop of
Pisa, fell victims to the popular fury. Enraged at the failure of his
scheme, Sixtus excommunicated the Florentines for laying violent hands
upon a dignitary of the Church, and formed a league with Ferrante of
Naples for the overthrow of the republic. The disorder in Milan
following the death of [Sidenote: War with Florence.] Galeazzo Maria
Sforza, and the fact that Venice was still engaged in the Turkish war,
deprived Florence of her natural allies, and in 1479 the city was
exposed to serious peril. Lorenzo de’ Medici, however, not only averted
the danger, but dexterously employed it to strengthen his authority. At
considerable personal risk, he undertook a journey to Naples, and
succeeded in negotiating a peace with Ferrante. Sixtus was at first
inclined to continue the war; but the occupation of Otranto by a Turkish
force in 1480 constituted such a serious menace to Italy, that the
obstinate Pope was forced to come to terms with his opponents and to
withdraw the bull of excommunication against Florence.
The Turkish invasion compelled Ferrante of Naples and his son Alfonso to
withdraw their troops from Tuscany, and [Sidenote: Relations with
Ferrara and Venice, 1482-84.] to concentrate their attention on the
recovery of Otranto. Fortunately for Italy, the death of Mohammed II. on
May 3, 1481, and a dispute as to the Turkish succession, led to the
withdrawal of the invaders, and enabled the Neapolitan rulers to claim a
military triumph which they had done little or nothing to bring about.
But the alliance between Naples and the papacy had been completely
annulled, and Sixtus, as restless as ever, did not scruple to form a new
coalition, which was destined to have momentous results to Italy. Venice
had concluded the treaty of Constantinople with the Turks in 1479, and
was eager to obtain upon Italian soil compensation for its losses in the
east. Hence arose in 1482 an unscrupulous and unprecedented alliance
between the papacy and Venice for the spoliation of Ercole d’Este of
Ferrara. The danger to the balance of power in Italy led to the
formation of a hostile coalition between Naples, Florence, and Milan.
Sixtus IV. soon discovered that he had gained nothing by his change of
allies. Venice had seized the district of Rovigo from Ferrara, but had
obviously no intention of handing over any share of the spoils to
Girolamo Riario. At the same time, Neapolitan troops entered the papal
states and threatened Rome, and there was a risk that the misdeeds of
the papacy might result in the meeting of another general council. The
Pope, whose policy was entirely selfish, did not hesitate to avert the
danger by a sudden and complete change of front. In 1483 he made peace
with Naples and Ferrara, excommunicated the Venetians for disturbing the
peace of Italy, and prepared to seize the cities which Venice had
acquired within the papal dominions. But his restless greed was again
doomed to disappointment. Venice adroitly ended the war by the treaty of
Bagnolo, in which the only loser was the unfortunate duke of Ferrara,
and Sixtus was chagrined to find that he had gained absolutely nothing
by his ill-faith. Soon afterwards he died on August 12, 1484, and
contemporary lampoons declared that he died of peace.
‘Nulla vis potuit sævum extinguere Sixtum:
Audito tantum nomine pacis, obit.’
In Rome itself the pontificate of Sixtus IV. had been as turbulent as
his foreign relations. The great families, and especially the Colonnas,
had opposed the advancement of the Pope’s nephews, and had thus drawn on
themselves the wrath of Sixtus. A long civil war ensued, [Sidenote:
Disorders in Rome.] in which the barons allied themselves with the
foreign enemies of the Pope, at one time with Florence, at another with
Naples or with Venice. In this war Sixtus displayed all his cold-blooded
cruelty and treachery. The stronghold of his enemies was the castle of
Marino, which was surrendered by Lorenzo Colonna on condition that he
should be restored to his family. Sixtus fulfilled his promise by
sending them his corpse. The mother appeared at the papal court, and
producing her son’s head, exclaimed, ‘See how a Pope keeps faith!’ It
was a graphic picture of the terrible degradation of Rome by the Pope’s
abandonment of spiritual aims for temporal ambition. Directly the Pope’s
death was known, the Colonnas headed a rising which sacked the palaces
of the Riarios and drove their adherents from Rome.
The character of Innocent VIII. has been painted by some historians in
blacker colours than it deserves. It is true that [Sidenote: Innocent
VIII., 1484-92.] he was the first Pope who recognised his own children,
but they seem to have been born before he took orders, and his devotion
to them did not involve him in such scandals as disgrace his predecessor
and his successor. The principality of Anguillara was purchased for his
son, Franceschetto Cibo, but the latter was more interested in gaining
money than power, and his first act after his father’s death was to sell
his territories to Virginio Orsino. Innocent himself had little capacity
and little interest in politics. He spent great part of his time in a
state of lethargy, which not infrequently gave the appearance of death.
Among those who exercised a dominant influence over the feeble Pope was
Lorenzo de’ Medici, who married his daughter Maddalena to Franceschetto
Cibo, and as a part of the bargain, obtained the cardinal’s hat for his
second son, Giovanni, at the age of fourteen. It was under Innocent
VIII. that the Medici obtained that position at the papal court which
enabled them to produce two almost successive popes, Leo X. and Clement
VII., and enabled these popes to use the power of the Church to suppress
the liberties of their native city.
By far the greatest difficulty of Innocent VIII.’s pontificate was
connected with Naples. Ever since the withdrawal of [Sidenote: Rising of
Neapolitan barons.] John of Calabria in 1464, the bastard house of
Aragon had enjoyed undisputed possession of the Neapolitan throne.
Jacopo Piccinino, the _condottiere_, who had been formidable in the
previous struggle, was enticed to Naples by Ferrante with the aid of
Francesco Sforza, and was treacherously put to death in 1465. At the
time of his alliance with Sixtus IV. against Lorenzo de’ Medici,
Ferrante had succeeded in reducing his tribute to his papal suzerain to
the annual gift of a white horse. The freedom from external danger
enabled the king to make the royal authority despotic, and to annul the
independence of the feudal nobles. His son, Alfonso of Calabria, gained
an undeserved military reputation by the withdrawal of the Turks from
Otranto, and from that time was associated with his father in the
government. Under his influence the royal rule became even more
tyrannical and oppressive, and in 1485 the barons determined to rebel.
Innocent VIII., who desired to extort the old tribute from Naples which
his predecessor had commuted, espoused their cause, and Venice, always
hostile to the house of Aragon, gave secret assistance. It was decided
to revive the Angevin pretensions, and Réné of Lorraine, the grandson of
Réné le Bon, was invited to come to Italy as a claimant of the crown for
which his ancestors had so long contended. But the rebellion ended in
complete failure. Neither Florence nor Milan would consent to such a
disturbance of the normal relations of Italy as would be involved in
French intervention. The military force of the Neapolitan rulers was
overwhelming, and Alfonso, for the second time, led an army against
Rome. To complete the disasters of the Pope and his allies, Réné of
Lorraine, who was engaged in prosecuting a hopeless claim upon Provence
at the French court, allowed the opportunity of gaining Naples to slip
from his hands. But the mere threat of a French invasion was enough to
induce Ferrante and Alfonso to come to terms. The Pope was bought off by
the restoration of the former tribute, and the Neapolitan barons,
deprived of all hope of assistance, submitted on the understanding that
a full amnesty should be granted to them. The promise was broken with
that cynical disregard of good faith which marked the politics of Italy
in the fifteenth century. The nobles who returned to Naples were
imprisoned, and were never again seen alive. The sole survivors were
those who preferred to remain in exile rather than trust the rulers whom
they had endeavoured to depose. These men eagerly watched for an
opportunity which might enable them at once to avenge the death of their
associates and to regain their own confiscated territories. In 1493 they
were at last enabled to act. The death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the
growing alienation of Ludovico Sforza from Naples, removed some of the
chief securities for peace in Italy. By the advice of Venice the
Neapolitan exiles petitioned for the intervention, not of the duke of
Lorraine, but of the French king, Charles VIII. Before any final
decision had been come to at the French court, Ferrante had died on
January 25, 1494, and Alfonso II. was left to face the danger of which
his own violence and misrule had been the principal cause.
Innocent VIII. had not lived to witness this new crisis in the history
of Naples. His death in 1492 had been followed by a very important
election. The most prominent candidates for the suffrages of the
conclave were Ascanio Sforza, the brother of Ludovico, and Giuliano
della Rovere, the nephew of Sixtus IV. But neither could obtain the
requisite majority, and in the end Ascanio Sforza was bribed to support
the candidature of the wealthiest of the Roman cardinals, Rodrigo
Borgia, a nephew of Calixtus III. The well-known fact that he had
several natural children, born to him not only since he was a priest,
but since he had been a cardinal, seems to have been completely
disregarded. [Sidenote: Election of Alexander VI.] A lavish expenditure
of money and promises secured his election, and he assumed the title of
Alexander VI. The first great problem which the new Pope had to solve
concerned the approaching struggle in Naples. In spite of his
obligations to Ascanio Sforza, and his antagonism to the Orsini, who
were closely connected at this time with the house of Aragon, Alexander
allowed himself to be drawn in 1493 into an alliance with Ferrante, and
on his death he recognised the title of Alfonso II. The French invasion,
which the Pope was thus pledged to resist, threatened the papacy for
some time with serious dangers; but in the end it proved one of the
chief circumstances which enabled Alexander himself, and afterwards
Julius II., to erect the temporal power upon firmer foundations than any
of their predecessors had been able to construct.
CHAPTER XIV
FLORENCE UNDER THE MEDICI
The period of oligarchical rule in Florence—Maso and Rinaldo degli
Albizzi—Niccolo da Uzzano—The opposition and Giovanni de’ Medici—War
with Filippo Maria Visconti—The _Catasto_—Unsuccessful attack upon
Lucca—Expulsion of the Medici—Fall of the Albizzi, and return of
Cosimo de’ Medici—Character and methods of Cosimo’s rule—Luca Pitti
and the _coup d’état_ of 1458—Cosimo’s foreign policy—Piero de’
Medici and his opponents—Victory of Piero—Accession of Lorenzo de’
Medici—Approximation to monarchy—Alienation of Naples, and quarrel
with Sixtus IV.—Conspiracy of the Pazzi—War in 1478 and 1479—Lorenzo
goes to Naples—Conclusion of peace—Constitutional changes in
1480—Lorenzo’s later years—Importance of his death—Reckless conduct
of the younger Piero.
The leaders of the Florentine democracy paid a heavy penalty for their
momentary triumph in 1378. A violent [Sidenote: Oligarchical rule in
Florence.] reaction in 1382 restored the oligarchy under the leadership
of the Albizzi, and for the next fifty years the curious machinery of
the civic constitution was carefully manipulated to secure the
ascendency of the dominant faction. Although it is by no means the most
famous, there can be no doubt that this is one of the most successful
periods in Florentine history. Under the resolute guidance of a close
oligarchy, Florence maintained a heroic struggle against the
encroachments of Gian Galeazzo Visconti until his death in 1402 saved
the city from almost inevitable submission. When the Milanese dominions
fell to pieces, Florence seized the opportunity to gain a great prize;
and the city of Pisa, which commanded the mouth of the Arno, was in 1406
compelled to surrender after an obstinate resistance (see p. 244). Then
followed a long war with Ladislas of Naples, in the course of which
Florence acquired the important town of Cortona. And in 1421 the
commercial interests of the city were strengthened by the purchase from
Genoa of a second port—Livorno.
For a long time the active leader of the victorious faction and the most
influential politician in Florence was Maso degli Albizzi, a nephew of
the Piero degli Albizzi who had been so prominent in the party strife of
the fourteenth century (see p. 164). Maso had returned from exile in
1382, and at various times held most of the chief offices of the state.
While he was gonfalonier in 1393 harsh measures were taken to complete
the defeat of the democrats. But, apart from the severity shown to the
unfortunate Alberti and their supporters, Maso showed himself a wise and
tolerant ruler. When he died in 1417, his place was, to some extent,
taken by his eldest son, Rinaldo, who displayed great industry and
integrity, but less prudence and insight than his father. The almost
hereditary prominence of these two men did much to accustom the
Florentines to that disguised despotism which was afterwards established
by the Medici. But the Albizzi never enjoyed such undivided ascendency
as was held by Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici. At least as influential a
leader as Rinaldo was Niccolo da Uzzano, who is frequently spoken of by
contemporaries as the head of the party. He seems to have been a sincere
enthusiast for aristocratic rule, and it was greatly due to his
influence that the Albizzi were prevented from making themselves
absolute masters of the city. His reputation for wisdom and insight was
deservedly high, and his death in 1432 proved a fatal blow to the party
in whose counsels he had always been on the side of moderation.
In spite of the services which it rendered to the state, the
oligarchical government did not succeed in averting discontent and
hostility. The strongest political sentiment among the Florentines was
the love of equality, which found practical expression in the system of
filling offices by lot. This love of equality was more outraged by the
domination of a clique of ruling families than it would have been by the
government of a single despot. The lesser guilds and the lower classes
resented their virtual exclusion from office; and many wealthy citizens,
who had incurred the displeasure of the dominant faction, found
themselves equally left in the cold. Moreover, the militant foreign
policy of the government was extremely expensive; and the burden of
taxation, as was always the case in Florence, fell more heavily upon the
opponents than upon the supporters of the government. Gradually the
cause of the opposition came to be more and more identified with the
house of Medici. The action of Salvestro de’ Medici in 1378 had
identified the name with the popular cause, though he did not personally
profit by its short-lived victory. In 1393, when the severe measures of
Maso degli Albizzi provoked a popular rising, it was to Vieri de’
Medici, a kinsman of Salvestro, that the mob appealed for guidance, and
it was his moderate advice which checked the rebellion. But it was a
member of another branch of the family—Giovanni de’ Medici—who, in the
second decade of the fifteenth century, came to be regarded as the
leader of those who disapproved of the conduct of affairs by the ruling
party. Giovanni was a banker and money-changer, and was so successful in
his business that he became the richest citizen in Florence, if not in
Italy. He employed his wealth in extending his popularity, though he was
extremely careful to avoid any action which might give the government a
handle against him. In 1421 he was drawn as gonfalonier, and Niccolo da
Uzzano wished to cancel the appointment as dangerous. But Giovanni’s
hold on the people, and especially on the lesser guilds, made such a
step perilous, and his two months of office passed uneventfully.
Giovanni de’ Medici died in 1429, leaving two sons—Cosimo, afterwards
the ruler of Florence, and Lorenzo, whose descendants in the sixteenth
century became grand-dukes of Tuscany.
As long as the oligarchical government was successful, there was little
prospect of its overthrow, but from 1421 its credit steadily declined.
The reunion of the [Sidenote: War with Filippo Maria Visconti.] Milanese
territories under Filippo Maria Visconti constituted a serious menace to
Florence, and the imperative duty of self-defence compelled the republic
to embark once more in a desperate struggle for existence. In 1424 the
Florentine army, under Pandolfo Malatesta, was defeated with great loss
in the battle of Zagonara. A despairing appeal was made to Venice for
assistance, and the intervention of Carmagnola saved Florence from
annihilation. But the spoils of victory were monopolised by Venice, and
the aggrandisement of their ally was by no means popular with the
Florentines. The power of the oligarchy had rested upon the success of
their foreign policy, and alarming discontent was the inevitable result
of an unsuccessful war. Two important measures were resorted to in the
hope of restoring the prestige of the dominant faction. The heavy
expenses of the war had called attention to the old grievance of
arbitrary taxation, and in 1427 a reform was introduced to provide a
more [Sidenote: The Catasto of 1427.] equitable basis of assessment.
According to Machiavelli, the acceptance of the _Catasto_, as it was
called, was due to the influence of Giovanni de’ Medici. Every citizen
was to report to the gonfalonier of his district his whole income from
every source; and concealment was to be punished by confiscation. From
fixed capital the income was to be estimated at seven per cent. These
reports were to be collected into four books, one for each quarter of
the city; and henceforth the assessment of taxation was to be determined
by them instead of depending upon a man’s political position and
opinions. As wealth fluctuated rapidly in a mercantile community, a new
_catasto_ was to be made every three years. It was a notable sacrifice
on the part of the ruling clique, and probably tended to weaken their
unanimity, but it helped to pacify public opinion for a time. Rinaldo
degli Albizzi now came forward with a new scheme for restoring the
credit of his party. Ever since the days of [Sidenote: Attack upon
Lucca, 1430.] Castruccio Castracani, the annexation of Lucca had been a
darling object of Florentine ambition. Lucca was, at this time, ruled by
one of its own citizens—Paolo Guinigi—who had sided with Milan in the
recent war. Rinaldo proposed to treat this as a pretext for attacking
Lucca. It was in vain that Niccolo da Uzzano pointed out the risks of
the enterprise. Giovanni de’ Medici was dead, and his son Cosimo
supported the proposal of Rinaldo. His conduct on this occasion has
exposed him to the suspicion that he foresaw the failure of the
enterprise, and was willing to ruin his opponent even at the expense of
the state. War was declared in 1430, and Rinaldo degli Albizzi was
appointed one of the commissioners to superintend the siege of Lucca.
The enterprise was as unsuccessful as it was unjust, and its failure was
ultimately fatal to the party in power. Rinaldo, unjustly accused of
peculation, threw up his command in disgust. The duke of Milan was drawn
into the war, and the two most famous _condottieri_ of the day—Francesco
Sforza and Niccolo Piccinino—were employed in his service. After
suffering serious reverses in the field, the Florentines were glad to
accept the mediation of the emperor Sigismund, and in 1433 peace was
made, leaving things as they were before the war.
But no treaty could restore the previous conditions within the city.
Niccolo da Uzzano had died in 1432, and his death [Sidenote: Expulsion
of the Medici, 1433.] deprived his party of their strongest support,
while it removed the moderating influence on their conduct. Cosimo de’
Medici was at once more ambitious and less cautious than his father, and
he and Rinaldo degli Albizzi were now avowed rivals for ascendency. The
latter, conscious of his growing weakness, determined to have recourse
to violence. In September 1433, when the signoria was composed of
Rinaldo’s adherents, Cosimo de’ Medici was summoned to appear before the
magistrates, and was imprisoned while his fate was deliberated upon. For
some time it was generally expected that he would be put to death. But
the wealth which his father had collected stood him in good stead, and
his judges were not proof against corruption. The majority decided for a
milder sentence. Cosimo was banished for ten years to Padua, and his
brother Lorenzo for five years to Venice. Most of their prominent
adherents shared their exile, and the Medici were declared incapable of
holding any office in Florence.
The victory of Albizzi seemed to be assured when Cosimo went into exile
in October 1433. The ordinary machinery of a Florentine _coup d’état_
had been set in motion. The people had been convened in the piazza, and
had approved the appointment of a _balia_ or revolutionary committee.
But by a strange oversight on the part of so experienced a partisan,
Rinaldo had failed to obtain for this committee the right of refilling
the bags with the names of candidates for office. The result was that
the weakness of his position was only slightly modified. His own party
was divided and inclined to be mutinous because the _catasto_ was not
abolished. And the alienation of public opinion by military failures
could only be removed by some conspicuous success. In 1434 Florence
became involved in a war in Romagna between Filippo Maria Visconti and
the Pope. Again her troops were defeated in the field, and her ally,
Eugenius IV., driven from Rome by the Colonnas, was forced to seek a
refuge within her walls. In this moment of depression the accident of
lot resulted in the formation of a signoria in September 1434, which was
favourable to the Medici. Rinaldo [Sidenote: Recall of the Medici,
1434.] in his turn was summoned before a hostile magistracy, and he came
accompanied by eight hundred armed men. But he lost the favourable
opportunity for overawing his opponents by consenting to an interview
with Eugenius IV., who had offered his mediation. This delay proved
fatal. The _popolo minuto_ took up arms and surrounded the piazza; while
the signoria called in armed peasants from the country. The parliament
created a _balia_ in the interests of the party, which had for the
moment the upper hand. The Medici and Alberti families were recalled and
declared eligible for office. Rinaldo degli Albizzi with his son and
about seventy partisans were banished from Florence, and few of them
ever returned to their native city. Cosimo de’ Medici, who was in Venice
when the news of this sudden revolution reached him, re-entered Florence
on October 6, 1434. For the next three centuries the history of Florence
is bound up with the history of the house of Medici.
The ascendency which the dramatic events of 1433 and 1434 gave to Cosimo
de’ Medici was not only retained [Sidenote: Character of Medicean Rule.]
during his life, but became for a time a hereditary possession. Yet it
is impossible to point to any great apparent change in the constitution.
The old magistracies and councils continued to exist and to fulfil their
former functions. Cosimo was extremely careful to avoid any outward
signs of despotism. He continued to live in his former residence; and
nothing in his dress or his manner of life distinguished him from his
fellow-citizens. Like his defeated rival, he surrounded himself with a
sort of body-guard of allied families, whose interests he skilfully
identified with his own. To all appearance this was as much an oligarchy
as the government which it had displaced. The difference is to be found
in two points. On the one hand Cosimo was enabled, partly by his wealth,
and partly by his extensive foreign connections, to exercise a far
stronger control over his adherents and over the state than either Maso
or Rinaldo degli Albizzi had ever been able to wield. And, on the other
hand, the influential families who rose to power under Cosimo did not
represent the domination of a class as the rule of the Albizzi had done.
The Medici never forgot that they owed their original rise to their
championship of democratic equality; and they were careful to avoid any
unnecessary collision with the prejudices of the mob. Even a disguised
despotism must aim at the obliteration of classes, and this can be
clearly traced in the policy of Cosimo. He transferred several families
from the lesser to the greater guilds, and thus obscured a distinction
which had been at one time of supereminent importance. And he even
procured the repeal of the disqualifications against the old nobility on
which the foundations of the historic municipality had been built.
It is not difficult to trace the methods by which Cosimo maintained the
power which had fallen into his hands. He had two primary objects to
attain: he must prevent [Sidenote: Methods of Cosimo’s Government.] the
more important offices from falling into the hands of malcontents, and
he must diminish their number by bringing home to them the hardships and
dangers of opposition and the rewards that were to be gained by loyalty.
Cosimo boasted of the humanity of his rule, and he was always careful to
intrust to his followers the initiation of harsh proposals. But his
policy was really one of proscription. The Albizzi and their allies were
treated with the greatest severity. Not only were they banished, but
their place of exile was constantly changed, and they were hunted about
Italy like wild beasts. It was no wonder that their patriotism gave way
to a desire for revenge, and they joined the duke of Milan against their
native city. But the battle of Anghiari in 1440 destroyed all hope of
success, while their treason gave a pretext for more merciless
treatment. The financial administration was employed to the same ends.
The _catasto_ of 1427 was abolished, and the system of arbitrary
assessment was revived. This enabled Cosimo to reward his adherents and
to punish malcontents. Giannozzo Mannetti, a harmless student, whose
only offence was his popularity, was called upon to pay taxes to the
amount of 135,000 florins, and could only avoid ruin by going into
voluntary exile. It was a common saying that Cosimo employed the taxes,
as northern princes used the dagger, to rid himself of his opponents.
For the regulation of offices Cosimo employed the revolutionary
machinery which was in theory the ultimate enforcement of popular
sovereignty. The _balia_ which had recalled the Medici in 1434 had
received from the parliament full power to reform the state. Every five
years this power was renewed—in 1439, 1444, 1449, and 1454. The most
important act of the _balia_ was the appointment of ten _accoppiatori_
to superintend the filling of the bags with the names of those who were
eligible for office. This was in itself a fairly ample assurance that no
opposition to the Medici could be anticipated from the magistracy; and
to make it doubly sure, the names of the gonfalonier and priors were
selected every two months by the _accoppiatori_. They were made, as the
phrase went, not by lot, but by hand. But as time went on, this
prolonged departure from normal procedure gave rise to grumbling; and as
there were good reasons for avoiding at the moment any appearance of
disunion in the city, Cosimo determined to yield. In 1455 the _balia_,
which had been renewed the year before, was abolished, and the practice
of drawing the names of the signoria was revived. The concession was
more apparent than real; for the bags had only recently been refilled,
and three years would elapse before a new _squittinio_ would be
necessary. For that time the ascendency of the Medici party was secure,
and before it had elapsed measures might be taken to prolong it. But
that the revival of liberty was of some moment is proved by the proposal
in the signoria of January 1458 to restore the _catasto_. Cosimo’s
partisans urged him to employ energetic measures to defeat a scheme
which attacked their own pockets. But he was not unwilling to teach them
how dependent they were upon his support, and he allowed the system of
strict and impartial assessment to be revived.
There was one very obvious danger to which such a government as that of
Cosimo de’ Medici was exposed. Jealousy and ill-will might arise among
his intimate associates. It was his deliberate policy to place them in
prominent positions, and they were perforce intrusted with the secrets
of his administration. One or more of them might seek to use their
experience for their own advancement and to free themselves from the
control of their patron. This danger was partially realised in Cosimo’s
later years, and serious difficulties arose from the same source in the
time of his son. In 1458 it had become a grave question how far the
revival of republican freedom should be allowed to go. The death of
Alfonso of Naples removed one great motive for continuing the
conciliatory policy of the last three years; and the appointment to the
gonfaloniership of Luca Pitti, one of the oldest and closest of Cosimo’s
adherents, gave the opportunity for decisive action. After careful
precautions had been taken to control the avenues to the piazza and to
impress the mob, a parliament was convened by the ringing the great bell
of the Palazzo Publico. A _balia_ [Sidenote: Coup d’état of 1458.] of
350 citizens, together with the existing signoria, was endowed with full
authority. _Accoppiatori_ were appointed to fill the bags, and a
permanent committee, the _Otto di Balia_, received the control of the
civic police. By a curious irony it was announced to the people that the
priors should henceforth be called, not _priori delle arti_, but _priori
della Liberta_. The name was chosen, says Machiavelli, to designate what
had been lost.
But in this revolution to confirm the previous revolution Cosimo had
carefully abstained from taking any active share. In the eyes of the mob
the victorious politician [Sidenote: Luca Pitti.] was Luca Pitti, who
seemed to himself, as to others, to overshadow his employer. Puffed up
with ambition, he began to build the magnificent palace on the southern
side of the Arno, which, afterwards the residence of the grand-dukes of
Tuscany, and now the shrine of one of the greatest picture galleries in
the world, has done more than any political achievement to preserve to
posterity the name of its founder. Cosimo was probably convinced that
little real danger was to be dreaded from Luca Pitti, and he made no
attempt to alter or correct the popular impression. As long as his
influence was really unimpaired he cared little who had the appearance
and pomp of supremacy.
As a great banker, Cosimo de’ Medici was an important personage in many
foreign courts, quite apart from his [Sidenote: Cosimo’s Foreign
Policy.] political position in Florence. With very notable dexterity he
played his two parts so as to make each improve the other. He employed
his financial relations to strengthen his hold upon the strings of
Florentine policy, and he utilised his political influence to increase
his business and his profits. It is in foreign affairs far more than in
domestic administration that he showed himself to be the real ruler of
Florence. He inherited from the Albizzi a struggle against Filippo Maria
Visconti and an alliance with Venice. As long as the duke of Milan
threatened the independence of Florence, and especially when he espoused
the cause of the exiled Albizzi, Cosimo could not safely depart from the
traditional policy of Florence. But the death of Filippo Maria in 1447
and the establishment of a republic in Milan gave him more scope for
originality. He had to choose between the aggrandisement of Venice in
Lombardy, which must have been the inevitable result of the maintenance
of the Milanese republic, and the erection of a military power in Milan
which should hold Venice in check. Without any hesitation he decided for
the latter alternative, and the later history of Italy was vitally
influenced by his choice. The financial and other aid which he received
from Florence was one of the most potent factors in enabling Francesco
Sforza to obtain the lordship of Milan in 1450, and to conclude the
treaty of Lodi with Venice in 1454.
Another hardly less momentous question for Italy arose after the death
of Alfonso V. of Naples, when in 1460 the Angevin claim was revived in
antagonism to Ferrante. Although Florence was closely allied with France
by her Guelf traditions and her commercial interests, Cosimo was
resolute in his support of Ferrante and in urging Francesco Sforza to do
the same. Again his attitude helped to turn the scale in a struggle
where, for a time, the balance was undecided. He just lived to hear of
the retirement of John of Calabria, which secured the bastard house of
Aragon from serious attack for the next thirty years. By his action in
these two great crises Cosimo must be regarded as the real author of
that triple alliance between Naples, Milan, and Florence, of which his
grandson in later years made such a masterly use.
Cosimo’s death in 1464 left the headship of the family to his only
surviving son, Piero, who was already middle-aged [Sidenote: Piero de’
Medici and his opponents.] and in feeble health. The five years during
which he survived his father are chiefly noteworthy because they
witnessed the great split in the Medicean party, which careful observers
must have seen for some time to be inevitable. Four of the most
prominent associates of Cosimo—Luca Pitti, Diotisalvi Neroni, Angelo
Acciaiuoli, and Niccolo Soderini—were unwilling to give to the son the
deference which they had shown to the father. Luckily for the Medici,
their unanimity did not go far. The first three were actuated by motives
of personal ambition, which might easily lead them to quarrel with each
other, while Niccolo Soderini was an enthusiast for democracy, and had
no desire to humble Piero in order to exalt another in his place. Neroni
was the ablest of the leaders, but he was lacking in personal courage,
and preferred to employ intrigue and constitutional methods rather than
violence. It was only gradually that two parties were organised in
avowed opposition to each other. The anti-Medicean party received the
nickname of the Mountain, because the great palace of Luca Pitti was
rising on the hill of San Giorgio. The residence of the Medici stood on
level ground to the north of the Arno, and hence Piero’s adherents were
known as the Plain.
The first trial of strength took place in 1465, when the opposition made
a bid for popularity by proposing to abolish the _balia_ of 1458 and to
restore the constitutional method of filling offices by lot. Piero was
too cautious to oppose such a measure, and it was carried with virtual
unanimity. In November the first draw took place, and Niccolo Soderini
became gonfalonier. Disunion among the leaders prevented any use being
made of the advantage which chance had given them, and Soderini went out
of office at the end of December without having effected any further
change in the constitution. In the next year the party strife was
extended to foreign politics. Venice had never forgotten or forgiven the
part which Florence had played in establishing the Sforzas in Milan. Now
that Francesco was dead and succeeded by the more reckless Galeazzo
Maria, there was some possibility of evicting a dynasty which was a
perpetual bar to Venetian expansion in Lombardy. But to overthrow the
Sforzas it was first necessary to overthrow the Medici. And so the
leaders of the Mountain made overtures to Venice, regardless of the
consideration that a complete reversal of foreign policy might damage
the interests of Florence. The Venetians were too cautious to commit
themselves to an alliance with a faction which might fail, and moreover
they had the Turkish war on their hands. But there was a secret
understanding that if Piero de’ Medici were got rid of, either by the
dagger or by a revolution, his opponents would be aided by troops under
Bartolommeo Coleone, a _condottiere_ in the pay of Venice, and Ercole
d’Este, brother of the duke of Ferrara.
Piero knew enough of these schemes to induce him to draw closer the
alliance with Milan and Naples which his [Sidenote: Crisis of 1466.]
father had bequeathed to him. His elder son, Lorenzo, received his first
experience of diplomacy by being sent on an embassy to Ferrante. The
news that Ercole d’Este had advanced in the direction of Pistoia brought
matters to a crisis. Piero hurried to Florence from his villa at
Careggi, and is said to have escaped an ambush on the way through the
vigilance and acuteness of Lorenzo. Galeazzo Maria Sforza was invited to
send troops to the assistance of Florence, and the peasants from the
Medici estates were armed and brought into the city. On the other side
Niccolo Soderini collected two hundred men who were kept in arms in the
Pitti palace. Civil war seemed inevitable, but by a tacit agreement
active violence was postponed till the new signoria was drawn at the end
of August. Fortune or skill favoured the Medici, and a gonfalonier and
priors devoted to their interests took up office on September 1. On the
next day the great bell called the people to a parliament in the piazza.
The armed adherents of Piero commanded every entrance, and the
dissentients who obtained admission were too few or too timid to make
themselves heard. A numerous _balia_ was proposed by the signoria and
approved by acclamation. For the next ten years the priors were to be
made by hand. Neroni, Acciaiuolo, and Niccolo Soderini were banished.
Luca Pitti, who had been bribed or persuaded to desert his associates,
was allowed to remain, but his ostentation had made him unpopular, and
he spent the rest of his life in harmless insignificance. His gigantic
palace remained unfinished till it was completed by the Medici in the
next century.
There still remained the danger of foreign intervention. Neroni, who had
been banished to Sicily, defied the decree and repaired to Venice. It
was decided to carry [Sidenote: Failure of the anti-Mediceans.] out the
scheme which had been arranged in the previous year. Bartolommeo Coleone
was to conduct in the interest of the exiles what was ostensibly a
private enterprise. He was joined in the spring of 1467 by Ercole d’Este
and several of the smaller princes of Romagna. Neapolitan and Milanese
auxiliaries were sent to the aid of Florence, whose forces were under
the supreme command of Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. Italy
watched with eager interest the progress of the campaign, which was
conducted with the punctilious precision so dear to the professional
soldier of Italy. There was a great deal of marching, but very little
fighting and very little execution. The armies never came anywhere near
Florence, whose fate was supposed to be at stake, and no decisive
advantage was gained by either side. But this was in itself decisive
enough. It was sufficient for the Medici to avoid defeat; the exiles
could hope for nothing unless they gained a great victory. In 1468 peace
was negotiated by Pope Paul II., leaving matters _in statu quo_. The
exiles lost all hope of returning to Florence. Niccolo Soderini died in
Germany in 1474; Neroni lived in Rome till 1482; Angelo Acciaiuoli
entered a Carthusian monastery in Naples.
The struggle of 1466 and 1467 removed any possible doubt as to the
position of the Medici. The whole aim of the opposition and their
supporters had been to effect their overthrow, and the attempt had
failed. They were undistinguished by any title, but they were as
obviously the rulers of Florence as if they called themselves dukes or
counts. This was made clear after the death of Piero de’ Medici on
December 3, 1469. Tommaso Soderini, Niccolo’s brother, who had remained
faithful during the recent crisis, convened a _pratica_ or [Sidenote:
Accession of Lorenzo.] informal meeting of the principal citizens. He
proposed that Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was only twenty-one, and therefore
below the legal age for holding any magistracy in the republic, should
be invited to exercise the power that had been wielded by Cosimo and
Piero. A deputation was chosen to carry the offer, which Lorenzo
accepted after a becoming show of hesitation.
Lorenzo’s conduct shows that he was fully conscious of the altered
position which events had enabled him to assume. Hitherto the Medici had
been content to intermarry with Florentine families, and thus to
recognise their equality of rank. But Lorenzo, as a prince, must seek a
foreign bride, and he married Clarice Orsini, a daughter of the famous
family of Roman nobles. Though his own tastes led him to show an
interest in art and literature, and to encourage [Sidenote:
Constitutional changes.] the amusements of the people, he was also
inspired by the wish to establish a court on the lines which had become
familiar in the principalities of Italy. In their intercourse with
Lorenzo the Florentines showed a deference and even a servility which
would have been deemed wholly out of place in the days of Cosimo and
Piero. This growth of a monarchical element within the republic is
probably the explanation of the numerous and obscure constitutional
changes which were made or attempted in the early years of Lorenzo’s
administration. Their essential object was to secure absolute control of
appointments to the signory. In 1470 it was proposed that the
_accoppiatori_ should be chosen every year by a new college of
forty-five, consisting of men who had discharged this function since the
return of the Medici in 1434. The scheme was denounced as an attempt to
subject the city to forty-five tyrants, and failed to pass the council
of a hundred. In the next year, however, the same object was attained in
a different way. The existing _accoppiatori_ were associated with the
sitting members of the signoria as a permanent committee, and the names
which they proposed were to be carried in the Hundred by a bare
majority, instead of by the usual majority of two-thirds. In the same
year the legislative functions of the old councils of the people and of
the commune were suspended for ten years. It is difficult to estimate
the precise significance of these and other changes, but their general
effect was to narrow the circle of families among whose members the more
important offices circulated. This was certain to excite
dissatisfaction; and among the malcontents we find the Pazzi, an old
noble family which had devoted itself to commerce, and now became rivals
of the Medici in business as well as in politics.
Events proved that discontent within Florence was not very formidable,
unless it was reinforced by [Sidenote: Foreign policy.] difficulties in
foreign relations. Lorenzo had been brought up by his grandfather to
regard Milan and Naples as the normal allies of Florence, Venice as a
dangerous rival of Florence and a resolute opponent of the Medici
ascendency, and the papacy as a variable force depending on the
idiosyncracies of rapidly changing popes, and requiring to be very
carefully watched. Lorenzo had learned the lesson, but with the egotism
and self-sufficiency of youth he was not disinclined to attempt a few
experiments on his own account. If he could establish friendly relations
with the papacy and with Venice, he might make his own position stronger
than ever, and might pose as mediator and almost as arbiter in the
relations of the Italian states. On the election of Sixtus IV. in 1471,
Lorenzo went in person as Florentine envoy to carry the usual
congratulations. He returned not only with a confirmation of his banking
privileges in Rome, but with the lucrative appointment of receiver of
the papal revenues. At the same time he opened negotiations with Venice,
which led in 1474 to the embassy of Tommaso Soderini and the conclusion
of an alliance between Venice, Milan, and Florence.
But these new connections were dearly purchased by the alienation of
Naples. Ferrante regarded Venice as the inveterate enemy of his kingdom
and his family. As long as the Medici had identified their interests
with his own he had been eager to uphold [Sidenote: Alienation of Naples
and quarrel with Sixtus IV.] their power in Florence. But a good
understanding of Milan and Florence with Venice threatened Naples with
isolation, and Ferrante must seek support elsewhere. Sixtus had already
allowed the Neapolitan tribute to be commuted for a formal gift; and as
the ties between Naples and the papacy were drawn closer, a coolness
grew up between Sixtus and Lorenzo. The origin of the quarrel is to be
found in the opposition of Florence to the aggrandisement of Girolamo
Riario (see p. 282). Lorenzo refused to find the money for the purchase
of Imola, and the Pope transferred the post of receiver-general from the
Medici to the Pazzi. The dispute was speedily embittered. Sixtus
appointed Francesco Salviati to the archbishopric of Pisa without
consulting Lorenzo, and in defiance of his wishes. The Florentines, on
their side, refused to admit the archbishop to his see; they supported
the Vitelli in Citta di Castello, and in many ways showed an inclination
to thwart the Pope’s schemes in Romagna. For some time, however, the
dispute did not seem likely to lead to serious results. But the death of
Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1476, and the obvious weakness of the
government of the regent, Bona of Savoy, encouraged the opponents of the
Medici to bolder acts than they would have contemplated when Milan could
give efficient support to Florence. In 1477 Girolamo Riario and
Francesco Pazzi began to discuss in Rome [Sidenote: Conspiracy of the
Pazzi.] how to overthrow a family which stood in the way of both of
them. By the beginning of 1478 the main outlines of the conspiracy had
been agreed to. Francesco Salviati and Jacopo Pazzi, the head of the
family in Florence, had agreed to take part in the plot. It was
understood that the Pope and the king of Naples would give active
support, but they took no responsibilities for the actual means by which
the desired end was to be attained. Assassination was a recognised
weapon in Italian politics, and it was obviously difficult to effect a
revolution in Florence without it. Sixtus IV. might plead that he was
ignorant of this part of the design, but morally the plea is worthless.
If the Medici government had been unpopular in Florence, it might have
been possible to organise a rebellion and to overthrow them by means of
a parliament. But there was no widespread discontent in the city, and
the Pazzi had no strong following among either the lower or the wealthy
classes. It was decided, therefore, to kill Lorenzo and his brother
Giuliano, and to trust to the resultant confusion and foreign
intervention. A number of hired mercenaries, headed by Giovanni Battista
da Montesecco, were engaged to carry out the two immediate objects—the
murder of the brothers and the seizure of the magistrates. It says much
for the fidelity of the plotters that no one was found to betray the
design, in spite of the discouragement caused by unavoidable delays. The
great practical difficulty arose from the necessity of assassinating
Lorenzo and Giuliano at the same moment, for fear that one might receive
warning from the fate of the other. And unless both were removed, the
plot would end in failure. At last the desired opportunity was offered
by a banquet which the Medici gave in honour of Cardinal Raffaelle
Riario, a great-nephew of the Pope. But Giuliano was too unwell to
attend, and the time and place had to be altered. On Sunday, April 26,
1478, the two brothers were to be present at divine service in the
cathedral, and the elevation of the host was to be the signal to the
assassins. This gave rise to an unexpected difficulty. Montesecco, who
had undertaken to slay Lorenzo, refused to commit sacrilege by shedding
blood in a church, and two priests were chosen to take his place. But
the priests, though they did not share the scruples, also lacked the
strength and skill of the soldier. As the little altar bell tinkled,
Giuliano was struck down, and Francesco Pazzi dealt the final deathblow.
But Lorenzo was only wounded in the shoulder, and in the confused
scuffle which followed he succeeded in escaping to the sacristy, where
his friends closed the bronze doors in the face of the murderers.
Elsewhere the conspirators were equally unsuccessful. Archbishop
Salviati, who had gone to the Palazzo to superintend the seizure of the
gonfalonier and priors, excited suspicion by his obvious agitation, and
was seized with several of his followers. Jacopo Pazzi headed a
procession through the streets with shouts of ‘Liberty,’ but the people
raised the counter-cry of ‘Palle! Palle!’ in favour of the Medici, and
the leaders of the demonstration were carried by the mob to the Palazzo.
On the arrival of the news that Giuliano de’ Medici was dead, Francesco
Pazzi, the archbishop of Pisa, and several other prisoners were promptly
hanged from the windows. Vindictive severity was shown to the Pazzi and
their allies. Guglielmo Pazzi, who had married Lorenzo’s sister, was the
only member of the family who escaped. The two priests who had taken
refuge in a monastery were dragged from their sanctuary by the mob and
barbarously murdered. Montesecco had left Florence, but he was captured,
and after giving evidence which implicated the Pope in the conspiracy,
was executed. One of the murderers succeeded in reaching Constantinople,
but even there the vengeance of the Medici was able to reach him. He was
handed over by Mohammed II., and brought back to Florence, where in 1479
he shared the fate of his accomplices.
Within Florence all danger was at an end. The cowardly nature of the
attack rallied public opinion to the Medici; and [Sidenote: War with
Naples and the Papacy.] the death of a brother, who had hitherto enjoyed
the larger share of popular favour, served to exalt the survivor and to
remove from his way a possible rival. The fate of the conspirators was a
striking object-lesson to future malcontents. But Lorenzo’s signal
triumph only exasperated the foreign enemies whom his reckless policy
had alienated. He had broken up the triple alliance, in which Florence
served as a link between Milan and Naples, and had divided Italy into a
northern and a southern league. These were now brought into collision by
the failure of the Pazzi conspiracy. Both Sixtus IV. and Ferrante of
Naples had good reasons for desiring the overthrow of Lorenzo, and these
reasons were multiplied now that success had made him more formidable.
The Pope, urged on by Girolamo Riario, and infuriated by the execution
of an archbishop and the murder of priests, called upon the Florentines
to banish Lorenzo, who was to be made the scapegoat for the crime of his
opponents. The citizens refused to give up their leader, and published
the confession of Montesecco. Sixtus laid the city under an interdict,
and prepared for war. The papal troops under Federigo da Montefeltro and
a Neapolitan army under Alfonso of Calabria marched into southern
Tuscany, where the adhesion of Siena gave the invaders a convenient base
of operations. Florence appealed to her allies, and obtained assistance
from Milan under Gian Jacopo Trivulzio, and from Venice under Galeotto
Pico of Mirandola. Ercole d’Este was appointed commander-in-chief for
the republic. Great hopes were also entertained of the intervention of
France, and Louis XI. despatched Philippe de Commines to Italy to try
what diplomacy could effect in favour of Lorenzo de’ Medici.
In 1478 Florence made a creditable resistance against superior forces.
The fortification of Poggio Imperiale blocked the Val d’Elsa, the most
vulnerable approach to [Sidenote: Campaigns of 1478 and 1479.] the city;
and when the disappointed invaders turned eastwards to the valley of the
Chiana, they had only completed the preliminary operation of taking
Monte San Savino when winter put an end to operations. But in the
campaign of 1479 fortune turned decisively against the Florentines. A
revolution in Milan, which was dexterously organised by Ferrante, not
only compelled the withdrawal of the Milanese troops; but by
substituting the rule of Ludovico Sforza for that of Bona of Savoy,
detached Milan for a time from the Florentine alliance. The Turkish
attack on Scutari, which reduced Venice to such straits that it was
necessary to make the peace of Constantinople, and to refrain from any
vigorous action in Italy, was also attributed by contemporary suspicion
to the wily suggestions of the Neapolitan king. Worst of all, France
would not take action. A few hundred French lances would have been worth
far more than the threat of a general council which the Pope knew would
not be carried out. Florence found herself isolated and exposed to a
crushing attack. The plague broke out within the walls, Poggio Imperiale
was stormed, and nothing but the ponderous tactics of a mercenary army
saved the city from the necessity of an ignominious surrender. Lorenzo
de’ Medici was in a very difficult position. In a sense the city was
enduring these sufferings and risks on his behalf, and the loyalty of
the citizens might give way under an intolerable strain. He sought and
found a way out of the dilemma by an enterprise which his adherents and
apologists have agreed to consider [Sidenote: Lorenzo goes to Naples.]
heroic. In December 1479 he set out on an embassy to Naples. The fate of
Jacopo Piccinino was sufficiently recent to convince people that it was
dangerous to trust to the good faith of Ferrante, yet it is difficult to
believe that Lorenzo undertook the journey without some fairly
substantial assurance that there was less risk in it than appeared on
the surface. After all, Ferrante had originally been the cordial friend
of Lorenzo; and although he had since then taken offence, he might be
appeased by a renewal of the old understanding. Events had proved that
it was not worth while to alienate Naples in order to establish better
relations with Venice, and Lorenzo was quite willing to do penance for
his blunder. And the alliance between Naples and the Pope did not rest
upon very substantial foundations. Lorenzo could point out that Sixtus
only cared for the aggrandisement of his nephew, that he was already
preparing to expel the Ordelaffii from Forli in order to give a duchy to
Girolamo, and that a strong secular power in the papal states was by no
means likely to benefit Naples. There was an ultimate argument in the
relations of the Medici with France. The revival of the Angevin claim
was a perpetual nightmare to Ferrante and his son, and it might well
prove that the house of Aragon would find in a Florentine alliance a
substantial bulwark to their throne. At all events, whether hazardous or
not, the enterprise was successful. Lorenzo returned to Florence in 1480
with a treaty of [Sidenote: Conclusion of peace, 1480.] peace. It was
not, of course, a very glorious agreement: the southern districts of
Florentine territory were ceded to Siena, the allies in Romagna were
left at the mercy of the Pope, and there was no provision for the
restoration of the northern fortress of Sarzana, which had been seized
during the war by the Fregosi of Genoa. But anything was better than the
continuance of the war, and Lorenzo was hailed as the saviour of the
state. It is true that there was a momentary reaction, when it was found
that the Neapolitan forces were in no hurry to quit Tuscany, and that
Alfonso was apparently taking advantage of party feuds in Siena to
maintain a permanent foothold in the province. But the Turks intervened
to checkmate any such design, and the occupation of Otranto compelled
Alfonso and his troops to retire for the defence of their own territory.
Even the obstinate Pope was forced to give way by the danger from the
infidel. Sixtus ceased to insist that Lorenzo should make another more
humiliating, and perhaps more perilous journey to Rome, and withdrew the
interdict which he had launched against Florence for venturing to punish
ecclesiastics for a flagrant crime.
The conspirators had failed, and foreign enemies had failed, to
overthrow the Medici, and their failure necessarily strengthened the
dynasty against which these strenuous [Sidenote: Constitutional changes
in 1480.] attacks had been directed. In 1480 Lorenzo was able to carry
through vital changes in the constitution which for the rest of his life
secured his authority against serious attack. It is noteworthy that no
use was made of the parliament, as on previous occasions, when
revolutionary decrees had to be enacted. The proposals were made by the
signoria and carried in the ordinary way through the three councils. A
constituent body of thirty was nominated by the signory. These were to
appoint a ‘greater council’ of two hundred and ten members, afterwards
enlarged to two hundred and fifty-eight, who were to act as a temporary
_balia_, having power to legislate and to control the filling of the
bags with the names of suitable candidates for office. In order to
secure a wide distribution of influence, no family, except two specially
named, was to have more than three members on the council. By a far more
important provision the thirty were to nominate another forty, and with
them were to constitute a permanent Council or Senate, known as the
Seventy. The Seventy held office for life, and filled vacancies by
co-optation. From among them were to be chosen the two important
executive committees—the _Otto di Pratica_, who took the place of the
occasional committees of eight or ten whom it had been usual to appoint
in time of war, and the _Otto di Balia_, who superintended the police of
the city. The institution of the Seventy did not abolish any of the old
magistracies and councils; these still continued as a means of rewarding
supporters and flattering men’s love of importance. But it placed side
by side with them what Florence had not for a long time possessed, a
permanent machinery of government, and thus supplied the stability, the
want of which had been the chief cause which raised the Medici to their
anomalous and ill-defined position in the state. It was inevitable that
the Seventy, with its two standing committees, should gradually draw
into its hands the real power which could never be effectually employed
by officials who changed every two months.
The troubles of the last three years had taught Lorenzo a lesson which
he never forgot. The prompt punishment which followed his youthful
errors in statecraft had been [Sidenote: Lorenzo’s later years.] an
invaluable training to him. For the next twelve years the internal
history of Florence is absolutely uneventful, a fact which is itself the
best evidence of the capacity of its ruler. Freed from the fear of
domestic opposition, Lorenzo could concentrate his attention on external
affairs, and he became the foremost statesman in Italy. Reverting to the
sound traditions which his grandfather had handed down, he maintained an
alliance with Naples on the one side, and with Milan on the other, and
was thus enabled to check the aggressive tendencies of Venice and the
papacy, and at the same time to avert the danger of foreign
intervention. In the war of Ferrara (1482-84) he was an active member of
the coalition which saved the house of Este from annihilation, though he
was chagrined that the interested defection of Ludovico Sforza enabled
Venice not only to escape well-deserved punishment, but also to retain
the polesina of Rovigo. In 1485 a more serious difficulty arose when the
Neapolitan rebels, backed up by Innocent VIII., endeavoured to revive
the Angevin claims. Florence had no love for the house of Aragon, and
was closely connected by many ties with France. Fortunately, the appeal
was made to Réné of Lorraine instead of to Charles VIII., and so Lorenzo
could support the cause of Ferrante without any overt breach of the
French alliance. And while engaged in these questions of high policy,
Lorenzo never lost sight of the immediate interests of Florence. He took
advantage of party feuds in Siena to procure the restoration of most of
the territories which had been ceded in 1480. And he not only recovered
Sarzana from Genoa, but he added to it the neighbouring fortresses of
Pietrasanta and Sarzanella, thus giving to Florence a strong frontier on
the ridge of the Apennines, which, if properly garrisoned, would have
enabled the republic to check the invasion of Charles VIII.
In Lorenzo’s last years a new and momentous political problem was
created by the growing alienation between Naples and Milan. Ludovico
Sforza could not carry out his designs upon his nephew’s duchy without
incurring [Sidenote: Importance of Lorenzo’s death.] the hostility of
Ferrante and Alfonso; and upon Florence, as the middle state of the
league, devolved the responsibility of mediating between her two allies.
It was a task which required all Lorenzo’s tact, experience, and
patience, and it may be doubted whether even he could have ultimately
succeeded in averting a collision. It is just possible, however, that
consummate prudence on the part of Florence might have prevented French
intervention in Italy, and in that case the whole course of European
history might have been altered. But in 1492, when the fate of Italy was
trembling in the balance, Lorenzo died; and his death at this critical
moment must be ranked with those other events—the discovery of America,
the conquest of Granada, and the election of Alexander VI.—which make
1492 one of the most memorable years in the history of Europe.
Enough has been said of the Florentine constitution to show that the
power of the Medici did not rest upon very solid foundations. They had
no military force [Sidenote: Recklessness of Piero de’ Medici.] behind
them; none of the ordinary securities on which a despotism must rely for
its permanence. They ruled, partly because they supplied an element of
stability, which the civic constitution notoriously lacked, partly
because they maintained the credit and the influence of the state in
Italy and in Europe, but mainly because they had managed to conciliate
the interests and the allegiance of a majority of the citizens. But if
the Florentines once felt that their own interests and the security of
the republic were endangered by the ascendency of the Medici, that
ascendency must inevitably fall. And this was precisely the impression
which Piero, Lorenzo’s eldest son, set himself to produce. Discarding
all pretence of civic equality, he indulged in the airs and pretensions
of a prince born in the purple. And while his haughtiness disgusted the
mass of the citizens, he made no effort to retain the support of the
prominent families with whom his father had lived on familiar terms. But
his most fatal blunder was in foreign relations. His mother was an
Orsini, and his wife was an Orsini, and under the influence of his
foreign relatives he abandoned the mediating position of Lorenzo, and
allied himself unconditionally with the rulers of Naples. This action
had a double result. It completed the exasperation of the Florentines,
who had never loved the Neapolitan alliance even when their trust in the
wisdom of Cosimo or Lorenzo had convinced them that it was to their
interest to adhere to it. And it drove Ludovico Sforza into that
desperate appeal to France which was the immediate cause of Charles
VIII.’s invasion. When the French came, Piero showed himself to be
pusillanimous as well as incompetent. He took no steps to hold the
defensible passes of the Apennines against the invaders; and when they
had reached Pisa, he sought to disarm their hostility by a more ruinous
surrender than the most extreme supporter of a French alliance would
have advocated. The patience of the citizens was exhausted; and Piero’s
flight was followed by the expulsion of his family and the restoration
for a few troubled years of republican independence in Florence.
CHAPTER XV
BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS IN FRANCE, 1380-1435
Minority of Charles VI.—The princes of the lilies—Risings in
Paris—Intervention in Flanders—Battle of Roosebek and death of
Philip van Artevelde—Rule of the _Marmousets_—Insanity of Charles
VI.—Rivalry for the government—Philip the Bold of Burgundy—Louis of
Orleans—John the Fearless—Murder of Orleans—Outbreak of civil
war—The _Cabochiens_ in Paris—Victory of the Armagnacs in 1413—Henry
V. invades France—Battle of Agincourt—Armagnacs retain their
ascendency in France—English successes in Normandy—Burgundians seize
Paris—Murder of John the Fearless—Treaty of Troyes—War in Northern
France—Deaths of Henry V. and Charles VI.—John of Bedford and
Charles VII.—Divided allegiance of France—Humphrey of Gloucester and
Jacqueline of Hainault—Quarrels at the court of Charles VII.—Philip
the Good acquires territories in the Netherlands—Siege of
Orleans—Successes of Jeanne Darc—Her capture and death—Character of
the War—Quarrel of Bedford and Burgundy—Treaty of Arras and death of
Bedford.
The death of Charles V. in 1380 ushered in one of the most disastrous
periods in the history of France. The young [Sidenote: Minority of
Charles VI.] Charles VI. was only eleven years of age, and the
government fell into the hands of his uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Berri,
and Burgundy, and their brother-in-law, the duke of Bourbon. These men
represented the new class of royal nobles, or princes of the lilies, and
it was soon evident that their interests were those of their caste, and
not those of the monarchy with which they were connected by blood. Their
conduct was characterised by the same selfish love of independence as
had been displayed by the older feudal nobles, whose lands had fallen to
them by inheritance, marriage, or royal grant. It was a momentous fact
for France that the power of the crown was wielded just at this time by
men who desired not to advance that power, but merely to abuse it for
their own profit and that of their fellow-nobles. Everywhere feudalism
was fighting a final and desperate struggle to maintain itself against
the [Sidenote: Feudalism and its opponents.] forces which were destined
to effect its overthrow. In Germany the Swabian towns were engaged in
war with the nobles, and the Swiss were preparing for the struggle in
which they won their great victory of Sempach. In England social
discontent was encouraged and organised by the teaching of Lollard
priests, and the year 1381 witnessed the famous upheaval which is
usually associated with the picturesque episode of the Kentish leader,
Wat Tyler. In Flanders the citizens of Ghent were heading a rebellion
against their count, Lewis de Mâle; and though the latter succeeded in
detaching Bruges from the league of towns, he found the militia of Ghent
more than a match for his feudal levies, and was compelled to appeal for
assistance to his suzerain, the French king. It is important to remember
that these movements were connected by more than the accident of
occurring at the same time. News travelled more rapidly in the
fourteenth century than it had done in earlier times, and a
consciousness of common class interests was beginning to unite men of
different countries, as common religious interests united them two
centuries later. Events in Germany and England, and still more events in
Flanders, influenced opinion and action in France. The burghers of Paris
and other towns had not forgotten their temporary triumphs in 1356 and
1357, and in 1380 the general unrest in western Europe gave them a new
stimulus to action just at a time when the change of government made
their grievances more intolerable.
Even under Charles V. the burden of taxation had excited indignant
murmuring, and on his deathbed the [Sidenote: Risings in Paris.] wise
king had promised that the recent imposts on the sale of commodities
should be abolished. But Charles’s brothers needed money for their own
purposes; and the eldest, Louis of Anjou, was so greedy, that he stole
the crown jewels and the treasure which Charles had amassed for his son.
An order was issued that the taxes should be collected in spite of the
promised relief. Paris rose in revolt, and an ordinance was extorted
from the terrified regents that all taxes imposed since the reign of
Philip IV. should be withdrawn. Peace was purchased for a year by this
concession; but at the beginning of 1382, while the regents were engaged
in suppressing a rising in Rouen, an attempt was again made to collect
the tax on sales. The mob rose in arms, and their most common weapon
gave them the name of _Maillotins_, or the hammerers. The streets were
barricaded, and again the government yielded. In May 1382 an amnesty was
promised to the rebels, who showed their gratitude by a civic gift of a
hundred thousand francs.
This treaty was the last act of the duke of Anjou, who had hitherto been
the guiding spirit in the regency. His one aim had been to collect funds
for an expedition to Italy, and in this year he set out for Naples to
enforce his claim against Charles of Durazzo (see p. 154). His departure
left the chief power in the hands of Philip of Burgundy, who had bought
off his elder and incapable brother, the duke of Berri, by handing over
to him the wealthy province of Languedoc. Hitherto the French Government
had refused to give any assistance to the count of Flanders, who was
reduced to great straits by a victory of the Gantois outside [Sidenote:
Intervention in Flanders.] the walls of Bruges (May 2, 1382). Philip van
Artevelde, the son of Jacob van Artevelde, was now more powerful than
his father had ever been. He was not only supreme in Ghent, but he
claimed to be _ruwaert_ or regent of the whole of Flanders. After his
victory he proceeded to lay siege to Oudenarde, the last stronghold of
the court and the Flemish nobles. If the town were allowed to fall, the
triumph of the burghers would be complete. There was sufficient evidence
of intercourse between Ghent and Paris to excite the misgivings of a
French ruler, and, moreover, the duke of Burgundy had a strong personal
interest of his own in the matter. He was the son-in-law, and his wife
was the heiress of Lewis de Mâle. It was imperative that he should
strike a blow on behalf of an authority that might before long be his
own, and the French nobles were eager to suppress a civic revolt which
set such a bad example to their own vassals. A large feudal force was
collected to advance to the relief of Oudenarde, and the young king
himself, who was keenly interested in military affairs, accompanied the
army in person. Filled with the confidence inspired by their recent
victory, the Flemings [Sidenote: Battle of Roosebek.] quitted their
strong position and advanced to attack a stronger and better-armed force
than their own. On the field of Roosebek they were enveloped by the
converging wings of the French army, and were almost annihilated. The
corpse of Philip van Artevelde was found at the bottom of a heap of the
slain. A prompt advance must have resulted in the capture of Ghent, but
the French were satisfied with their success, and soon afterwards
withdrew. The chief sufferers were not the defeated Flemings, but the
_Maillotins_ of Paris. The victorious army was irresistible on its
return. Most of the leaders of the recent rebellion suffered death. The
gates of the city were thrown down, and its municipal liberties were
abolished.
With the suppression of the bourgeoisie all opposition to the regents
seemed to be at an end. But in 1388 occurred a dramatic revolution which
is a strange parallel to contemporary events in England. Charles VI.
declared himself to be of age, dismissed his uncles to [Sidenote: Rule
of the Marmousets.] their estates, and intrusted the Government to men
who had been trained in the service of his father. For the next four
years these _Marmousets_ or parvenus, as the nobles scornfully called
them, ruled with equal capacity and moderation. Suddenly, in 1392, came
another extraordinary change in the course of events. One of the ablest
of the royal ministers was the Constable, Olivier de Clisson, a follower
and fellow-countryman of Bertrand du Guesclin. An attempt was made to
assassinate him in the streets of Paris, and the would-be murderers
sought refuge with the duke of Brittany, who had a quarrel of his own
with the Constable. Charles VI. was furious, and led an army towards
Brittany to exact vengeance. But his health was already [Sidenote:
Insanity of Charles VI.] undermined by precocious debauchery and the
premature possession of power. On the journey he became so violently
insane that he had to be kept in forcible restraint. He lived for thirty
years after this, but never recovered the complete control of his
faculties, though he had intervals of comparative lucidity. As a rule he
was worst in the hot weather of summer and autumn, and recovered to some
extent in the colder months of winter and early spring. It would
probably have been better for France if his insanity had been complete
and permanent, as in that case it would have been necessary to make
regular provision for the regency. As it was, the government was still
carried on in the king’s name; but it was notorious that even when he
was at his best he had lost all strength of will, and was the obedient
slave of whoever had control of his person at the time. These conditions
led to that struggle for the exercise of power which brought such
innumerable woes to France in the next half century.
The duke of Burgundy was with the king at the time of the seizure, and
took prompt advantage of it to recover the authority which he had been
compelled to relinquish [Sidenote: Origin of party feuds.] four years
before. By so doing he excited the bitter animosity of Louis of Orleans,
the king’s younger brother, who clamoured that he was ousted from his
proper position by his uncle. From this rivalry arose in the course of
time the famous factions of Burgundians and Armagnacs, whose quarrels
distracted France and rendered the country an easy prey to the foreign
invaders. It would be useless and wearisome to trace in detail the
frequent fluctuations of success and failure, but it is important to
form a clear idea of the position of the two antagonists, and of the
interests which became involved in their disputes.
Philip the Bold or the Rash (_le Hardi_) was the youngest and favourite
son of King John, and had been taken prisoner with his father at
Poitiers. To reward his bravery [Sidenote: Philip of Burgundy.] and
devotion John gave him the duchy of Burgundy when it fell in to the
Crown in 1361 on the death of Philip de Rouvre. But the greatness of the
house was mainly due to a lucky marriage. Charles V. procured for his
brother the hand of Margaret, the only child of Lewis de Mâle, count of
Flanders, Artois, Nevers, Rethel, and Burgundy. When Lewis died, in
1383, these territories came through his wife to Philip, who became at
once one of the wealthiest and most powerful princes in Europe. The
object of Charles V. in promoting this marriage had been to connect
these fiefs, and especially Flanders, more closely with France. The
ultimate result was precisely the reverse; the connection of Burgundy
with France was weakened. Commercial interests tended to sever Flanders
from France and to attach it to England (see p. 71). These interests
proved stronger than feudal and family ties. Instead of Flanders
following Burgundy, Burgundy followed Flanders. Thus, although the duke
of Burgundy was the first peer of France, and as count of Flanders was
doubly a peer, yet he found himself more and more detached from France,
and impelled to play the part of a foreign and independent prince. It is
important to remember that part of Flanders and Franche Comté, or the
county of Burgundy, were imperial fiefs, and had no legal connection
with France. As time went on this non-French element in the position of
the house of Burgundy was destined to be greatly extended. In 1385 an
important double marriage was concluded with the Wittelsbach count of
Holland, Hainault, and Zealand, the son of Lewis the Bavarian (see p.
108). The son of Count Albert, afterwards William VI. (1404-1417), was
to marry Philip’s daughter, Margaret; while Philip’s eldest son, John of
Nevers, was to marry Albert’s daughter, another Margaret. It was to
strengthen this alliance, which two generations later brought these
Wittelsbach possessions to the house of Burgundy, that Philip negotiated
the marriage of Charles VI. to a princess of another branch of the
Wittelsbach house, Isabel of Bavaria—a marriage that was fraught with
anything but blessing to France. Another imperial fief, Brabant, which
was held by the aunt of Philip’s wife, passed in 1406 to his second son,
Antony, and ultimately to the main Burgundian branch. This gradual
absorption of adjacent provinces by the Valois dukes gave to what came
to be known as the Netherlands, or the Low Countries, their first
semblance of political unity.
The young Louis of Orleans was, in territorial power and prospects,
quite insignificant by the side of his uncle and rival. His great
ambition was to redress this [Sidenote: Louis of Orleans.] obvious
inequality. At every opportunity he induced his brother to alienate
domain-lands to him in spite of the protests of the _Marmousets_. By
these grants and by purchase he obtained the duchy of Orleans, which
Charles V. had promised should never be severed from the Crown,
Perigord, a part of Angoumois, and the counties of Valois, Dreux, and
Blois. His marriage in 1386 with Valentina Visconti, daughter of Gian
Galeazzo, which gave to his descendants a claim upon Milan in later
times, brought to him a million francs as dowry, but in the way of
territory only the town of Asti in Lombardy, and the county of Vertus in
Champagne. Louis even competed with his uncle for territories in the
Netherlands, and in 1401 he agreed to purchase Luxemburg from Wenzel.
But this proved a complete fiasco, and Luxemburg was ultimately absorbed
in the Burgundian dominions. One discreditable advantage in the struggle
was gained by the duke of Orleans. He became the paramour of the queen,
Isabella of Bavaria, and by this means he not only secured her support,
but also the influence which she still retained over her unhappy
husband.
Early in the fifteenth century changes took place in the personages of
the drama, though its action was only slightly changed by them. Philip
the Bold died in 1404, leaving three sons. The second son, Antony of
Rethel, succeeded his great-aunt in the duchy of Brabant and Limburg,
and married Elizabeth of Luxemburg, a grand-daughter of the Emperor
Charles IV. The youngest son, Philip, received only the county of
Nevers. With the exception of Nevers and Rethel, the whole magnificent
inheritance [Sidenote: John the Fearless.] of Philip and Margaret passed
to their eldest son, John, who also succeeded to the position of
protagonist in the party strife in France. John had been taken prisoner
by the Turks at the famous battle of Nicopolis (1396), and the reckless
courage which he displayed on that occasion gained for him the name of
the Fearless (Jean sans Peur). He displayed the same impulsiveness in
politics as in the field, and this led him into criminal blunders, and
ultimately to a violent death. Like all politicians of the time, he
sought to use marriage as a means of strengthening his position. His
eldest daughter was married to the duke of Guienne or dauphin, and the
king’s second son, John of Touraine, was betrothed to the daughter of
his brother-in-law, William VI. of Holland.
In 1407 Louis of Orleans was assassinated in Paris; and after some
hesitation, John the Fearless avowed himself to be the instigator of the
murder, and put forward [Sidenote: Murder of Orleans.] arguments to
justify it. Instead of putting an end to the quarrel, this act proved
the occasion for civil war. The sons of the duke of Orleans deemed it a
sacred duty to avenge their father’s death, and they were encouraged by
the support of all opponents of Burgundy. As they were young and
inexperienced, the practical leadership of the party was undertaken by
Bernard of Armagnac, the father-in-law of the young Charles of Orleans,
and himself the son-in-law of the duke of Berri, the only surviving
uncle of the king. From him the party derived the name by which it is
usually known both to contemporaries and to history.
The strife of parties had its origin in a purely personal rivalry for
power, but it gradually came to absorb all the elements of social,
political, and ecclesiastical conflict in France. Louis of Orleans was
the [Sidenote: Burgundians and Armagnacs.] champion of the past, of
feudal independence and privileges. His party, especially after his
death, included most of the noble families of France. Louis had been the
supporter of Richard II. against Henry IV., of Wenzel against his rival
the Elector Palatine Rupert, of the Avignon popes against the policy of
neutrality in the great schism. The Burgundians were forced to espouse
the opposite side in these disputes. They clamoured for financial
economy and encouraged the growth of municipal liberties. Flemish
interests impelled them to maintain a good understanding with Henry IV.
after his successful usurpation. In the matter of the schism they urged
the ‘way of cession,’ and thus gained the support of the University of
Paris. Orleans had alienated this powerful corporation by encouraging
the rival schools of Orleans, Montpellier, and Toulouse. The University
of Paris showed such devotion to the Burgundian cause that Jean Petit,
one of the leaders of the Sorbonne, marshalled all the hackneyed
arguments in favour of tyrannicide in order to justify the murder of
Orleans. But this went too far for doctors of more tender conscience,
and at Constance Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the University, pressed
for the condemnation of Jean Petit’s discourse, and thereby incurred the
bitter enmity of John the Fearless (see p. 218). The great strength of
the Burgundians lay in the enthusiastic support of the Parisians; the
duke at once rewarded and conciliated their support by restoring in 1409
the municipal institutions which had been abolished in 1383.
The war has also a geographical as well as a social significance. The
west and south were Armagnac, while the north and east of France were
Burgundian. This opposition was of long standing, and rested upon a
substantial difference of race. In the south-west the strongest element
of the population was the Romanised Celts; whereas in the north-east the
Teutonic or Frankish race preponderated. For a long time, especially
since the Albigensian crusades, the south had been reduced to
subservience by the north, and in the Armagnac party it strove to shake
off some of the fetters that had been imposed upon it.
In thus roughly estimating the significance of the civil strife in
France, it is important to avoid being too precise and dogmatic. It was
not so much a struggle of principles as a personal quarrel, in which
certain principles became involved. It is to some extent misleading to
speak of the Armagnacs as an aristocratic, and the Burgundians as a
popular or bourgeois party. The parties did not set out with definite
character and policy; but circumstances and momentary exigencies forced
them to seek allies where they could, and these allies could only be
gained by at least a professed devotion to their interests. The age also
is full of contradictions, which make it the more difficult to draw
definite distinctions. The dukes of Burgundy were the champions of
municipal privilege in Paris; in Flanders it was their first business to
restrict the independence of the cities. Philip the Bold declaimed
against the extravagance of the government when he was excluded from it,
and promised the people relief from taxation. But he was personally
extravagant, his rule was at least as expensive as that of his
opponents, and he died so profoundly in debt that his widow had to
undergo a ceremonial proof of bankruptcy in order to secure the
inheritance of her children from the disappointed creditors. Again,
Louis of Orleans is apparently the champion of a reactionary feudalism;
but in another aspect he is a disciple of the Renaissance, and a patron
of the new learning that was to overthrow the essential ideas of
mediæval feudalism. In this, as in other respects, he may be
instructively compared with an Englishman who was almost his
contemporary, Humphrey of Gloucester.
It was fortunate for France that in the early stages of the quarrel
little danger was to be feared from England. The minority of Richard II.
was disturbed at first by the social discontent which led to the rising
of [Sidenote: Relations with England.] 1381, and afterwards by party and
personal jealousies which almost produced a great civil war. When
Richard II. at last took the reins of government into his own hands and
effected a temporary pacification, he began to prepare for his dramatic
revenge upon his opponents, and for that attempt to establish a despotic
power which resulted in his deposition. The result was that during his
reign the war with France languished. Truces were frequently made and
prolonged, and during the interval of nominal hostility no operations of
importance were undertaken on either side. In 1396 Richard II. actually
paid a visit to Paris, and was betrothed to Isabella, daughter of
Charles VI. The revolution of 1399, which gave the English crown to
Henry IV., seemed likely to bring about a resumption of hostilities,
especially when Henry married the dowager duchess of Brittany, and thus
renewed that connection with the house of Montfort which had in the past
given the English an easy entry into France. But for some years Henry
IV. sat but insecurely upon his throne, and the struggle against
successive rebellions left him little time or inclination for an
aggressive foreign policy. It was not until French parties were led by
their irreconcilable enmity to each other to invite English intervention
that the prolonged suspension of hostilities between the two countries
came to an end.
The murder of the duke of Orleans exasperated, but at the same time
intimidated the other princes of France, and their terror was increased
by the punishment which the duke of Burgundy inflicted in 1408 upon the
citizens of Liége for a revolt against their bishop. In spite of the
pitiful entreaties of the widowed Valentina, John the Fearless was
allowed to retain supreme control of the government through his
son-in-law the dauphin, who was now put forward to represent his father;
and the young duke of Orleans and his brother had to undergo the shame
of a formal reconciliation with their father’s murderer. It was not till
1410 that the first league of princes was formed to overthrow the
Burgundian [Sidenote: Civil war breaks out in 1410.] ascendency. It
included the dukes of Berri and Bourbon, Louis II. of Anjou, the titular
king of Sicily, the sons of Louis of Orleans, and the counts of
Clermont, Alençon, and Armagnac. The duke of Brittany, who had
previously been the ally of Burgundy, also joined the league because a
daughter of John the Fearless had married the count of Penthièvre, on
whom the claims of the rival house of Blois had devolved. It would take
too long to trace the actual progress of the war or to enumerate the
hollow truces and treaties by which it was occasionally interrupted.
Neither party could claim any monopoly of patriotism, and both appealed
successfully to England for assistance. In 1411 aid was sent to the
Burgundians, and in the next year to their opponents. This was not due,
as has often been asserted, to a politic desire to prolong the civil war
in France, but was the result of a change of parties in England. In
1411, when the Burgundian alliance was concluded, the Prince of Wales
and the Beauforts were in power. In January 1412 their influence was
undermined by an obscure intrigue, Henry Beaufort resigned the
chancellorship, and the Prince of Wales, who had incurred his father’s
displeasure, quitted the court. The government fell into the hands of
Archbishop Arundel and Thomas of Clarence, Henry IV.’s second son, and
they reversed the foreign policy of their predecessors. Clarence in
person commanded the expedition, which was despatched to help the
Armagnacs, but did little except ravage Normandy and part of Guienne.
The chief interest in the struggle lay in the efforts of the Armagnacs
to get possession of Paris, the stronghold of Burgundian influence. In
1411 the princes advanced to besiege the city. The exigencies of the
defence gave a temporary ascendency to the lower class of the citizens,
who were the most enthusiastic partisans of Burgundy, and among them the
lead was taken by the powerful guild [Sidenote: The Cabochiens in
Paris.] of butchers. One Caboche, a flayer, acquired an unenviable
eminence which gave to his associates the name of _Cabochiens_. For two
years they were all-powerful in the city, and their history is marked by
one of those extraordinary contrasts which are more familiar in the
history of France than in any other country. On the one hand, their rule
was disgraced by the brutal atrocities of a Paris mob at its worst. On
the other hand, there must have been among their leaders men of virtue
and capacity, who saw clearly the administrative evils under which
France was suffering. On May 25, 1413, was issued the famous Cabochian
ordinance, containing 258 articles, which has been warmly praised by
more than one eminent historian as a wise and far-seeing measure of
reform. But the authors of the ordinance hardly acted in its spirit, and
it was so short-lived that it has no practical importance.
The horrors of Cabochian rule excited a strong reaction among the higher
class of citizens, and the Armagnacs were [Sidenote: Armagnac victory in
1413.] enabled by their aid to enter Paris. The great ordinance was
revoked in September 1413, and all offices were transferred to members
of the victorious faction. The dauphin, who had quarrelled with his
father-in-law, joined his former opponents, and this enabled them to
claim that they were governing in the king’s name and interest. In 1414
the Armagnacs assumed the offensive, drove the duke of Burgundy from one
town after another, and even invaded Artois. Before Arras a treaty was
concluded which left Paris and the persons of the queen and the dauphin
in the hands of the Armagnacs. John the Fearless, chagrined by his
defeat, and excluded from all political influence, resumed those
relations with the English to which he was impelled by Flemish
interests. Henry V., who as Prince of Wales had shown himself disposed
to aid the Burgundians in 1411, was now on the throne. He was free from
some of the difficulties which had made his father [Sidenote: English
invasion of France.] pursue a peace policy, and the condition of France
offered him an irresistible temptation to renew the war. In 1415 he
formally announced his intention of asserting his claim to the crown of
France, and laid siege to Harfleur. The Armagnacs were by no means
dismayed by the news. The militant instincts of an aristocracy were
strong among them, and a victory over the English invaders would
complete their triumph over the Burgundians. A feudal army was hastily
collected under the constable d’Albret, and the offers of aid from Paris
and other communes were haughtily rejected. The expected success was to
be for the party, not for the nation. But the military ability of the
nobles was not equal to their exclusiveness. A slight exertion would
have relieved Harfleur, but the town was allowed to surrender on
September [Sidenote: Fall of Harfleur.] 22. This was a considerable gain
to the English; for Harfleur, though less defensible than Calais, was
far better suited for aggressive purposes. It was the real key to
Normandy, whereas the strength of Calais lay in its isolation. But the
English army had suffered heavily during the siege, and prudence seemed
to dictate that it should either return to England or spend the winter
in Harfleur. Henry, however, trusting to the incapacity and disunion of
his enemies, decided to lead his diminished army, not more than fifteen
thousand at most, through a hostile country to Calais. The bridges on
the Somme had been broken down, and the English made for the famous ford
of Blanchetaque, where Edward III. had effected his crossing before the
battle of Crecy. A prisoner declared that the ford was guarded by six
thousand troops, and the English turned southwards to find another
crossing. One place after another was found to be impracticable, and the
army had passed Nesle before they discovered some marshy shallows which
gave them the desired passage. They thus escaped the trap into which
they had fallen, but their march had brought them to the south of the
French army, which in overwhelming numbers blocked the way to Calais. It
was necessary to fight or perish. In the [Sidenote: Battle of
Agincourt.] battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415) the muddy state of
the ground, the reckless insubordination of the French nobles, and the
skill of the archers gave the English an extraordinarily easy victory.
The losses on the French side were enormously increased by a massacre of
the prisoners, which Henry ordered when the appearance of some
camp-followers was taken as the approach of a new army. Among the slain
were the constable d’Albret, the duke of Alençon, and the two brothers
of John the Fearless, Antony of Brabant and Philip of Nevers. The duke
himself had refused to join his opponents, and his brothers only arrived
in time to share the defeat. The most important of the prisoners whose
lives had been spared were the young Charles of Orleans and the count of
Richemont, brother of the duke of Brittany. As far as Henry V. was
concerned, he gained no immediate advantage in France, except the
ability to continue his retreat. He hastened to Calais, and there
embarked for England.
The Armagnacs had destined for themselves all the glory of the expected
victory, and they had to endure all the shame of the defeat. The
Parisians openly exulted at [Sidenote: Continued party strife in
France.] the humiliation of their oppressors, and prepared to welcome
John the Fearless, who advanced as far as Lagni on his way to the
capital. But the duke had lost much of the energy of his younger days.
Bernard of Armagnac, who had played no part in recent events, hurried up
from the south and took prompt measure to suppress the Burgundian
sympathies of the citizens. He only arrived just in time. The dauphin,
worn out by debauchery of every kind, died on December 18, and the heir
of the throne was now John of Touraine, who was the creature of the
Burgundian party. If John the Fearless had succeeded in reaching Paris,
his hold on the government would have been secure. But he had lost his
opportunity, and retired after four months of absolute inactivity. His
enemies called him in derision John of Lagni.
In 1416 there was no renewal of the English invasion, and the attention
of Henry VI. was fully occupied with diplomacy. Sigismund had quitted
Constance with the professed intention of putting an end to the
international quarrels which impeded the work of the council. But his
visits to France and to England failed to effect the desired result.
Their chief result was to ally Sigismund with Henry V. and to bring
about a better understanding between the latter and the duke of
Burgundy, who had found it difficult to maintain any alliance with
England after the death of his two brothers at Agincourt. Meanwhile
Armagnac continued a reign of terror in Paris. The citizens were
disarmed, the chains and barriers in the streets were removed, and a
strict system of espionage enabled the government to detect and punish
any attempt to rebel. The atrocities of the _Cabochiens_ were equalled
by their opponents, and without the excuse that could be offered for the
brutal action of a mob. The one difficulty in Armagnac’s way was the
fact that the dauphin John was in the hands of the duke of Burgundy at
Valenciennes. But in April 1417 the dauphin died so opportunely that
Armagnac was suspected of having brought it about. The only surviving
prince, Charles, was the son-in-law of Louis II. of Anjou, and had been
brought up in bitter hostility to the Burgundians. The one influence
over him that might stand in the way of Armagnac was that of his mother.
In a lucid interval Charles VI. was induced to notice and resent his
wife’s notorious misconduct, and Isabel of Bavaria was sent into
disguised captivity at Tours. Indignant at this insult, she forgot the
quarrel of a lifetime, sought the alliance of John the Fearless, and
escaped from Tours with his aid. This encouraged the Burgundians to
fresh exertions. The queen claimed to act as regent during her husband’s
‘occupation,’ as it was euphemistically called. At Amiens she and the
duke of Burgundy established a council and a parliament in opposition to
those in Paris, which were ‘subjected to the usurpers of the royal
power.’ The civil war was carried on in a series of petty combats over
the northern provinces, in which each side was equally discredited by
acts of the grossest brutality.
The renewed outbreak of civil war encouraged Henry V. to enter Normandy
again in 1417. Little resistance was offered to him, except at Caen, and
a truce with [Sidenote: English in Normandy.] the duke of Brittany gave
him a secure hold upon north-western France. The rapid success of the
foreign invasion gave rise to negotiations between the French factions,
and a treaty was on the verge of conclusion in May 1418, when it was
broken off by Armagnac and his brutal colleague, Tannegui du Châtel.
This was more than the Parisians could endure; the gates were opened to
admit a body [Sidenote: Burgundians seize Paris.] of Burgundian cavalry,
and the citizens rose with cries of ‘Burgundy and peace.’ Armagnac was
discovered and slain, but the dauphin succeeded in escaping to Melun,
where he was joined by Tannegui and other followers, who had made a bold
but unsuccessful attempt to hold out in the Bastile. The revolution in
Paris gave to the Burgundians the ascendency in the north, but the
dauphin continued to call himself lieutenant-general for his father, and
set up a council and a parliament in Poitiers.
One result of the revolution was to impose the burden of national
defence upon the duke of Burgundy. The Parisians, although Burgundian,
had not ceased to be Frenchmen, and their clamour compelled the duke to
take measures against the English. He escorted the insane king to take
the oriflamme from St. Denis, and he established a camp at Beauvais.
[Sidenote: Fall of Rouen.] But he did nothing to relieve Rouen, which
was offering a heroic resistance to Henry V., and the town was forced to
capitulate on January 19, 1419. A systematic government was set up in
Normandy as a dependency of the English crown.
The news of the fall of Rouen roused the national spirit of France. The
two parliaments of Paris and Poitiers combined to demand internal peace
in the face of [Sidenote: Negotiations between the factions.] the
foreign foe. On May 14 a truce for three months was concluded. But the
English successes continued, and the capture of Pontoise enabled them to
threaten Paris. The pressure of imminent danger forced the rival
factions into closer relations with each other, and it was agreed that a
meeting should take place between the dauphin and John the Fearless for
the final settlement of all differences. This was a great blow to the
extreme Armagnacs, who dreaded the loss of power and the vengeance of
Burgundy. Tannegui du Châtel and his associates determined by a
desperate act to put an end to all [Sidenote: Murder of John of
Burgundy.] prospects of pacification. The interview took place on
September 10, 1419, on the bridge at Montereau, and John the Fearless
was treacherously assassinated by the dauphin’s followers. Whether
Charles himself was aware of the plot beforehand is open to question,
but by continued association with the murderers he made himself an
accomplice after the event.
The murder of John the Fearless was a fatal event for France. It revived
the unity of the Burgundian party, which had been rapidly breaking up,
and for the moment [Sidenote: Treaty of Troyes, 1420.] it subordinated
all sentiment of nationality to the desire for revenge. The young duke
Philip vowed that the dauphin, whom he regarded as his father’s
assassin, should never sit upon the throne of France. Isabel of Bavaria,
who had never loved her youngest son, did not scruple to join the duke
in a close alliance with the English. The treaty of Troyes (May 21,
1420) excluded the dauphin from the succession, arranged that Henry V.
should marry Katharine of France, that he and his descendants should be
the heirs of Charles VI., and that Henry should be regent during the
lifetime of his father-in-law. Normandy and all other English conquests
were to be reunited to the French crown on Henry’s accession, and he
swore to observe the laws and customs of France. Paris, already
dominated by Burgundian partisans, and exposed to the danger of English
attack from Pontoise, could make no resistance to an arrangement which
proposed to subject France to an English dynasty.
The treaty of Troyes was a treaty with one of the factions in France; it
was not a treaty with the French nation. In order to carry it out it was
necessary to enforce [Sidenote: War in northern France.] the submission
of the Armagnacs, who had the support of almost all the provinces south
of the Loire, and also held a number of strong places north of that
river. The reduction of the latter was the first task of the English and
Burgundians. Some of them surrendered readily, but Melun held out for
four months, and with its fall the campaign of 1420 ended. Henry V.
returned to England, but was recalled by the news of a serious reverse.
Thomas of Clarence, who had been left in command, was defeated and slain
by a combined force of French and Scots at Baugé in Anjou (March 23,
1421), and a rising in favour of the dauphin took place in Picardy.
Henry’s return restored victory to the English arms. While Philip of
Burgundy put down the malcontents in Picardy, the English laid siege to
Meaux, the chief Armagnac stronghold in northern France. With its
surrender (March 22, 1422) the supremacy of the allies to the north of
the Loire seemed to be assured. A few adventurers, at the head of
mercenary forces, remained to pillage the country, but there was no
longer any centre of organised resistance to the English. Their army was
preparing to cross the river when it was recalled by the news that Henry
V. had died of dysentery, at the early [Sidenote: Deaths of Henry V. and
Charles VI.] age of thirty-four (August 31, 1422). Seven weeks later,
the unfortunate Charles VI. was also carried to the grave, accompanied
by the tears of his subjects, who remembered that if he had never ruled,
so he had never oppressed them. None of his own family were present at
the funeral, and the only mourner of princely rank was the Duke of
Bedford, now regent of France for the infant Henry VI., who was solemnly
proclaimed King of France and England.
For several years after 1422 there were two kings of France—Henry VI.,
represented by his uncle Bedford, with Paris as his capital; and Charles
VII., a youth of twenty years of age, at Bourges. The position
[Sidenote: Bedford and Charles VII.] of the latter had been completely
changed by the treaty of Troyes. He was no longer the mere head of an
unscrupulous and discredited faction, but the leader of a national
cause. This washed out the stain of the murder of Montereau. There was
hardly a French nation as yet, otherwise Henry V. had never conquered
Normandy, but there was certainly a sentiment of nationality. A duke of
Burgundy, half of whose possessions lay outside France, might be
comparatively free from such a sentiment, but his French subjects were
not. From the very first the result of the struggle was certain. All the
permanent influences were in favour of Charles and against England. Only
two things were necessary to secure the victory of Charles VII.—the
national sentiment must be kindled into a blaze, which was done by
Jeanne Darc, and Burgundy must be detached from England. This was sooner
or later inevitable, both from the natural jarring of interests and from
the pressure brought to bear upon the duke by his own followers. Henry
VI. wore the crown of France, partly by virtue of the Burgundian
alliance, and partly because the feeling of national union had been
overpowered for a time by domestic feuds and by the misery which they
had brought to the country. Directly this double basis collapsed, the
English power fell. That it lasted as long as it did was due to the
difference between the respective leaders. John of Bedford was a great
soldier and a great diplomatist; there was no one on the French side who
equalled him in either capacity. Charles VII. may have had scant justice
dealt to him by historians, and his latest biographer would have us
believe that he was a model of kingly virtues. But these virtues, such
as they were, were developed by adversity. At the time when he assumed
the royal title, he was too young to have much experience of government,
his training had been against him, and he had been fatally compromised
by the criminal violence of his associates. He was not personally a
coward, but he disliked war, and he disliked publicity. Two important
cities—Bourges and Poitiers—remained faithful to him, but he preferred
the more congenial solitude of Loches and Chinon. He had excellent
advisers. The council and parliament which he established at Poitiers
comprised many of the ablest members of those institutions who had left
Paris in 1418. So far as it was possible to conduct a civil government
during the war, it was conducted well. But against these civilian
advisers must be set the influence of brutal adventurers, such as
Tannegui du Châtel, whose services he could not dispense with, and whom
he was too feeble to restrain. Their gradual disappearance enabled him
at last to free himself from the Armagnac party, and to render
conspicuous services to France. But for the first seven years of his
reign he had to contend with inferior instruments against superior
force.
Geographically, France was fairly evenly divided. Paris, with the Ile de
France, Normandy, Picardy, Champagne, and all the Burgundian fiefs,
together with Western Guienne and Gascony, recognised [Sidenote:
Division of France.] Henry VI. Maine and Anjou were a battleground
between parties. Their duke, Louis III., was absent in Italy, engaged in
the effort to secure the succession in Naples. His mother—Yolande of
Aragon—was the mother-in-law of Charles VII., and an influential
personage at his court. Charles could count, in the first place, upon
the provinces which he had held in fief before his father’s
death—Touraine, Dauphiné, Berri, and Poitou. Orleans, whose duke was
still a prisoner in England, was loyal, and so were Auvergne, Lyons,
Bourbon, Languedoc, and the eastern parts of Guienne and Gascony. The
duke of Brittany was doubtful. He was intimately connected with both
parties. He had married Charles VII.’s sister, but he was the nephew
through his mother of the first duke of Burgundy, and that mother had
been the second wife of Henry IV. of England. His family was under great
obligations to England, but his subjects were, for the most part, averse
to the English alliance; and his brother—Arthur of Richemont—had been
one of Henry V.’s prisoners at Agincourt. For the moment the attitude of
John V. was decided by a foolish attempt on the part of the Armagnac
leaders to excite a revolt in Brittany in favour of the count of
Penthièvre. This drove the duke, in 1423, to acknowledge Henry VI. and
to make a treaty with the dukes of Bedford and Burgundy. At the same
time, Bedford tried to strengthen the ties between Burgundy and England
by marrying Philip’s sister Anne. There were three provinces—Lorraine,
Savoy, and Provence—which were not French, but for many years had been
involved by their geography in French politics. Provence belonged to the
duke of Anjou, and was certain, sooner or later, to support Charles VII.
Amadeus VIII. of Savoy was the uncle of the duke of Burgundy, but held a
neutral position, and tried to play the part of mediator. Charles of
Lorraine had been an ardent Burgundian partisan, and had been appointed
constable in 1418 by John the Fearless. But since then he had been
gained over by Yolande, and induced to marry his only daughter to her
second son, Réné.
The actual military operations were not, for some time, of first-rate
importance. There was no campaign on a large scale, and only two battles
which deserve mention. A few places in the north, notably Guise and
[Sidenote: Campaigns of 1423-24.] Ivry, held out for Charles VII., and
Picardy was always ready to revolt. Important assistance was rendered by
Scotland, the permanent ally of France against England. Buchan, a Scot,
was appointed constable of France, and the earl of Douglas, who brought
a number of adventurers, was created count of Touraine. In 1423 a mixed
French and Scottish army was defeated by the English and Burgundians at
Crevant. In 1424 a more important engagement took place. The English had
laid siege to Ivry, and a great effort was made to relieve the garrison.
Bedford in person met the relieving army at Verneuil, and inflicted a
crushing defeat upon them. Douglas, Buchan, and a number of French
nobles were slain; Maine was completely reduced, and the remaining
fortresses in Picardy surrendered.
At this juncture Bedford’s progress was arrested, and his whole design
was threatened with ruin by the action of his brother, Humphrey of
Gloucester, whose reckless selfishness nearly effected a complete
rupture [Sidenote: Gloucester quarrels with Burgundy.] with Burgundy.
The dearest aim of Philip the Good was to absorb the dominions in the
Netherlands of the two collateral branches of his house.[11] Holland,
Hainault, and Zealand had now passed, by the death of William VI., to
his only daughter, Jacqueline. Another of Philip’s uncles, Antony of
Brabant, had left two sons, John IV. and Philip. The duke of Burgundy
had contrived to unite these two lines into one by marrying Jacqueline
to John IV. of Brabant. But the marriage was inharmonious, Jacqueline
fled from her husband, and appealed for aid to the duke of Gloucester.
Philip was infuriated when he learned that Gloucester had actually
married Jacqueline, having obtained a dispensation from the old
anti-pope, Benedict XIII. A prolonged and intricate quarrel followed.
Gloucester claimed his wife’s territories and defied Philip, who
supported John of Brabant, to mortal combat. Bedford was in despair. He
endeavoured to pacify Philip by ceding to him the Picard towns of Roye,
Mondidier, and Péronne, and by allowing him to annex to Burgundy the
counties of Auxerre and Macon. Fortunately, Gloucester was as changeable
as he was rash and hot-tempered. He repudiated Jacqueline in order to
marry Eleanor Cobham, and Philip the Good was free to settle matters
with his cousin without being hampered by English intervention. But
Gloucester continued to put difficulties in Bedford’s way. He quarrelled
so violently with his uncle, Henry Beaufort, that Bedford was compelled
to return to England, where the task of peacemaker detained him from
December 1425 till the spring of 1427.
Meanwhile Philip of Burgundy had been nearly impelled by the conduct of
Gloucester to desert England and come to terms with Charles VII. One
difficulty in the way was removed by the dismissal from the court
[Sidenote: Quarrels at the court of Charles VII.] of Tannegui du Châtel
and the other accomplices of the assassination at Montereau. Philip had
declared that he would never pardon the murderers of his father, and the
negotiations with Burgundy enabled Yolande and the wiser advisers of
Charles VII. to procure their expulsion. The office of constable was
given to the count of Richemont, and this induced the duke of Brittany
to acknowledge Charles. The latter could now claim to be no longer the
champion of the Armagnacs, but a national king, and a reconciliation
with Burgundy seemed to be the natural and inevitable result of the
change. But the hopes of all patriotic Frenchmen were disappointed for a
time by Charles’s weakness of character. In his youth he was always
under the thumb of a favourite, and the favourite at this moment was
Pierre de Giac. Giac’s wife had been the mistress of John the Fearless,
and she had been employed to induce him, in spite of warnings, to keep
his appointment at Montereau. With such a record behind him, it was
natural that Giac should do all in his power to thwart the negotiations
with Burgundy. Richemont, who had just returned to Bourges from an
unsuccessful campaign in Normandy, was furious at the frustration of a
project on which the salvation of France depended. The favourite was
seized at night, condemned to a hasty trial, and drowned. A successor,
who incurred the displeasure of the rugged constable, was assassinated.
Charles VII. could not venture to punish those acts of violence, but he
refused to pardon or trust their instigator. As intimidation had failed,
Richemont tried a new way to effect his object. He introduced a new
favourite, George de la Tremouille, who proved the evil genius of the
king and of France for the next six years. La Tremouille became
all-powerful at court, but he turned against the patron to whom he owed
his advancement. Richemont was banished from Bourges, and a small civil
war broke out between his partisans and those of the favourite. The
condition of France seemed more hopeless than ever. The reconciliation
with Burgundy had failed; and, to make matters worse, the duke of
Brittany, left unaided to oppose the English, had made terms with them
at the end of 1427 and had become the vassal of Henry VI.
Meanwhile Bedford had succeeded, by persistent diplomacy, in removing
the difficulties that stood in his way. Henry Beaufort was gratified by
being allowed to receive the cardinal’s hat, which Henry V. had
forbidden, and was induced to leave England in order to head a crusade
against the Hussites in Bohemia. The quarrel between Gloucester and
Burgundy was terminated by the former’s marriage, and by the death in
1427 of Jacqueline’s lawful husband, John of Brabant, whose duchy passed
to his younger [Sidenote: Burgundian aggrandisement in the Netherlands.]
brother. Philip the Good might not be a very devoted ally, but no
opposition was to be expected from him as long as he was allowed to
swallow the Netherlandish provinces at will. His war with Jacqueline
continued until she undertook to acknowledge him as her heir in Holland,
Hainault, and Zealand, and to grant him the immediate administration of
these provinces as her mainbourg. Luxemburg was in the hands of
Elizabeth, widow of Philip’s uncle, Antony of Brabant. She was no
relation by blood to the house of Burgundy, and there were members of
her own family to whom the duchy ought to have passed, but Philip
succeeded in the end in securing possession of Luxemburg. Namur he
purchased from its count. The only provinces in the Netherlands which
were free from Burgundian domination were the duchy of Gelderland and
the bishoprics of Liége and Utrecht.
Burgundy being thus pacified, Bedford was encouraged by the mingled
folly and misfortunes of his opponents to make new exertions in France.
In 1428 he received [Sidenote: Siege of Orleans.] reinforcements under
the earl of Salisbury, and a regular campaign was planned instead of the
petty local war of partisans that had been carried on for the last four
years. It was determined to lay siege to Orleans, which was situated at
the elbow of the Loire, and constituted the key to southern France. Its
capture would involve the submission of Touraine, Berri, and Poitou, the
very heart of Charles VII.’s kingdom. The importance of the siege was
fully recognised, and desperate exertions were made both for the attack
and the defence. The English forces were not numerous enough to form a
complete blockade, but they gradually drew nearer and nearer, and their
engineering works were regarded as the masterpieces of the age. The
French attempted to cut off a large convoy of provisions, escorted by
Sir John Fastolf, but they were defeated in the battle of the Herrings.
This skirmish seemed likely to decide the fate of the city. The besieged
sent envoys to Philip of Burgundy, offering to surrender to him if the
English would withdraw. Philip was eager that the offer should be
accepted, but Bedford replied that after having beaten the bushes he
would not allow another to seize the birds. The duke was so indignant
that he ordered his own troops to retire, and thus a second blow was
struck at the Anglo-Burgundian alliance.
Meanwhile Charles VII., whose kingdom was at stake, was doing nothing.
Tremouille would not allow him to arrange terms with the constable, and
assistance from Scotland, which was urgently demanded, could not arrive
[Sidenote: Appearance of Jeanne Darc.] in time to save Orleans. It was
at this juncture that Jeanne Darc made her famous appearance at Chinon.
It is impossible, in a concise narrative, to do justice to the
extraordinarily dramatic episodes that followed in such rapid
succession. All that can be attempted is to tell the story of the chief
events in which Jeanne played her part, without endeavouring to discuss
her claim to supernatural guidance, or to throw any new light upon her
remarkable character and influence. Great efforts were made by the
courtiers to exclude her from the royal presence; but the impression she
had already made upon the common people, and the influence of Yolande of
Aragon, at last brought about the desired meeting. She gained the
confidence of the king by reassuring him about the legitimacy of his
birth, a matter on which he entertained not unnatural doubts, though he
had never communicated his misgivings to any one. After some delay, a
force was raised with which she entered Orleans on April 29, 1429. On
May 4 the attack upon the English [Sidenote: French successes in 1429.]
positions was commenced, and on May 8 the siege was raised. Jeanne
herself carried the great news to Charles VII. at Loches, and insisted
that he should accompany her to Rheims for his coronation, which had
never yet taken place. The indolent king and his courtiers were
reluctant to undertake a long and hazardous march through a country
which had long been held by the enemy, but the persistence of the
victorious maid carried the day. To the astonishment of Europe, the
French had suddenly become invincible. Jargeau was stormed, a large body
of English under Talbot and Fastolf was routed at Patay (June 18), and
one town after another opened its gates to the advancing army. In Troyes
it was determined to make a stand, but at the first assault the citizens
rose and compelled the garrison to surrender. On July 16 Rheims was
entered, and on the next day the coronation took place with the
accustomed formalities.
The daring and success of the march to Rheims made a profound
impression. Jeanne clamoured for an immediate advance upon Paris, and it
is probable that if she had had her way the capital would have fallen.
Bedford was in despair. In Normandy the opponents of English rule were
gaining ground, and the loyalty of the Parisians was doubtful. To obtain
an army he had to conclude his famous agreement with Cardinal Beaufort,
by which the troops which had been collected for the Hussite war were
diverted, much to the indignation of Martin V., to make war upon Charles
VII. In order to secure Paris, he had to appeal to the duke of Burgundy,
and to purchase his continued support by the cession of Meaux and by the
appointment of a Burgundian partisan to the office of captain of the
city. Fortunately for the English regent, there was treachery and
division in the royal camp. La Tremouille and his associates were eager
to destroy the ascendency which Jeanne was acquiring over the king. She
was known to have advised him to come to terms with the constable and to
free himself from evil advisers, and they felt that the triumph of
France would be dearly purchased at the cost of their own overthrow. And
although the younger leaders, such as Dunois, the bastard half-brother
of the duke of Orleans, were devoted to the heroine, the older
commanders were indignant at being controlled by a girl. Jeanne found
that she had to contend with a regular conspiracy, of which Charles VII.
himself, to his eternal shame, was a willing accomplice. Futile
negotiations with Burgundy provided a pretext for a delay which enabled
Bedford and Beaufort to bring up troops for the defence of Paris. But a
rising in Normandy compelled Bedford to retire northwards, and Jeanne at
last succeeded in inducing the royal forces to advance. Compiègne,
Senlis, and Beauvais surrendered in rapid succession. From Beauvais, the
bishop, Pierre Cauchon, was expelled as an English partisan, and he was
destined to take a terrible revenge for the injury. But at St. Denis,
Charles VII. refused to run any further risks, although his approach
would probably have induced the Parisians to rise. Losing all patience,
the maid attacked the fortifications with a volunteer force, but met
with her first repulse. She returned to St. Denis with the proposal to
cross the Seine and attempt a new attack on the right bank. To her
horrified amazement, the bridge had been destroyed by order of the royal
council. Against such despicable treachery it was impossible to contend.
Charles withdrew to the Loire and disbanded his army. Jeanne with
difficulty obtained leave to attack some of the smaller places on the
Loire, but after some successes she was driven back from La Charité, to
the undisguised relief of the courtiers.
In spite of these bitter disappointments, the French cause had made
immense strides in 1429. The attack on Orleans had been foiled, the
greater part of Champagne and Brie had been recovered, and the dormant
loyalty of the northern peoples had received a sudden stimulus. But
these successes had also served to give new vigour to the alliance
between Burgundy and England. Philip was no longer a loyal supporter of
Henry VI., but he was not prepared to acquiesce in a triumph of Charles
VII. that was obtained without his aid. Moreover, his greed for
territory was by no means satisfied, and he knew that as the English got
into difficulties the value of his aid would increase. Bedford was quite
willing to pay the price, and offered the investiture of Champagne. It
is true that the province was no longer in English hands, and that its
acceptance imposed upon Philip the necessity of recovering it from the
French. But Champagne was of superlative importance to the duke, because
it would serve to unite his two chief possessions—Flanders and the duchy
of Burgundy. He accepted the offer of the regent, and in 1430 the
Burgundian troops once more [Sidenote: Capture of Jeanne.] took the
field and laid siege to Compiègne. The news that one of her precious
conquests was threatened, roused Jeanne from the inaction in which she
had been kept against her will. Without authority from the king, she
collected a small band of devoted followers, and threw herself into the
besieged town. It was her last enterprise. A sortie which she headed was
repulsed, and she was cut off before she could regain the
fortifications. She was taken prisoner by the followers of John of
Luxemburg, a cadet of the house of St. Pol (May 24, 1430).
From the English point of view, the capture of Jeanne was insufficient.
The impression she had made must be [Sidenote: Her trial and death.]
effaced, and she herself must be discredited as well as punished. A
charge of heresy and witchcraft was equally suggested by the
superstition of the age and by the extravagant claims to supernatural
powers which Jeanne herself had put forward. It was natural for her
enemies to hold that these powers came not from above, but from Satan.
The university of Paris, which boasted itself the home of the highest
learning of the time, gave the first cue for persecution. They demanded
that she should be tried before the inquisition of faith, which had been
established in France by Innocent III., but had since fallen into
oblivion. But the university was not sufficiently under English
dictation, and they had a more suitable instrument to hand. The bank of
the Oise on which Jeanne had been captured was just within the bishopric
of Beauvais; and Pierre Cauchon, an exile from his diocese, and
ambitious of the archbishopric of Rouen, was at the beck and call of
Bedford. He demanded the surrender of the prisoner to his jurisdiction,
and undertook the necessary negotiations with John of Luxemburg and his
suzerain. In ordinary times Philip the Good might have preferred to
retain so valuable a prize; but his cousin, Philip of Brabant and
Limburg, had just died, and he was anxious to secure the succession. The
Nevers branch of his house had strong claims to a partition of the
inheritance; and as Bedford’s intervention might prove decisive, it was
imperative to avoid any quarrel with the English. The bargain was
quickly settled. John of Luxemburg carried his prisoner into Artois,
resigned her to his suzerain, and left to the duke of Burgundy the
disgrace of selling the champion of France to the foreigner. In November
1430 the shameful transaction was completed. Into the details of the
trial, with its arid scholasticism and its wanton brutality, it is
unnecessary to enter. The presiding judge was the bishop of Beauvais,
but he was guided throughout by Bedford and Cardinal Beaufort. A
condemnation was from the first a foregone conclusion, and the martyr
was burned in the old market-place of Rouen on May 28, 1431.
Meanwhile the war had been going on, and the allies had gained little by
the capture of their most formidable opponent. Even Compiègne held out
successfully [Sidenote: Character of the war.] through a six months’
siege. An Anglo-Burgundian army was defeated in Champagne, and Philip
was chagrined to see the prize on which he had confidently reckoned lost
to him for ever. In Normandy the English gained some successes, but
these were counterbalanced by the loss of Melun. In 1431 hostilities
were resumed in Champagne, Picardy, Artois, and Burgundy. It would be
tedious and useless to describe the innumerable skirmishes and sieges in
which, as a rule, only insignificant forces took part. With the
disappearance of Jeanne Darc all restraint upon the brutal instincts of
the soldiers had been removed. Most of the leaders were mercenary
adventurers who fought, not out of devotion to one side or the other,
but because their followers could only be kept together by plunder. The
atrocities committed by the French troops were the greatest obstacle to
the success of Charles VII. The people were everywhere inclined to
return to their allegiance, but they hesitated to trust their lives and
property to such defenders. The war was complicated by an important
dispute about the succession in Lorraine. On the death of Charles I. in
1431 the duchy was claimed by his son-in-law, Réné of Anjou, who was
already duke of Bar. But he was opposed by Antony of Vaudemont, a nephew
of the late duke, who maintained that Lorraine was a male fief. Charles
VII. sent assistance to his brother-in-law, while Philip the Good
espoused the cause of Vaudemont. The Burgundians gained a complete
victory in July 1431, when Réné was taken prisoner. But the Lorrainers
were hostile to the count of Vaudemont, and in the end the dispute was
compromised. Réné recovered his liberty, and his rival withdrew his
claims to the duchy on condition that his son Frederick should marry
Réné’s daughter, Yolande.
Bedford was fully conscious that the English cause was steadily losing
ground in France. He tried to stimulate the loyalty of the Parisians by
bringing over the young Henry VI. to be crowned in Paris. It was his
answer to the coronation ceremony of Rheims. But it failed to produce
the desired result. The French were indignant that the chief part in the
ceremony was taken by Cardinal Beaufort, and not by a native prelate.
The common people complained that there was no remission of taxes and no
release of prisoners. Even more serious was the growing alienation of
Burgundy. In 1432 occurred the death of Bedford’s wife, Anne [Sidenote:
Rupture between Bedford and Burgundy.] of Burgundy. She was popular with
the Parisians, whereas the regent was not, and she had always been a
mediator between her husband and her brother. To make matters worse,
within five months Bedford found a new bride in the person of Jacquetta
of Luxemburg, daughter of the count of St. Pol, and niece of the captor
of Joan of Arc. She was a vassal of Burgundy, and Philip was indignant
that she should make so important a marriage without his consent.
Cardinal Beaufort made vain attempts to effect a reconciliation between
the two dukes. They were induced to come to St. Omer, but the interview
did not take place, and the personal quarrel was never healed.
Meanwhile important events were taking place at the court of Charles
VII. The ill-feeling against the omnipotent favourite, La Tremouille,
had been steadily growing, and the queen’s mother, Yolande of Aragon,
organised a conspiracy for his overthrow. The conspirators acted in
[Sidenote: Fall of La Tremouille.] conjunction with the constable
Richemont, who sent some of his trusty Bretons to aid them, but wisely
abstained from interfering in person. The plot was successful. La
Tremouille was surprised in his bed, and was kept in close captivity
till he had ceased to be formidable. The king was terrified when he
heard the news, but was consoled when he learned that the dreaded
Richemont was not present. It was not till 1434 that Charles consented
to be reconciled to the constable, whose rough exterior and brusque
measures against former favourites had outweighed his loyal services to
the national cause. From this time a new era opened for France. The
Royal Council was reformed under the guidance of Yolande, and room was
found in it for some of those bourgeois ministers, to whom was due the
later reorganisation of the kingdom. Even Charles himself began to show
unwonted energy, a change which unsupported tradition has assigned to
the influence of his mistress, Agnes Sorel. French historians are never
tired of insisting that France owed its salvation in the fifteenth
century to two women, the one a saint and the other a sinner.
The quarrel between Bedford and Burgundy and the suppression of feuds
and jealousies at the court of Charles removed the most obvious
difficulties which had [Sidenote: Treaty of Arras, 1435.] hitherto
impeded a reconciliation between the French king and Philip the Good.
Strenuous negotiations resulted in an agreement that a congress should
meet at Arras in July 1435. The English were to be invited to accept
reasonable terms, and if they refused Philip was to do all in his power
to restore peace to the kingdom. The inevitable result of the congress
was easy to foresee. Beaufort and the English envoys rejected the first
French demand that Henry VI. should resign the crown of France, and
quitted Arras. It only remained to arrange matters with Philip, who was
in a position to dictate his own terms. It was the suzerain who sued for
pardon and the vassal who granted it. The duke demanded and received the
counties of Auxerre and Macon in perpetuity for himself and his heirs,
the towns on the river Somme, which on certain conditions might be
redeemed by the French king, and the recognition of his claims to the
county of Boulogne, which had been contested by the heirs of the late
duchess of Berri. In addition, Philip was to be freed from all homage
and subjection to Charles VII. during their common lifetime. If Charles
died first, Philip was to do homage to his successor; but if Philip died
first, his heir would become the vassal of Charles VII. On these
exorbitant conditions Philip agreed to forget all past wrongs, _i.e._
the death of his father, to which Charles virtually pleaded guilty, and
to enter into a defensive alliance against the English. The treaty,
which put an end to the long feud between Burgundians and Armagnacs, was
signed on September 21, 1435. A week earlier Bedford had died. He had
lived long enough to witness the collapse of the foundation on which the
edifice rested, to whose construction he had devoted all his abilities
and exertions.
Footnote 11:
See Appendix, Genealogical Table H.
CHAPTER XVI
REVIVAL OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY, 1435-1494
English disasters and loss of Paris—Prolongation of war—France
exhausted and demoralised—Necessity of reform—Ordinance of 1439—The
_Praguerie_ —Creation of a standing army—Peace party in
England—-Henry VI. marries Margaret of Anjou—Renewal of war—Conquest
of Normandy and Guienne—Last years of Charles VII.—Accession of
Louis XI.—His character and early actions—League of the Public
Weal—Treaty of Conflans—Charles the Bold and Liége—Louis recovers
Normandy—Interview at Péronne—Charles of France receives
Guienne—Relations of France and Burgundy with England—Renewal of war
between Louis and Charles—Death of the Duke of Guienne—Charles’s
acquisitions in Germany—Fate of St. Pol—War with the Swiss and death
of Charles the Bold—Mary of Burgundy marries Maximilian—Treaty of
Arras—Successes of Louis XI.—Regency of Anne of Beaujeu—Charles
VIII. marries Anne of Brittany—Question of Naples.
The death of Bedford and the treaty of Arras were events of decisive
importance. The English power in northern [Sidenote: English disasters
in 1435-6.] France had rested upon the Burgundian alliance, which was
now irretrievably lost. Philip, it is true, had not promised active aid
to Charles VII., and probably intended to observe a profitable
neutrality. But the English were too indignant at his desertion to allow
this. They insulted his envoys, maltreated his subjects who were
resident in England, and set themselves to inflict all the damage they
could upon Flemish trade. The result was that not only was Philip forced
into hostilities with his late allies, but the Flemish citizens,
hitherto the strongest link between him and England, urged on the war
and offered to take the whole burden of it upon themselves. The rupture
with Burgundy altered both the balance of military force and the
sentiments of the population in the northern provinces. A rising took
place in Normandy, and even Harfleur, the first conquest of Henry V.,
opened its gates to French troops. Many of the strong places in the Ile
de France were held by Burgundian commanders, and they followed their
duke’s example in going over to Charles VII. In 1436 the constable
Richemont was strong enough to attack Paris. The citizens had been
partisans of Burgundy rather than of England; they had been alienated by
recent measures of repression; and the French now commanded the
water-ways by which the normal supplies of food reached the capital. The
fear of famine impelled the [Sidenote: Loss of Paris.] citizens to a
course which they were eager to adopt upon other grounds. One of the
gates was opened to the constable, and the populace rose with shouts of
‘Peace! The king and the duke of Burgundy!’ The English garrison, after
taking refuge in the Bastille, was allowed to depart upon honourable
terms. The parliament and the other sovereign courts returned to their
old abodes, and Paris became once more the capital of France.
The fall of Paris seemed to herald the immediate collapse of the English
dominion in France. Yet the general expectation was disappointed, and
the war went on for another seventeen years. A number of causes combined
to retard the progress of the French arms. The assistance rendered by
the duke of Burgundy proved far less efficient than had been
anticipated. In the first heat of resentment at the treatment he
received from the English, Philip vowed a striking revenge, and in 1436
he advanced with a large force to the siege of Calais. But his troops
were mostly Flemings, who had never been very skilful in aggressive
warfare, and had lost most of their military aptitudes during the
comparative peace which they had enjoyed under Burgundian rule. The
siege was abandoned in disorder even before the arrival of Gloucester
with a relieving force. Philip was deeply chagrined at this humiliating
failure, and a quarrel with the commune of Bruges diverted his attention
from the war and induced him in 1439 to conclude a truce for the
Netherlands with the English. Even more serious than the loss of such a
powerful ally was the exhaustion and demoralisation of France. For
nearly thirty years the country had been the scene of a desolating war
which combined the worst horrors of civil strife and foreign invasion,
and added to them some evils which were peculiar to itself. The most
efficient military force on the French side was furnished by the
companies of adventurers which had been originally introduced by
Armagnac. The employment of these men proved a curse to France. They
recognised no authority except that of their own commanders, and their
loyalty to them was only purchased by the plunder which they were
allowed to extort with impartial greed from friend and foe. The horrible
tortures which they inflicted in order to compel the hapless peasants to
disclose their savings, are among the most revolting incidents of a
period in which horrors are the rule rather than the exception. The
significant name of _écorcheurs_ or flayers, applied to them by their
victims, has become almost a technical term. The country was depopulated
as well as despoiled, and the provinces in English occupation were the
worst sufferers. Financial difficulties on both sides were a prominent
cause of the prolongation of the war. Military operations on a large
scale were impossible. So-called battles were mere skirmishes. A force
of 2000 men was an army. Isolated leaders struck a blow here, or
captured a town there, merely to keep their soldiers employed and to
obtain booty, but not with the object of gaining any decisive advantage.
To many of these leaders the termination of the war meant ruin and
effacement, a result which they were by no means eager to hasten.
In order to equip France for the final effort that was needed to expel
the foreign conqueror from her soil, it was necessary to undertake those
administrative reforms which constitute the real glory of the reign of
Charles VII. [Sidenote: Ministers of Charles VII.] Charles is known in
history by the name of ‘_le bien servi_,’ and it is probably to the
ministers rather than to the king that the credit of the internal
progress of France is due. Richemont and Dunois carried out the arduous
task of transforming the free companies into a disciplined force under
royal control. The two brothers, Gaspard and Jean Bureau, improved the
French artillery till it became the best in Europe, a pre-eminence which
it retained for the rest of the century. But the most famous adviser of
Charles was the merchant of Bourges, Jacques Cœur. He owed his influence
to the great wealth which he acquired by trade with the Levant. Hitherto
the cities of Italy and the Catalans had been without serious rivals in
the Mediterranean. Jacques Cœur brought Marseilles into competition with
Venice, Genoa, and Barcelona. His loans to the monarchy enabled Charles
VII. to carry on the war when the exhaustion of the country made it
almost impossible to fill the exchequer by means of taxation. Charles
rewarded him with the office of _argentier_, or treasurer of the royal
household. In this capacity he took an active part in reforming the
financial administration, and especially in restoring the currency which
had been ruinously debased during the recent disorders.
By far the most important single measure of the reign was the
_Ordonnance sur la Gendarmerie_, published by the States-general at
Orleans in 1439. The preamble recites [Sidenote: Ordinance of 1439.]
that it is made ‘to remedy and put an end to the great excesses and
robberies committed by the _gens de guerre_, who have long lived and do
now live upon the people without order or justice.’ In the future no one
is to raise a company without royal licence, and all captains are to be
nominated by the king, who is to fix the number and arms of their
soldiers. Pillage is expressly forbidden, and jurisdiction over the
troops is placed in the hands of royal judges. For the payment of the
troops an important financial innovation is made. The nobles are
forbidden to impose a _taille_ or tallage on their domain, and the
_taille_ is to be a national tax paid to the king. Thus Charles VII.
received a revenue of 1,800,000 livres. There was nothing in the
ordinance to make this tax permanent, or to give to the king any power
of arbitrarily fixing the amount of the _taille_; but the permanence of
the _taille_ was held to be involved in the permanence of the military
force which it was granted to support. And the successors of Charles
VII. held that the right to levy the _taille_ without consent gave them
also the right to increase it without asking for any fresh grant. The
acquiescence of the French people was due to the sufferings they had
gone through. Worn out by the prolonged war and by the terrible
exactions of the free companies, they were eager to strengthen the hands
of the monarchy to which alone they could look for a restoration of
peace and order. The absolute control of the national force and the
national revenue, which the action of the States-general of Orleans
allowed the crown to assume, enabled the monarchy to erect a despotism
in France. Englishmen may hold that orderly government and national
independence were dearly purchased by the sacrifice of all securities
for constitutional liberty, but it is at least probable that if they had
ever found themselves in such an evil plight they would have concluded
the same bargain on the same terms.
But though the mass of the people were ready to welcome any addition to
the royal power, the French nobles were sufficiently keen-sighted to
perceive the dangers [Sidenote: The Praguerie.] which it involved to
their hereditary privileges. The ordinance of 1439 expressly deprived
them of three valued rights: the power of taxing their own domain, the
maintenance of troops under their own authority, and the carrying on of
private war, which was enumerated among the causes of disorder which
must be suppressed by the royal troops. It was necessary to strike at
once before the monarchy became too strong. In 1440 a formidable
conspiracy was formed under the leadership of the dukes of Bourbon and
Alençon. Nearly all the great nobles of France were concerned in it,
except the duke of Burgundy, who was occupied with his own affairs, and
the two brothers-in-law of the king, Réné le Bon and Charles of Maine.
Even Dunois allowed himself to be seduced from the royal cause by the
desire to uphold the interests of his class. La Tremouille emerged from
his obscurity to seize a last opportunity of injuring the country and
overthrowing the hated constable. In the very forefront of the
conspirators was the dauphin, Louis, who had quarrelled with his father
on the ground that his mother was insulted by the ostentatious pomp of
Agnes Sorel, and whose restless ambition demanded a share in the
government. Like many another heir to a throne, Louis found himself as
prince allied with a cause of which as king he became the strenuous
opponent. The ‘Praguerie,’as the rising was called, in allusion to the
recent disturbances in Bohemia, seemed at first sight to be
irresistible, especially as the captains of the companies joined in the
movement. But the king showed unexpected energy and decision; the people
rallied to his side, and the selfish coalition against national
interests broke to pieces. Many of the leaders escaped punishment by
betraying their associates, and Louis was banished to his province of
Dauphiné.
The suppression of the Praguerie enabled the government to take the
necessary steps for carrying out the ordinance of 1439. By 1445 fifteen
companies had been [Sidenote: Creation of a standing army.] created,
each under a captain selected by the king. A company contained a hundred
lances, and a lance implied six persons, viz., the man-at-arms, his
page, three archers, and a _coutillier_, a soldier armed with a _coutil_
or dagger worn at the side. Thus the total number of the _gens
d’ordonnance_, as they were called, was nine thousand. Each captain on
appointment had to take the following oath: ‘I promise and swear by God
and Our Lady that I will maintain justice—that I will allow no
pillage—that I will unsparingly punish all those under my charge who are
guilty of such offence, and that I will make reparation for the injuries
that come to my knowledge.’ The _gens d’ordonnance_ were a cavalry
force, and three years later an ordinance of 1448 instituted a body of
infantry, the _francs archiers_. Each parish was to equip at the common
expense a single archer. During peace the cost of his maintenance was
borne by the parish, but when he was on service he was to receive pay
from the crown. They were called ‘free’ archers because they were exempt
from the _taille_ and other obligations. Besides these troops, the king
had his Scottish Guard, which had grown up during the intimate
connection with Scotland in the early years of the reign and received
its final organisation in 1445. There was also an efficient body of
artillerymen and engineers, the creation of the brothers Bureau. That
these military reforms were admirably suited to their purpose is proved
both by the complete cessation of complaints about military outrages,
and by the extraordinarily rapid successes of the French troops when
active hostilities were resumed.
While France was occupied with these reforms and with the ecclesiastical
disputes connected with the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (see p. 237),
England in [Sidenote: Parties in England.] her turn was becoming more
and more involved in those internal dissensions which developed into the
Wars of the Roses. The personal quarrel between Gloucester and Cardinal
Beaufort proved the origin of a lasting party struggle. After the treaty
of Arras, Beaufort and his supporters had seen clearly that the conquest
of France was impossible and had urged the conclusion of peace as the
only means of preserving a part of the provinces acquired by Henry V.
and Bedford. On the other hand, Gloucester, backed by the unreasoning
sentiment of the mob, had urged the disgrace of surrender and the
necessity of a dogged prosecution of the war. The strife of parties had
materially contributed to relax the efforts of England in the languid
warfare that went on from 1436 to 1444. In 1441 the peace party had
secured the release of Charles of Orleans, who had been a prisoner since
the battle of Agincourt and had found solace during his captivity in the
composition of poems which have given him an honourable place in
literary history. Three years later the Duke of Suffolk, who was
gradually superseding the aged cardinal in the leadership of the party,
succeeded in arranging a truce for twenty-two months and in negotiating
a marriage between Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, a daughter of Réné
le Bon and a niece of Charles VII.’s wife. The marriage was solemnised
in 1445, but it was extremely unpopular in England. Not only did
Margaret bring no dowry, but it was part of the bargain that Anjou and
Maine should be handed over to her uncle, Charles of Maine. Anjou had
never been thoroughly conquered, but Maine had long been in English
hands and they still had a garrison in its capital, Le Mans. Dreading
the outbreak of popular fury, Suffolk did all in his power to keep the
agreement secret and to postpone its execution. But in 1448, after
several prolongations of the truce, the patience of the French was
exhausted, and a small force marched to Le Mans and compelled the
withdrawal [Sidenote: Renewal of the war, 1449.] of the garrison and the
evacuation of the whole province. The truce was now extended for another
two years, but no permanent treaty could be arranged, and a renewal of
hostilities was sooner or later inevitable. France had by this time
completed the work of internal reorganisation, while England was
hopelessly unprepared and distracted by factious disputes. Under these
circumstances it was madness for England to provoke a quarrel. But
Suffolk and the Beauforts were conscious that the surrender of Maine had
alienated public opinion, and hoped by a display of vigour to disarm
opposition. The garrison of Le Mans had been quartered on the border of
Normandy and Brittany. On March 24, 1449, while the truce was still in
force, these troops attacked and took the Breton town of Fougères. The
act was as ill-timed [Sidenote: Conquest of the English provinces.] as
it was treacherous. Not only did it give Charles VII. a pretext for
renewing the war, but it alienated the young Francis I. of Brittany, who
had hitherto maintained an attitude of friendly neutrality. The duke
appealed for aid to his suzerain, and Charles VII. despatched his army
to invade Normandy. The campaign was little more than a triumphal
progress for the French troops. Within two months more than twenty towns
were taken. When Rouen was besieged, the citizens rose and shut up the
garrison in the citadel, where Edmund Beaufort, who commanded, had to
surrender (October 19, 1449). By the end of the year the English had
lost the whole of Normandy except a few places on the coast, which were
all taken in the course of 1450. In England these sudden and unexpected
reverses excited a storm of indignation. Adam de Moleyns, bishop of
Chichester, was assassinated at Portsmouth. Suffolk was impeached,
exiled by the king, and murdered at sea. The rising of Jack Cade was
only a prominent symptom of the prevalent discontent. The duke of York
came over from Ireland, and civil war was on the verge of breaking out.
But domestic disturbances, however justified by previous misgovernment,
were ill calculated to assist the defence of the French provinces. From
Normandy the French turned their attention to Guienne, and the campaign
in the south was as rapid and successful as that in the north. On August
26, 1451, Bayonne surrendered, and the English held nothing in France
except Calais and the adjacent forts of Guines and Ham. It is true that
the long commercial intercourse with England and the recollection of the
lenity of English rule as compared with that of Charles VII. led to a
rising in Bordeaux in 1452, and an English force under the veteran
Talbot was sent to take advantage of the opportunity. But Talbot was
defeated and slain at the battle of Castillon (July 17, 1453), and
Bordeaux was soon afterwards compelled to capitulate.
In spite of the glory reflected upon Charles VII. by the restoration of
unity, independence, and comparative order to his kingdom, his later
years were the reverse of happy. The gloomy suspicion which he had
[Sidenote: Later years of Charles VII.] contracted in his troubled youth
became a settled habit as he grew old. He shut himself up from the eyes
of his subjects with the obscure mistresses who became his companions
after the death of Agnes Sorel in 1450. To his loyal minister, Jacques
Cœur, he showed the same cynical ingratitude as he had formerly
displayed to Joan of Arc. There were plenty of courtiers who were
jealous of the influence of the merchant whose wealth made the phrase
‘rich as Jacques Cœur’ almost a proverbial expression. All sorts of
charges, ranging from malversation to the poisoning of Agnes Sorel, were
trumped up to procure his ruin. His property was confiscated, and after
a trial in which the evidence was ludicrously unconvincing, the sentence
of death was commuted by royal clemency to perpetual imprisonment. From
his prison he escaped to Italy, and was appointed by Nicolas V.
commander of the papal galleys in the projected war against the Turks.
But he died in 1456 before he had any opportunity of winning distinction
in this novel capacity.
By far the greatest trouble of Charles VII. in the later part of his
reign arose out of his quarrel with his elder son Louis. After the
suppression of the Praguerie a temporary [Sidenote: Quarrel with the
dauphin.] reconciliation took place, and the dauphin returned to court.
But Charles was intensely suspicious of his son, and in 1446 the alleged
discovery of a new conspiracy induced him to banish Louis once more to
Dauphiné. From this time the quarrel became irreconcilable, and father
and son never met again. For the next ten years Louis set himself to
rule his appanage as if it were an independent principality. He erected
a parliament of his own at Grenoble and a university at Valence. His
court became the refuge of all malcontents against the royal government.
To strengthen himself against his father he concluded a close alliance
with the duke of Savoy, and married his daughter Charlotte. So notorious
was the quarrel that the Pope and the kings of Aragon and Castile
proffered their mediation, but in vain. At last, in 1456, Charles
despatched Dammartin with an army to compel the submission of Dauphiné.
Louis had no adequate military force of his own, his father-in-law
declined to run the risk of assisting him, and he fled to Franche-Comté
and threw himself upon the protection of the duke of Burgundy. Philip
received him with great pomp in Brabant, and assigned to him a residence
at Genappe, where he remained for the next five years.
Since the treaty of Arras and the futile siege of Calais, Philip the
Good had taken little part in the affairs of France. He had allowed the
Praguerie to be put down, [Sidenote: Relations with Burgundy.] and the
English to be expelled from France, without stirring to the aid of
either, although the aggrandisement of the French monarchy was obviously
dangerous to himself. His absorbing interest during these years was the
government and extension of the heterogeneous dominions which had come
under his rule. The Flemish citizens found it difficult to defend their
liberties against a ruler who could employ against them the resources of
so many other provinces. A rising in Bruges in 1437 was suppressed with
great severity. In 1448 a more serious rebellion broke out in Ghent, and
the citizens appealed for aid to Charles VII. But the French king was
prevented from interfering by the renewal of the English war, and the
Gantois were left unaided to conduct a heroic resistance against
overwhelming odds. It was not till 1453 that a crushing defeat at the
battle of Gavre compelled them to submit, and even then the duke granted
fairly moderate terms to such formidable opponents. This victory was
followed by the acquisition of Luxemburg, which Philip finally acquired
on the death of his aunt Elizabeth, in opposition to the strong legal
claims of Ladislas Postumus, whose mother was a daughter of the emperor
Sigismund. In spite of the extent and wealth of his dominions, Philip
was conscious of two serious elements of weakness. There was no social
or political unity between the various provinces, which were held
together only by subjection to a common ruler. And, geographically, they
were split into two distinct units. Between the Netherlands and the two
Burgundies lay the provinces of Champagne and Lorraine, over which the
duke had no legal authority. He could not travel from his northern
capital at Brussels to his southern residence at Dijon without having to
pass through foreign and possibly hostile territories.
Charles VII. was fully conscious of the danger involved to the French
monarchy in the erection of a practically independent state on the
eastern and north-eastern frontiers of France. His suzerainty over the
French fiefs of Philip was suspended during the latter’s lifetime by the
treaty of Arras, and even when it should be revived by his own death or
that of the duke, it would be of little use against a vassal who was
strong enough to defy his overlord. The most pressing danger was the
occupation by Philip of the strongest places in Picardy, which brought
him into dangerous proximity to Paris. Twice Charles endeavoured to
exercise the power of redeeming the towns on the Somme which had been
reserved in the treaty of Arras, but both times he had to put up with a
rebuff. An open struggle between France and the Burgundian power was,
sooner or later, inevitable, but Charles was too weary of warfare to
allow it to break out during his reign. Even when the duke gave such an
ostentatious welcome to the rebellious dauphin, the king refused to
depart from his policy of peace. But he showed a grim sense of humour
when he heard of the reception of his restless and ambitious son in
Brussels. Philip, he said, ‘is nourishing the fox who will one day
devour his chickens.’
The dauphin was still at Genappe when the news reached him that his
father had died on July 22, 1461. It was said that Charles was so
terrified of being poisoned in [Sidenote: Accession of Louis XI.] his
food that he starved himself to death; and it is quite possible that his
suspicious timidity was a trait of insanity inherited from the
unfortunate Charles VI. Louis lost no time in setting out to take
possession of his kingdom, and he was accompanied by his Burgundian host
and champion. At the coronation ceremony at Rheims, and in the formal
entry into Paris, Philip played the most prominent part. It is true
that, in accordance with the treaty of Arras, he did homage to the new
king for his French fiefs, but under the circumstances the homage seemed
almost ironical. In the eyes of the people the duke was the powerful
patron and protector, while his nominal suzerain appeared as his
grateful dependant. Louis was still looked upon as the leader of the
Praguerie, as the rebel lord of Dauphiné, as the fugitive guest in the
dominions of the duke of Burgundy; and his first acts seemed to accord
with the principles which had guided his conduct in the past. He gave
the duchy of Berri as an appanage to his younger brother Charles. To
Philip’s son and heir, Charles of Charolais, he granted the government
of the all-important province of Normandy. The duke of Brittany received
the government of the district between the Lower Seine and the Loire.
The faithful servants of his father, such as Dunois and Dammartin, were
dismissed, and the latter was imprisoned. The offices thus left vacant
were conferred upon men who had supported the dauphin against the late
king. It seemed as if the feudal nobles of France had at last found a
king who would govern in their interests rather than in those of the
crown. The history of the reign is the record of their bitter
disappointment.
Louis XI. is perhaps the most familiar figure in the history of the
fifteenth century. His character has been painted for all time by
Philippe de Commines; and his portrait has been described for English
readers by Sir Walter Scott. He is the model prince of the new type, the
astute pupil of that [Sidenote: Character and policy of Louis XI.]
Italian statecraft which Machiavelli drew up in a systematic treatise.
He was, according to Chastellain, ‘the universal spider’; his intrigues
formed a vast web with himself at the centre. No consideration of
morality, pride, or mercy was allowed to interfere with the attainment
of his ends. His industry was unceasing, and he had a wonderful insight
into the weaker side of human nature. ‘No one ever took more trouble to
gain over a man who might do him either service or injury.’ His one
weakness was a caustic tongue, and he acknowledged that his indulgence
of this unruly member frequently brought him into scrapes. He was
naturally suspicious and mistrustful; he would listen to advice, but
follow his own counsel; his ministers must be his tools; independence
was treachery in his eyes. He forgot nothing, and forgave nothing, but
he could dissimulate even his anger. His policy has been equally clearly
portrayed for us. He was, in the words of Commines, ‘the enemy of all
great men, whose power might surpass his own, and he was naturally the
friend of men of low estate.’ But this phrase must not be misunderstood.
Louis XI. did not depress the nobles in order to exalt the lower classes
or to extend their liberty. Municipal independence was as hateful to him
as aristocratic privilege. Everything was to be equally subject to the
crown. The great achievement of his reign was the victory of
centralisation over the tendencies to disintegration in France.
Individual members of the bourgeois class were his favourite
instruments; for the class itself he did nothing, except so far as the
people were better off under a strong monarchy than under the rule of a
selfish and divided noble caste.
Commines tells us that Louis XI. was ‘the wisest king at recovering from
a false step,’ and at the beginning of his reign false steps were not
infrequent. In the [Sidenote: Louis’ first measures.] first
consciousness of the authority which he had long coveted, he made many
powerful enemies by his restless activity, and did not stop to consider
the danger to which their combined hostility might expose him. The
vengeful spirit with which he began his reign soon gave way to the
resolute purpose of increasing his power. Instead of conciliating the
people by the expected remission of taxes, he imposed a new charge upon
the sale of wines. To the great indignation of the clergy he annulled
the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which, for the last twenty-three
years, had given a large measure of independence to the Gallican Church.
Yet his strong sense of his own authority prevented him from restoring
to the papacy its former powers, and ecclesiastical anarchy prevailed
during the rest of his reign. The Roman Curia treated the Pragmatic
Sanction as null and void, whereas the Parliament of Paris acted as if
it were still in force, and the king regulated his conduct according to
his varying need to conciliate either the papacy or his own subjects.
But the chief dissatisfaction with the rule of Louis was felt by the
nobles. An edict which declared hunting to be a domain right of the
crown, and prohibited [Sidenote: Alienation of the nobles.] private
preserves as illegal, excited intense ill-feeling among men to whom the
chase was not only the chief occupation of their lives, but also a badge
of their rank. And the greater princes had special grievances. The duke
of Bourbon was deprived of the government of Guienne which he had
mis-used. With the duke of Brittany the king quarrelled on the old
grounds as to the homage due for the duchy and the extent of the ducal
rights to the revenue of vacant benefices. Francis II. opened
negotiations with Edward IV., and tried to renew the Anglo-Burgundian
alliance. On discovering these plans, Louis was compelled, in
self-defence, to withdraw the government of Normandy from Charles of
Charolais. At the same time, in order to render Charles’s hostility
impotent, and to strengthen the crown against the prince whose patronage
he resented even while he had profited by it, Louis set himself to
foment domestic disturbances at the court of Burgundy. During his five
years of exile he had established intimate relations with Philip the
Good’s favourite ministers, Antony of Croy and his brother John of
Chimay. The growing ascendency of these men and the suspicion that they
were allied with and possibly in the pay of the French king, roused the
animosity of Charles of Charolais, who quarrelled so fiercely with his
father on the subject that he quitted Brussels and took up his residence
in Holland. His absence enabled [Sidenote: Quarrel with Charles the
Bold.] Louis, with the help of the Croy brothers, to induce Philip to
allow the redemption of the Somme towns for the stipulated 400,000
crowns. Charles was more furious than ever at the curtailment of his
inheritance and the strengthening of the French frontier at his expense.
In 1464 events enabled him to turn the tables on his opponents. A report
was spread that an emissary of Louis had plotted to kidnap Charles in
Holland, and though there was probably no foundation for the story, it
served to bring about a partial reconciliation between Philip and his
son. Louis XI. sent an embassy to Brabant to denounce the untruth, and
to demand the surrender of its author, but the Chancellor of France used
such peremptory language that Philip’s pride was roused, and not only
was the demand refused, but the Croy favourites, who were identified
with French interests, were disgraced and expelled from the court.
Philip himself was now old and feeble, and allowed the reins of
government to fall into the hands of his impetuous son, whom
contemporaries and posterity have agreed to call Charles the Bold or the
Rash. This was a serious defeat for the plans of Louis. Charles was more
of an independent prince than a vassal of France, but in both capacities
it was his interest to weaken the French monarchy by encouraging the
feudal independence of the great nobles. The policy which he pursued for
the next few years is clearly expressed in his own phrase: ‘Instead of
one king of France I would like to see six!’
In 1465 the adhesion of Burgundy emboldened the princes of the lilies to
take active measures against the monarchy. The most prominent organiser
of the conspiracy was the duke of Bourbon, who acted as negotiator
[Sidenote: The war of the Public Weal, 1465.] between the two most
powerful associates, the duke of Brittany and Charles the Bold. The
signal for concerted action was the flight to Brittany of Charles of
Berri, a youth of nineteen, who was to take the part which Louis himself
had played in the Praguerie. At the court of Francis were assembled
Dunois and most of the other servants of Charles VII. whom Louis had too
hastily dismissed. A sort of open letter or manifesto was drafted in the
name of the duke of Berri and addressed to Philip of Burgundy. In it the
confederates denounced the oppressive rule of Louis as injurious to the
welfare of the people; and this profession of public spirit to cover
private aims was sufficient to give them the name of the ‘League of the
Public Weal.’ Louis had for some time been conscious of the approach of
danger, and had sought to strengthen himself against it. The duke of
Savoy was his brother-in-law, and the aid of Francesco Sforza was
purchased by the cession of Genoa. This, however, ruined the Angevin
cause in Naples, and John of Calabria, eager for vengeance, brought
Italian and Swiss mercenaries to the aid of the league. In England,
which could render more efficient aid than any other power, Louis’
scheme met with failure. He had gained over Warwick, the apparently
all-powerful king-maker, and hoped, with his help, to induce Edward IV.
to form a marriage alliance with France. But Edward preferred the charms
of Elizabeth Woodville, a niece of the count of St. Pol, who was
marshalling the forces of Burgundy for an invasion of Picardy, and this
marriage was a blow to the influence of Warwick and the interests of
Louis. The king found himself almost isolated in France. His old
province of Dauphiné was loyal to him, and his uncle, Charles of Maine,
undertook to oppose the rebels on the border of Brittany. In Paris, too,
he had conciliated the citizens, but most of the towns were passively
waiting to see which side would prove the stronger. In these
circumstances Louis felt that it would be dangerous to stake everything
on the devotion of his capital, and instead of waiting to be attacked he
determined to take the offensive. Some of the royal troops preferred to
support their local overlords, but the great mass of them were loyal to
the crown, and the possession of a trained and well-equipped force was
the one advantage which the king possessed over his enemies who had to
collect hasty levies from among their vassals. His first march was
against the duke of Bourbon, as the most resolute and the most central
of his opponents, and he had already made considerable progress when he
was recalled by the news that Charles the Bold, at the head of his
father’s forces, was threatening Paris. Louis hoped to enter the capital
without a contest, but chance or treachery brought the two armies so
close together that a collision was inevitable. The battle of Montlhéri
was a confused skirmish in which no military capacity was displayed on
either side. The left wing of each army routed its immediate opponents,
and thus neutralised each other’s success. The Count of Charolais
claimed the victory on the ground that his troops were left in
occupation of the field, but he had suffered the greater losses, and the
only tangible result was obtained by the king, who entered Paris two
days later. Soon afterwards the arrival of Berri and Brittany from the
north-west and of John of Calabria from the south-east gave the princes
an apparently overwhelming superiority of numbers. But they were divided
by mutual jealousies and by the selfishness of their several aims, and
thus concerted action was rendered impossible. The urgent necessity of
increasing his forces and of securing the valleys of the Seine, Marne,
and Yonne, by which Paris was provisioned, compelled Louis to make an
expedition to Normandy. By so doing he ran a very serious risk of losing
Paris, but the citizens refused to listen to the specious offers of the
princes, and the king returned with 12,000 troops and a supply of
provisions. Following the advice of Francesco Sforza, he sought to
divide his opponents by separate negotiations. But there was one demand,
that he should give the government of Normandy to Charles of Berri,
which he persistently refused to grant. Not only was the province one of
the largest and wealthiest of the kingdom, but in the hands of his
brother it would serve to connect the two most powerful malcontents,
Brittany and Burgundy, and the three together could reduce Paris to such
straits that they would be able to dictate terms to the king. But while
this difficulty proved a stumbling-block in the way of the negotiations,
the news came that Rouen had been treacherously surrendered to his
opponents. Louis at once decided that, the mischief being done, it was
better to put an end to the present war and to trust to future
opportunities for a chance of recovering his losses. In October the
treaty was drawn up [Sidenote: Treaty of Conflans.] at Conflans and
finally signed at St. Maur des Fossés. ‘The public weal was changed into
individual weal,’ and no attempt was made to carry out the professions
which the princes had put forward at the outset. The Pragmatic Sanction,
with regard to which the king’s conduct was most obviously indefensible,
was not even mentioned. The most important provisions were the
restoration of the Somme towns to Burgundy, with the provision that they
should not be again redeemed till after the death of Charles and his
immediate heir, and the cession of Normandy to Charles of Berri. But
nearly every member of the league received some concession. The duke of
Brittany was to have Montfort and Étampes, and his claims to sovereign
rights, with regard to ecclesiastical revenues, were allowed. St. Pol
was to be constable, John of Calabria was to have certain cessions in
Lorraine and money for the maintenance of troops to support the Angevin
cause, and the dispossessed officials of Charles VII. were to recover
their places. The princes of the lilies seemed to have won a complete
victory over the monarchy.
But Louis knew that he had only to bide his time. The very completeness
of their success dissolved the bonds that held the confederates
together. United they were irresistible, but if they could be severed
from each other the king could hope to regain what he had lost. Even
during the siege of Paris his shrewd eye had been keen to detect the
nascent jealousies which were to give him the desired opportunity for
revenge. Already his intrigues had provided an occupation for the forces
of Burgundy. In the heart [Sidenote: Risings in Liége.] of the
Netherlands lay the ecclesiastical principality of Liége, ruled by its
bishop as a vassal of the empire. Annexation was impossible, and
geography made complete independence equally out of the question. Liége
was famous then as it is now for its iron manufactures, and the
prosperous artisans, the most democratic community in mediæval Europe,
were in constant revolt against episcopal rule. It was the policy of the
Burgundian dukes to maintain a hold over the bishop by supporting him
against his rebellious subjects, and the present bishop, Louis of
Bourbon, was a dissolute youth wholly subservient to his uncle, Philip
the Good, to whom he owed his mitre. On the other hand, the citizens
looked for aid to France, which was the chief market for their produce.
As soon as the war began, Louis had taken measures to organise a revolt
in Liége, which broke out on the arrival of a false report that the
Burgundian troops had been completely routed at Montlhéri. Dinant, the
second town of the principality, incurred the special displeasure of
Philip by hanging over the walls an effigy of Charles of Charolais with
an inscription declaring him to be a bastard. Directly after the treaty
of Conflans, Charles led his troops into Liége to put down disorder and
to punish this insult. But the season was too far advanced for active
operations, and after forcing upon Liége the ‘piteous peace,’ by which
the cause of Dinant was abandoned and the liberties of the city
curtailed, Charles dispersed his forces for the winter. In 1466 the
invasion was renewed, and the aged duke, Philip, accompanied the army in
person to enjoy the luxury of revenge. Dinant was taken and razed to the
ground, and the men of Liége, roused by the sufferings of their
neighbours to a tardy breach of the recent treaty, were compelled to
renew their submission, to pay a heavy fine, and to hand over fifty
leading citizens as hostages for their good faith. In spite of these
reverses they retained their obstinate antipathy to external control and
their confident expectation of assistance from France. In 1467 Charles
the Bold, who had become duke of Burgundy by his father’s death on June
15, led what had now become an annual expedition for the attack on
Liége. Under the walls of St. Tron an obstinate battle ended in a
victory for the Burgundians. Liége might still have stood a siege, but
the citizens, divided and cowed, agreed to capitulate. The walls were
levelled to the ground, and the free constitution of the city was
annulled. So impressive was Charles’s success, that Ghent, which had won
increased privileges by a rising on the occasion of his ‘joyous entry,’
hastened to appease him by a timely submission. It seemed for a moment
that the champion of feudal independence in France might succeed in
establishing despotic government within his own territories.
While Charles was engaged in his first campaign against Liége, Louis had
seized the opportunity to recover the most serious of his losses. As
soon as the treaty of [Sidenote: Louis recovers Normandy.] Conflans had
been concluded, the dukes of Berri and Brittany had set out together to
take possession of Normandy. But the triumphant confederates quarrelled
over the division of the spoil. The feeble Charles of Berri resented the
patronage and pretensions of his ally, who claimed for his own subjects
the most valuable places in the duchy. Louis took prompt advantage of
the dispute. He concluded a treaty with the indignant Francis of
Brittany at Caen, and despatched the royal troops to Rouen. The province
was recovered as rapidly as it had been lost, and the two duke—‘wise
after the event’—made up their differences and set themselves in
Brittany to devise means for regaining what they had forfeited by their
own folly. They made urgent appeals for aid to Edward IV. of England and
to Burgundy, and Louis was fully alive to the danger of such a
coalition. He had two trump cards to play in the intricate negotiations
which followed. In England he had gained over the earl of Warwick, and
Warwick, though his influence was waning, and he was unable to prevent
the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret of York, was yet strong
enough to avert for a time any active intervention of England in
opposition to France. And Louis, as we have seen, was able to hamper the
action of Burgundy by stirring up disaffection in Liége. His supreme
object was to keep Burgundy and Brittany apart, and he constantly
offered to abandon the cause of the Liégeois if Charles would give him a
free hand in dealing with the dukes of Brittany and Berri. But Charles
the Bold was too astute to approve of so one-sided a bargain, and Louis
was forced to adopt another ruse. In 1468 he bribed his brother and duke
Francis to conclude a separate treaty, without consulting Burgundy, and
then he promptly communicated the fact of their desertion to Charles. He
was confident that Charles’s indignation would impel him to punish them
by a similar abandonment, and when his envoys failed to conduct the
negotiations to a successful issue he determined to try his own powers
of diplomacy. The experienced politicians of Europe were astounded to
hear that the French king had obtained an unconditional safe-conduct
from his vassal, and had ventured with a wholly inadequate escort to run
the risk of a personal [Sidenote: Interview at Péronne.] interview at
Péronne. But in his own self-confidence and his contempt for the ability
of his rival, Louis had made another ‘false step.’ He had completely
forgotten that his emissaries were at the moment engaged in rekindling
the smouldering embers of rebellion in Liége. While he was still the
duke’s guest at Péronne, the news arrived that the citizens had seized
the bishop, and had barbarously murdered several members of the chapter.
Charles was so furious that his more prudent advisers had great
difficulty in dissuading him from laying violent hands upon his
suzerain. Louis’s father had been held responsible for the murder of a
duke of Burgundy; and it might well have been that the duke’s grandson
would not shrink from the death of a king of France. Louis could only
escape from his perilous position by agreeing to all the terms dictated
by the host who was now his gaoler. He had to incur the ignominy of
accompanying the Burgundian army in a fourth expedition against Liége,
and to take part in the destruction of a city whose chief fault was a
too implicit confidence in his own promises of support. If Charles had
demanded the restoration of Normandy to the duke of Berri, Louis could
hardly have refused. But the duke of Burgundy had not yet forgotten the
action of Brittany earlier in the year, and he was more anxious to
strengthen himself than to weaken the French king by renewing the old
league against him. Instead of Normandy, he demanded the cession to the
king’s brother of Champagne and Brie. Isolated from Brittany, Charles of
Berri could hardly fail to become the tool of Burgundy; and, in the
hands of a submissive ally, these provinces would serve to connect the
Netherlands with the original Burgundian possessions. Louis perforce
consented; but before he escaped from the toils, his quick mind had
already discovered a means of evading the danger. At his parting
interview with Charles he put forward as a casual suggestion that his
brother might decline the proffered appanage, and asked what he should
do. Charles replied, without thought, that in that case he must leave
the king to satisfy the duke. Louis took these hasty words as authority
to make an independent bargain. No sooner was he safe within his own
realm than he offered his brother the duchy of Guienne. Guienne was a
far more wealthy and important province than Champagne, and in itself
was a greater loss to the crown; but, on the other hand, it was far
removed from the two dangerous opponents of the crown—the dukes of
Burgundy and Brittany—and Louis knew that his brother, by himself, was
not likely to be formidable. The bribe was accepted, and thus the most
important provision of the treaty of Péronne was never carried into
effect.
The substitution of Guienne for Champagne freed Louis from the worst
consequences of his ill-timed visit to Péronne, but it did little or
nothing to remove the great standing difficulties in his way. Burgundy
and Brittany were as powerful and as independent as ever. They could
reckon on the support of all the feudal nobles in France who wished to
limit the authority of the crown. Worst of all, they could call in the
aid of the Yorkist king of England, who had recently proved his complete
estrangement from France by giving his sister in marriage to Charles the
Bold. It was obviously of immense importance to Louis [Sidenote:
Relations of France and Burgundy with England.] to secure himself from
danger on the side of England, and for the moment events seemed to
favour his schemes. Warwick was now completely estranged from Edward
IV., and Clarence, the latter’s brother, had joined the king-maker and
had married his elder daughter, Isabel Neville. But Edward was still too
strong for his opponents, and in 1470 Warwick and Clarence had to seek
refuge in France. Louis seized the opportunity to effect a
reconciliation between his cousin, Margaret of Anjou, and the man who
had done more than any other to ruin the Lancastrian cause. Warwick’s
second daughter, Anne, was married to the ill-fated Edward, titular
prince of Wales, and the former champion of the Yorkists undertook to
restore the house of Lancaster. Such an extraordinary and unexpected
coalition effected an easy revolution in England. Henry VI. emerged from
his prison to play, for a few more months, the part of king; and Edward
IV. sought safety and assistance in the dominions of his brother-in-law.
Charles the Bold found himself placed by these events in an awkward
dilemma. Descended through his mother from John of Gaunt, he had long
posed as a supporter of the Lancastrian cause, and had sheltered at his
court many of the leading nobles of that party. Recent events had forced
him into an alliance with Edward IV., but it had been dictated by policy
rather than by good-will. If the restoration of Henry VI. were
permanent, Charles could hope to gain such support among the Lancastrian
nobles as would secure him against the French proclivities of Warwick
and Margaret of Anjou. On the other hand, Edward was his wife’s brother;
he was a refugee in the Burgundian province of Holland; to disown him
would put an end to all hope of English assistance in the event of
Edward recovering his crown. Charles escaped from the dilemma in a
manner characteristic of the age. Publicly he protested his devotion to
the house of Lancaster, but secretly he gave Edward sufficient
assistance to enable him to return to England. The desertion of
Clarence, who had no interest in restoring the Lancastrian dynasty, and
the ill-concealed enmity with which the Lancastrian partisans continued
to regard Warwick, gave Edward successive victories over the two
sections of the hostile coalition. At Barnet, the Nevilles were crushed
and Warwick slain (April 14, 1471), and three weeks later Margaret and
her immediate followers met with a fatal reverse at Tewkesbury. The
deaths of the prince of Wales and his father left the house of Lancaster
almost extinct, except for a solitary scion of the illegitimate line of
Beaufort, and the permanence of the Yorkist dynasty, with its numerous
male representatives, seemed to be assured.
The decisive victory of Edward IV. was a blow to Louis XI., and it was
the more serious because in 1470 he had become involved in new
hostilities with Charles the Bold. [Sidenote: The Constable St. Pol.]
This was in great measure due to the Count of St. Pol, who had been an
influential personage at the French court ever since the war of the
Public Weal. His position was in many ways an extraordinary one. For his
hereditary estates he was a vassal of Charles the Bold, and the bulk of
these estates lay in or near the province of Picardy, the very frontier
where the rivalry between French and Burgundian interests was most
acute. As Constable he was a servant of the French king and the chief
commander of the standing forces of the crown. The incongruity of such a
double relation had been clearly shown in recent events. In 1466 St. Pol
had taken part as a Burgundian vassal in the campaign against Dinant and
Liége. In the next year he had headed the French embassy which had
suggested the abandonment of Liége by Louis as the price of Charles’s
severance from Brittany. The importance and the anomaly of the
constable’s position were both increased by his own marriage with Mary
of Savoy, Louis XI.’s sister-in-law, and by the marriage of his niece,
Elizabeth Woodville, to Edward IV. of England. It was the ambition of
St. Pol to play the part of an independent potentate in the politics of
Europe, and he conceived that the best way to do this was to prolong the
strife between France and Burgundy. Not only did the war increase his
power and importance as constable of France, but it also enabled him,
through the position of his own estates, to hold a sort of balancing
position between the two opponents. Both might hate and fear him, but it
was in the highest degree unlikely that they would combine against him;
and as both must bid for his support, it was in his power to make his
own terms with either side as interest and policy should dictate.
Accordingly, in 1470, he persuaded Louis to strike a blow for the
recovery of the Somme towns, and in the king’s name he took possession
of Amiens and St. Quentin. Charles the Bold was [Sidenote: Renewed war
between France and Burgundy.] taken by surprise, and the want of a
standing army always made it difficult for him to meet any sudden move
on the part of the French king. He was naturally indignant that the blow
should be dealt by one of his own vassals, and his anger was by no means
diminished when he received a message from St. Pol and his associates
that they would desert to his side if he would marry his daughter Mary
to Charles of Guienne. Charles had no desire to give up his daughter,
whose hand was a valuable asset in his diplomacy, and he had no
intention of submitting to coercion in the choice of a son-in-law. His
obstinacy compelled the constable and the confederate nobles to remain
outwardly loyal to the king, though their real aim was to reduce the
duke to such straits that he must accept their terms. An attempt on the
part of Charles to recover Amiens ended in failure, and the critical
struggle in England led to a truce in April 1471, by which the captured
towns were left in the king’s hands. The Yorkist victory seemed likely
to turn the balance in favour of Burgundy, but, fortunately for Louis,
Edward IV. was resolutely hostile to the marriage project put forward by
the French princes. It is true that a dauphin had been born in 1470, but
he was a sickly child, and if he died the duke of Guienne would once
more become heir to the throne, and the possible absorption of the vast
Burgundian inheritance by the French monarchy would be ruinous to
English interests and ambition. Sooner than allow such a union to be
effected Edward would abandon Burgundy and join Louis. But Louis was
discouraged by the failure of his English policy. He knew that he could
not trust the loyalty of his instruments, and he preferred diplomacy to
the renewal of a war in which there was little prospect of assured gain.
So for six months he negotiated with Charles, offering to restore Amiens
and St. Quentin and to abandon St. Pol to the vengeance of his injured
suzerain, on condition that Charles would give up all connection with
the dukes of Guienne and Brittany. At last, in the spring of 1472,
Charles announced that he would accept the proffered terms. At the same
time he privately assured the dukes that he only agreed to the treaty in
order to recover his own possessions, and that he had no intention of
deserting them. But Louis was not so easily duped. He had received
intelligence that his brother was hopelessly unwell, and he adroitly
postponed any final agreement until the news came that the duke of
Guienne had died on May 24. Of [Sidenote: Death of Charles of Guienne.]
course it was rumoured that so opportune an event must be due to
contrivance rather than to chance, but Louis’s gains were so substantial
that he could afford to disregard a suspicion which had no real
foundation. Guienne reverted to the crown, troops were despatched to
invade Brittany, and the treaty on which so much time had been spent was
repudiated. Charles was carried away by rage and disappointment.
Although the truce was not yet expired he crossed the Somme to harry the
territories of the French king. Nesle was taken and sacked with a
brutality unusual even in fifteenth century France, and Charles advanced
to the siege of Beauvais. But his military skill was not equal to his
indignation, and after a prolonged attack he was compelled to retreat
and to close the campaign by a truce in November, 1472. Curiously enough
this proved more durable than many formal treaties of peace. The truce
was renewed from time to time, and Charles and Louis never again met in
open hostility.
The death of the duke of Guienne proved far more important than his life
had been. A coalition of the princes of the lilies had nearly ruined the
monarchy in 1465, [Sidenote: Altered policy of Charles the Bold, 1472.]
and the energies of Louis had been taxed ever since to prevent its
revived activity. That coalition was now wholly broken up. Charles the
Bold was as hostile as ever to the French king, but he was compelled to
adopt different means to overthrow his rival. Hitherto his primary
concern had been with the affairs of France. He had appeared to the
world as the powerful vassal who headed the forces of feudalism to
depress the authority of his suzerain. Henceforth he turned his chief
attention from his French to his German provinces, and sought to build
up a rival kingdom along the valley of the Rhine, which might surpass
France in wealth and power, and might even bring to its ruler the
imperial crown. The danger to Louis was perhaps as great, but it was
wholly different in character, and it required wholly different
expedients to cope with it. That within France the monarchy had gained a
decisive victory over the forces arrayed against it was recognised by
two of the most subtle intellects of the time. Philippe de Commines, the
born vassal and the intimate adviser of Charles the Bold, had already
made the acquaintance of Louis XI. during the troubled days at Péronne.
In the autumn of 1472 he deserted his suzerain to enter the service of
the king, whose character and career he has described in the most
important historical work of the century. His example was followed by
Odet d’Aydie, lord of Lescun, who had hitherto been the trusted guide of
Charles of Guienne and Francis of Brittany. The shrewd Gascon found no
difficulty in gaining the favour of his new employer, and he was
rewarded with the title of count of Comminges.
Already, before 1472, Charles the Bold had taken an important step in
the direction of territorial aggrandisement in Germany. Alsace and the
Breisgau, representing the original Swabian possessions of the house
[Sidenote: Acquisitions of Charles the Bold in Germany.] of Hapsburg,
had been ruled since 1439 by Sigismund, son of that Frederick of Tyrol
who had played a prominent part in the early stages of the Council of
Constance (see p. 213). Like his ancestors, Sigismund had become
involved in a quarrel with the members of the Swiss confederation, and
by a treaty in 1468 he had pledged himself to pay to the League a
considerable sum of money. Unable to raise the sum from his own
resources, he had applied to Charles the Bold, who agreed to furnish the
money if Alsace and the Breisgau were handed over to him as security. It
was more than improbable that the penniless count of Tyrol would ever
redeem the pledge, and Charles, treating the provinces as his own
possession, intrusted the administration to Peter of Hagenbach. When, in
1472, the direct opposition to Louis XI. came to an end, Charles turned
with avidity to that acquisition of lands in Germany which was to prove
the cause of his ruin. Interfering as arbiter in a dispute between
father and son in Gelderland, he seized the disputed duchy for himself
(1473). In the same year occurred the death of Nicolas of Calabria, the
grandson and last male descendant of the old Réné le Bon. The duchy of
Lorraine now passed to another grandson, Réné of Vaudemont, who
inherited both the Angevin and the Vaudemont claim. Lorraine was of
peculiar importance to Charles the Bold, as it lay between his northern
and his southern dominions. Although he had no legal claim to interfere,
he seized the young duke and only released him on condition that he
should cede four fortresses as a guarantee for the free passage of
Burgundian forces through Lorraine. Meanwhile Charles was negotiating
with the emperor Frederick III. to have his duchy of Burgundy erected
into a kingdom, and he intended to claim all those territories which at
one time or another had borne the name of Burgundy. Such a claim would
have included Savoy, Provence, and several adjacent districts. The
emperor was to be bribed by the proposal of a marriage between his son
Maximilian and the heiress of these vast dominions present and
prospective. An interview was arranged at Trier, and Charles brought
with him the crown that was to be placed on his head. But Frederick
III., always cautious and rather timid, was alarmed by the extravagant
pretensions of the aspirant to royalty, and he was cognisant of a scheme
to recover Alsace for his cousin Sigismund. So one night the emperor
slipped away in a boat down the Moselle, leaving the duke the
laughing-stock of Europe. But this humiliation failed to check Charles’s
ambition, and in 1474 he embarked on a new enterprise. The archbishop of
Cologne, Robert of Bavaria, deposed by his chapter and his subjects,
appealed for assistance to the duke of Burgundy, who seized the
opportunity to gain on the middle Rhine a preponderance similar to that
which he had acquired in the bishopric of Liége. With a large army
Charles entered the territories of Cologne, as the champion of the
archbishop against his rebellious subjects, and laid siege to Neuss, a
fortress on the Rhine held by the Landgrave of Hesse, whose brother had
been appointed administrator of the diocese.
The siege of Neuss was one of the great blunders of Charles the Bold. He
had never shown any skill in siege operations, and for a whole year his
obstinacy [Sidenote: Louis XI. stirs up enemies against Charles the
Bold.] kept him before a town which he was ultimately unable to reduce.
During these months his enemies were able to attack with impunity the
extremities of his dominions, and he lost a favourable opportunity of
weakening his chief opponent Louis XI. Louis was frequently urged by his
advisers to check the aggrandisement of the Burgundian duke by a renewal
of direct hostilities. But he preferred the more subtle policy of
allowing his rival to exhaust his strength in distant enterprises, while
he secretly encouraged the resistance of the German princes and people
whose interests were threatened by Charles’s progress. Among the latter
were the leading members of the Swiss Confederation. They had always
quarrelled with the Hapsburgs in Alsace, and they were not likely to
find a less formidable neighbour in the duke of Burgundy, whose
expansion southwards could hardly be effected without destroying their
independence. The oppressive rule of Peter of Hagenbach, Charles’s
bailiff in Alsace, was bitterly resented by all the cities and towns of
Swabia, and Bern, now the leading canton of the Confederation, was
prominent in demanding redress. Louis seized the opportunity to score a
notable diplomatic victory. He induced Sigismund to demand the
restoration of Alsace, and he set himself to reconcile the Swiss with
their old opponent. On March 30, 1474, it was agreed by the Everlasting
Compact that Sigismund should renounce all Hapsburg claims within the
territory of the League, and that the confederates should support him in
recovering the provinces which had been pledged to Charles. The chief
Swabian towns furnished the necessary money to redeem the pledge, and
when Charles took no notice of the demand for restitution, Alsace was
invaded and Hagenbach was put to death (May 9, 1474). After this there
was good reason to dread the duke’s enmity, and a strong party was
formed within the League which contended that the safest method of
defence was to anticipate attack. French gold was employed to aid and
extend this party, which was headed by Nicolas von Diesbach of Bern, and
the emperor Frederick III. was induced to use his authority to urge on a
war with Burgundy. In October a treaty was concluded with France, and
this was followed by a formal defiance of Charles and an invasion of
Franche-Comté. Charles received the news of these events before Neuss,
but he refused to abandon the siege, and the only step which he took to
protect his interests in the south was to conclude a close alliance with
Yolande of France, the dowager-duchess and regent of Savoy. Yolande was
the sister of Louis XI., but her policy was as independent and
self-seeking as that of her brother, and she did not scruple to break
off the intimate alliance between Savoy and France which had resulted in
her own marriage and that of Louis. She even used her influence to
detach her brother-in-law, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, from France, and to
arrange an alliance between Milan and Burgundy. But the first result of
her action was to extend the area of Swiss aggression, and in the spring
of 1475 Granson, Morat, and other Savoyard territories fell into the
hands of the confederates. About the same time Réné of Lorraine was
induced by the French king to repudiate his recent treaty with Charles
the Bold and to invade the duchy of Luxemburg. So formidable was the
coalition now formed that Louis sent to Frederick III. to propose a
partition of the Burgundian territories, the French provinces to be
escheated to the crown, and the German fiefs to be claimed by the
emperor. But the cautious Hapsburg would not commit himself to so
far-reaching a scheme, and replied that he preferred not to bargain
about the bear’s skin until the beast was dead.
The position of Charles was one of great danger. He was practically at
war with the Swiss, with Sigismund of Tyrol, with the duke of Lorraine,
and with the forces of the empire, which he had alienated by his
unjustifiable intervention in the affairs of Cologne. But Charles knew
that these enemies were all set in motion by Louis _XI._, and that if he
could ruin his arch-opponent the hostile coalition would almost
certainly fall to pieces. And in 1475 he had an unequalled chance of
dealing a fatal blow to the power of France. For years the duke
[Sidenote: Edward IV. invades France, 1475.] of Brittany and other
opponents of the French monarchy had been striving to bring about a
renewal of the English invasion, and at last their efforts were rewarded
with success. Edward IV., securely established on the English throne by
the double defeat of the Nevilles and the Lancastrian nobles, determined
to resume the ambitious schemes of Henry V. and to make himself king of
France with the aid of Burgundy. In 1474 the terms of the treaty had
been arranged with Charles, who was to receive as his reward Champagne
and some smaller districts, together with complete emancipation from the
suzerainty of France. In the summer of 1475 a considerable English army
was transported to Calais, and Charles at last set himself free to aid
his ally by retiring from Neuss, and concluding an agreement with the
emperor by which the Pope was to arbitrate in the dispute about Cologne.
The truce between Burgundy and France had expired on May 1, and Charles
had refused all the entreaties of Louis for its prolongation. But all
the hopes which Charles had based upon the intervention of England were
doomed to disappointment. Edward IV. was immensely chagrined when
Charles arrived alone at Calais, having sent his army from Neuss to
chastise the duke of Lorraine. St. Pol, who had offered to admit the
English into St. Quentin, fired upon the approaching forces from behind
the closed gates. The French monarchy was infinitely stronger in 1475
than it had been in 1415, and Edward IV. was shrewd enough to see that
with such support as he received from professed allies the conquest of
France was impossible. Louis on his side was not slow to profit by the
obvious discouragement of the invaders, and promptly opened negotiations
which resulted in a personal interview at Pecquigni on the Somme. In
return for a large sum of money and a promise that the dauphin should
marry his daughter Elizabeth, Edward agreed to withdraw from France.
Charles was furious at what he denounced as treacherous desertion, but
his own conduct had been so obviously selfish that his complaints were
treated as unreasonable, and he was compelled to renew his former truce
with Louis XI.
The failure of the English invasion and the renewal of peaceful
relations between France and Burgundy proved [Sidenote: Fate of St.
Pol.] fatal to St. Pol, who had succeeded for five years in maintaining
a practically independent position in Picardy. He had been profoundly
disappointed by the termination of active hostilities in 1472, but he
still trusted in his ability to play off one rival against the other,
and he was confident that their mutual jealousy would never allow them
to act together against him. For a time his forecast had been justified.
In 1472 it had been proposed that Louis and Charles should unite to
punish the constable, but the scheme had broken down, because neither
would trust the other. In 1475 the proposal was renewed. St. Pol’s
recent conduct, and especially his relations with Edward IV. who handed
over to Louis the constable’s correspondence, had created a strong
desire to punish the man who betrayed and deceived everybody in turn.
Charles was to have St. Quentin, Ham, and Bohain, with all the fiefs
which St. Pol held of him, on condition that he would undertake to
capture the constable and either punish him within eight days or hand
him over to the king. On the news of this treaty St. Pol determined to
trust Charles rather than Louis, partly because he believed him to be
less vindictive, and partly because after his territories were in
Charles’s hands the latter had little to gain by inflicting any further
penalty. Charles was besieging Nanci when his ministers sent word that
the constable was in their hands. Charles was anxious to avoid any
French opposition in Lorraine and he sent instructions that if Nanci
held out beyond November 24, St. Pol was to be handed over to the
French, but if it were taken before that date they were to keep him in
their hands. Nanci did not surrender till after the time had elapsed,
but Charles began to think that his order had been hasty and that St.
Pol might still be useful to him in his quarrel with France. His
instructions to delay the transfer, however, came too late, as the
Burgundian ministers, many of whom had a personal grudge against St.
Pol, had punctually obeyed the original order. Louis was not unwilling
to show that neither rank, nor royal relationship, nor eminent office
could save a rebel against the crown, and St. Pol, of whose treason
there was ample proof, was executed in Paris on December 19, 1475.
At the end of 1475 Charles the Bold seemed to be at the height of his
power. He was at peace both with the emperor and the king of France.
Since the submission of Ghent he had met with no opposition from his
subjects in the Netherlands. The fall of St. Pol had restored his
complete ascendency in Picardy. Savoy and Milan were apparently loyal
and almost submissive allies. The aged Réné of Provence, who had never
loved the house of Vaudemont, expressed his willingness to disinherit
his only surviving grandson in favour of the duke of Burgundy. Above
all, Charles had at last succeeded in uniting the two main divisions of
his realm by the conquest of Lorraine, and he determined to make Nanci
the capital of the Burgundian kingdom that seemed now to be within his
grasp. His one immediate task was to recover the province of Alsace, and
to punish the Swiss, not only for aiding to restore Sigismund, but also
for their raids upon his own territories and those of his allies. His
troops were exhausted [Sidenote: Charles’s war with the Swiss, 1476.] by
their exertions in the long siege of Neuss and the subsequent conquest
of Lorraine; but his resources, both in men and money, were so
infinitely superior to those of his opponents that it was hardly
possible to doubt his ultimate victory. The Swiss had begun the war as
the allies of the emperor and the French king, but they were now
deserted by both. In February 1476 Charles crossed the Jura to drive the
Swiss from the districts they had seized in Savoy. Granson, a town near
the lake of Neuchâtel, which was held by the house of Orange as a fief
of Savoy, was taken by the Burgundians, and the garrison was put to
death. Two days later the confederates arrived, and at once began the
attack. Charles ordered a portion of his army to retire to the plain
where he could use his superior cavalry. But the retirement became a
panic-stricken retreat, and the Swiss, pressing their advance, gained a
complete and easy victory (March 2, 1476). Granson was recovered, and
the Burgundian camp and artillery were the prize of the conquerors. So
humiliating a disaster was the more galling to Charles that it shook the
fidelity of his allies. The succession in Provence upon which he had
confidently reckoned, was now transferred by Réné to the French king.
Galeazzo Maria Sforza opened negotiations with Louis, and even Yolande
of Savoy began to contemplate the possibility of a reconciliation with
her brother. But Savoy could hardly desert Charles as long as there was
a prospect of recovering the lost lands with his help; and the
Burgundian power was not destroyed by a single disaster. Within a few
weeks a new army had been collected at Lausanne, and Charles advanced to
the siege of Morat, which the Bernese had taken from the Count of
Romont, a brother of the late duke of Savoy. The Swiss hastily
reassembled the troops, which had been disbanded after their recent
success in spite of the warnings of Bern. On June 22, an obstinate, and
for a long time, a very equal contest was fought out under the walls of
Morat. At last the Swiss gained a decisive advantage by turning the
flank of the Burgundian army; and the very obstinacy with which the
latter fought only served to make their losses heavier. Nearly
two-thirds of Charles’s forces were practically annihilated, and the
final desertion of his allies, combined with the disaffection of his own
subjects, rendered it hopeless to renew the struggle. Savoy made peace
with the Swiss, through the mediation of France; and Granson, Morat, and
other towns of Vaud became subject to the Confederation. Charles retired
into gloomy solitude near Pontarlier, and it was feared that his reason
would give way as he cursed the ill-fortune which had humbled so
powerful a prince before a despicable foe. He was roused from his
retreat by the news that Lorraine was lost to him. The young Réné had
joined the Swiss in the battle of Morat, and had proceeded after the
victory to raise a force with which he had recovered Nanci. Charles
hurriedly collected a third army, and, in spite of the winter cold,
commenced a second siege of the town which he had destined to be his
capital. The scanty garrison could not long have resisted the attack,
but Réné appealed for the assistance of the Swiss, and they [Sidenote:
Death of Charles the Bold.] sent 20,000 men to raise the siege. The
Italian mercenaries, in whom Charles placed great confidence, were
headed by the count of Campobasso, a Neapolitan who had been driven into
exile for his adhesion to the house of Anjou. Of that house Réné of
Lorraine might now claim to be the lawful heir; and Campobasso was
induced to desert his master in favour of the family to which his first
allegiance was due. This treachery placed Charles at a fatal
disadvantage, and he had to fight between the besieged and the relieving
forces. But his dogged character would not allow him to retreat, and in
a third contest with the despised German Confederation the great Valois
duke of Burgundy found an obscure and unhonoured death (January 5,
1477).
Louis XI. had watched the events of the last twelve months, at first
with anxiety, and later with feverish attention. Ever since his
accession he had been haunted by the [Sidenote: Louis seizes Burgundian
territories.] sense of Charles’s hostility, and the dangers which it
involved; and now his great rival had been slain by the agency of an
unforeseen and apparently unequal opponent. The only claimant of the
vast inheritance left vacant by the death of Charles the Bold was an
unmarried girl of twenty-one years. Various schemes were debated in the
royal council as to the best way of profiting by so favourable a
contingency. One very obvious plan was to effect a marriage between Mary
of Burgundy and the dauphin. But there were several objections to this.
The dauphin was only in his eighth year; he was already betrothed to an
English princess, and Edward IV. was not likely either to pardon an
insult to his daughter, or to acquiesce in the absorption of the
Burgundian inheritance by the French monarchy. To the alternative scheme
of marrying Mary to a French noble of royal blood, such as Charles of
Angoulême, it could be objected that the new dynasty thus created might
be as dangerous and disloyal as that to which it would succeed. Louis
determined to keep the possibility of either marriage as a card to be
played, if necessary or expedient, but in the meantime to take measures
for the occupation of those Burgundian territories which France could
acquire without serious opposition. The revival of such a power as that
of Charles might be prevented, and the adhesion of German princes might
be purchased, by a partition of the fiefs which the late duke had held
of the empire. No preparations had been made to resist Louis, and his
promptness ensured a considerable measure of success. He had an
unquestionable claim to the Somme towns, whose transfer had been limited
to male heirs; and the duchy of Burgundy could be reasonably claimed as
an escheated fief. But Flanders, Artois, and Franche-Comté had come to
the Burgundian house through an heiress, so that Mary’s right of
succession could hardly be disputed. Regardless of this consideration,
and of the fact that Franche-Comté was an imperial fief, Louis proceeded
with the work of annexation. Both the duchy and the county of Burgundy
submitted to French rule. From Picardy, which returned willingly to its
former allegiance, the forces of Louis entered Artois and succeeded in
reducing its capital, Arras.
The occupation of Artois brought the French to the frontier of Flanders,
the most wealthy and important of the Burgundian possessions. The
Flemish citizens, and especially [Sidenote: Conduct of the Flemings.]
those of Ghent, where Mary of Burgundy was residing, were not likely to
allow the choice of their future ruler to be settled without their
participation. Their policy in the matter was quite distinct. They had
hated Burgundian rule and the Burgundian ministers whom Charles and his
predecessors had appointed to govern them. As long as their sovereign
had been a mere count of Flanders, they had enjoyed a large measure of
independence and self-government, but they had lost this under the too
powerful Valois dynasty. They therefore welcomed the occupation of the
Burgundies, and had no objection to a further weakening of Mary’s
inheritance. But they would not be annexed to France, and the aggressive
measures of Louis XI. drove them into opposition to him. The Burgundian
ministers, whom Charles had left in authority, were seized by the mob on
the discovery that they were conducting separate negotiations with
France, and in spite of the passionate entreaties of Mary, were put to
death. The plan that commended itself to the people of Ghent was to
marry Mary to Adolf of Gelderland, the youthful monster who had been
imprisoned and disinherited for brutal ill-treatment of his father.
Adolf was released and sent to oppose the French before Tournay; where,
to Mary’s great relief, he was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to
relieve the town. This event, and the necessity of gaining support
against the encroachments of France, forced the Gantois to revive the
scheme of marrying Mary to [Sidenote: Maximilian marries Mary of
Burgundy.] Maximilian of Hapsburg, the son of the emperor Frederick III.
Mary herself, naturally frightened and aggrieved by the conduct of Louis
since her father’s death, was not averse to the proposal, and the
marriage was solemnised in August 1477. Louis was extremely chagrined by
the news of an event, which not only frustrated his plans for a further
partition of the Burgundian inheritance, but also compelled him to fight
for the provinces he had already seized. Maximilian undertook the
championship of his wife’s claims with his usual impetuosity. But he was
hampered by his want of money—Commines calls his father ‘the most
perfectly niggardly man of his time’—and by the obstruction of the
Flemish citizens, who had taken advantage of the weak government since
Charles the Bold’s death to recover much of their old independence. In
1482 Mary died, leaving two infant children, Philip and Margaret. This
was a great blow to Maximilian, who had no longer any formal authority
in the Netherlands, except so far as the estates of the various
provinces recognised him as his son’s guardian. In these circumstances
he was not unwilling to come to terms with Louis, and the treaty of
Arras [Sidenote: Treaty of Arras, 1482.] gave to the king most of the
territories he had contended for. The dauphin, Charles, was to be
betrothed to Margaret, the daughter of Maximilian and Mary, and she was
to be brought up in France as its future queen. Artois and Franche Comté
were to be regarded as her dowry. The treaty made no mention of the
Somme towns or of the duchy of Burgundy, and thus tacitly conceded
Louis’s contention that his legal rights to these provinces were
indisputable. It was fortunate for Louis that Edward IV., who had good
reason to regard this treaty as both injurious and insulting, was not
able to give practical expression to his displeasure. He died in 1483,
and the disturbances which followed kept England from any idea of
intervention on the Continent. But though the treaty of Arras appears,
at first sight, to be a considerable triumph for the policy of Louis,
the permanent gain to the French monarchy was not very great. Artois and
Franche-Comté were lost again before very long; and the annexation of
the Netherlands to the Hapsburg possessions, together with the
subsequent further aggrandisement of that house, involved France in even
greater dangers than those which had been threatened by the Valois dukes
of Burgundy. But the subsequent struggle which thus arose differed from
its predecessor in one very important respect. The Hapsburgs of Spain
and Austria were more powerful sovereigns than Philip the Good or
Charles the Bold, but they were complete foreigners to France, and had
none of that traditional and family alliance with French nobles and
French parties which gave to the Valois-Burgundian dynasty such a unique
position. The contest with the Hapsburgs served to strengthen, not to
destroy, the national unity of France.
The relations with Burgundy constitute by far the most important episode
of the reign of Louis XI.; and he could [Sidenote: Successes of Louis
XI.] boast of no more conspicuous achievement than the defeat of Charles
the Bold, and the annexation of a considerable share of his dominions.
But he gained other successes and acquired other lands. By intervening
to support John II. of Aragon against the rebellious Catalans (1462), he
obtained the cession of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and for a time extended
the French frontier to the Pyrenees. And the Angevin inheritance was
almost as great a windfall to the monarchy as the duchy of Burgundy.
Réné le Bon had hastily abandoned the cause of Charles the Bold, after
the latter’s defeats in 1476; and Louis XI. succeeded in extorting from
his uncle an arrangement by which the latter’s territories were to pass,
in the first place, to his nephew, Charles of Maine, and on the
extinction of his line to the crown. The successive deaths of Réné in
1480 and of Charles of Maine in 1481, gave to Louis the possession of
Anjou and Maine, with the duchy of Bar and the imperial fief of
Provence. Equally important, from the point of view of the French
monarchy, were the signal humiliations inflicted by Louis upon the great
feudatories who had ventured, in the early years of his reign, to
identify themselves with the cause of opposition to the monarchy. The
duke of Alençon was kept a prisoner till his death in 1476. The count of
Armagnac, the restless leader of the southern nobles, was attacked in
his chief town of Lectoure and perished in the sack which followed its
capture. His cousin, the duke of Nemours, who had been a favourite
companion of Louis in his youth and had since been twice pardoned for
ungrateful treachery, was executed in 1477 after having suffered the
most horrible tortures. The fate of St. Pol has been already related.
With regard to the nobles who were more closely related to the royal
family, Louis took precautions to ensure their loyalty or to disarm
their opposition. The duke of Bourbon abstained from further rebellion
after the War of the Public Weal. His brother and heir, Pierre de
Beaujeu, was married to the king’s eldest daughter, Anne, with the
proviso that if they left no male heirs the succession should pass to
the crown. For Louis of Orleans, the heir-presumptive to the throne
after the dauphin, a bride was found in another daughter, Jeanne, who
was deformed in person and was regarded as unlikely to have issue.
The government of Louis XI., though in many ways advantageous to France,
was too obviously selfish to be popular. His death in August, 1483,
transferred the crown to his only son, Charles VIII., but as [Sidenote:
Regency of Anne of Beaujeu.] he was too young to rule, the actual
government was assumed by Anne of Beaujeu. She had much of her father’s
ability and all his love of power, but her position was insecure and she
was obliged to conciliate support by measures which Louis XI. would
never have adopted. The States-General were convoked at Tours in January
1484, and for the first time the rural districts were represented in the
third estate, which had hitherto included only delegates from the towns.
Although the estates recognised the regent, their _cahier_ of grievances
showed an obvious hostility to the despotic rule of the late king. Among
other things they demanded that they should meet regularly every second
year. But the States-General, having lost all efficient control over
taxation, had no power to extort concessions, and the crown reserved
absolute discretion as to the redress of grievances. A more serious
danger to Anne was a coalition of nobles, including the duke of Brittany
and headed by Louis of Orleans, who deemed it a wrong that he was
excluded from the regency. There was some risk that the confederates
might receive support from Richard III. of England, who had good reason
to divert the attention of his subjects to a foreign war, and from Réné
of Lorraine, who advanced a well-founded claim to his grandfather’s
dominions of Bar and Provence. Anne of Beaujeu showed notable ability in
meeting her opponents. To prevent English intervention, Henry of
Richmond, whose mother was the last of the Beauforts, was encouraged to
prosecute the enterprise which placed the house of Tudor on the throne
(1485). The duke of Lorraine was partially satisfied by the cession of
Bar, and the prospect of gaining Provence was dangled before his eyes in
an artfully prolonged law-suit, which was not decided against him until
all danger was over. Meanwhile, the princes, deprived of external aid,
proved powerless to resist the forces of the crown. The Bretons were
defeated, and Louis of Orleans, carried a prisoner to Bourges, found it
to his interest to reconcile himself with his cousin.
A few days after the defeat of the Bretons the death of duke Francis II.
extinguished the male line of the Montforts, and left the one great
province which had retained [Sidenote: Succession in Brittany.] its old
independence in the hands of his daughter Anne (September 9, 1488). The
disposal of the hand of so important an heiress was naturally a matter
of great political interest, and Anne of Beaujeu, who wished to use the
opportunity for the gain of the monarchy, was chagrined to learn in 1490
that the young duchess had been married by proxy to Maximilian of
Austria, who had been a widower since the death of Mary of Burgundy.
Declaring the marriage to be null without royal consent, she despatched
an army into Brittany, and Anne of Brittany was compelled to give her
hand to Charles VIII. A double injury was thus inflicted upon
Maximilian. Not only was he deprived of a wife, but his daughter, who
had been educated in France since 1482 as the future queen, was sent
back to him. The archduke, however, was too distant and too busy
elsewhere to be immediately formidable, and it was worth while to risk
his displeasure in order to secure possession of Brittany. But the
children of Charles VIII. and Anne did not survive their parents, and
two subsequent marriages were necessary before the union of Brittany
with France was complete.
The marriage of the king was the last achievement of Anne of Beaujeu,
whose regency came to an end when her brother assumed the reins of
government, while she herself [Sidenote: The question of Naples.] became
duchess of Bourbon by the death of her brother-in-law. In 1493 a wholly
new problem was presented to the French government by the arrival of
Neapolitan exiles with an invitation to Charles VIII. to claim the crown
of Naples on the same grounds as he already held Provence. The late
regent and the more experienced councillors were resolute in opposing
the scheme. But Charles himself and his younger associates were dazzled
by the prospect of an Italian kingdom, and the proffered support of
Ludovico Sforza seemed to give a reasonable prospect of success. Before
Charles could venture to quit his kingdom it was necessary to secure it
against the hostility of jealous neighbours. Henry VII. of England, who
had come forward as the champion of Anne of Brittany, was bought off by
the peace of Etaples which offered him a large money bribe (1492). The
treaty of Barcelona restored Roussillon and Cerdagne to Ferdinand of
Aragon (January 1493); while the enmity of Maximilian was appeased by
the treaty of Senlis and the cession of Artois and Franche-Comté, which
had been the stipulated dowry of Margaret (May 23, 1493). In September
1494, Charles set out on his journey towards the Alps. The resources of
the revived French monarchy were to be employed in an enterprise of
which no one could foresee the end, but which was destined to usher in a
new epoch in the history of Europe.
CHAPTER XVII
GERMANY AND THE HAPSBURG EMPERORS, 1437-1493
German disunion in the fifteenth century—The House of Hapsburg—The
succession in Hungary and Bohemia—The Imperial election in
1438—Death of Albert II.—Election of Frederick III.—Death of
Frederick I. of Brandenburg—Futile opposition in Germany to the
Emperor and the Papacy—Frederick III. at war with the
Swiss—Sigismund of Tyrol—Succession to Albert II. in Austria,
Hungary, and Bohemia—Ladislas Postumus—Relief of Belgrade and death
of John Hunyadi—Death of Ladislas Postumus—Austria falls to the
Styrian Hapsburgs—Election of Mathias Corvinus in Hungary and of
George Podiebrad in Bohemia—War between Hungary and
Bohemia—Relations of Frederick III. with Burgundy—Hungarian
conquests in Austria—Last years and death of Frederick III.
In the history of three of the great countries of Europe, France,
England, and Spain, the fifteenth century marks a [Sidenote: Disunion
and weakness of Germany.] decisive epoch in the growth both of national
unity and of monarchical government. In France the civil strife of
Armagnacs and Burgundians and the long struggle against the English
prepared the way for the rule of Charles VII. and Louis XI. In England
the Wars of the Roses ended with the accession of a powerful Tudor
dynasty. In Spain national sentiment was kindled by the anti-Moorish
crusades, and the union of the chief kingdoms by the marriage of
Ferdinand and Isabella led to the great expansion of Spain under the
despotic rule of Charles I. and Philip II. The history of Germany
resembles that of its neighbours up to a certain point. Anarchy and
disorder were as conspicuous there as they were in France under Charles
VI., or under Henry VI. in England. The schism which filled the first
decade of the century both illustrated and increased the weakness and
the degradation of the once powerful German monarchy. But in Germany no
remedy was found for political and social disunion. No ruler arose with
the strength and the resolution that were needed to transform a vague
suzerainty into a territorial monarchy, as Charles IV. had schemed to
do. On the contrary, there was a marked decline of imperial authority,
which reached its nadir in the reign of Frederick III. The impulsive
Sigismund had striven for a moment to revive the Ghibelline tradition,
and he seemed to have made a considerable stride when, in 1415, he
humbled the pride of Frederick of Tyrol, and rewarded the loyalty of
Frederick of Hohenzollern with the electoral Mark of Brandenburg. But
Sigismund’s imperial ambitions were bound up with the cause of the
reforming party at Constance, and he was discouraged and disconcerted by
its failure. From that time he abandoned the interests of Germany to
devote himself to the affairs of Bohemia and Hungary. The party which
had rallied round him at Constance, deserted by their natural leader,
endeavoured to give to Germany a new central government which should
take the place of the decadent monarchy. A series of ignominious defeats
by the Hussites enabled them to carry through the diet some tentative
reforms in 1427. There was to be a system of imperial taxation, an
imperial army, and a standing representative council to wield the
executive power which the emperors had allowed to fall from their hands.
But the projected reforms ended in failure. The sense of nationality was
not strong enough to overcome the selfish independence of states and
classes. The two last crusades against the Bohemians were even more
humiliating to Germany than their predecessors.
That the disunion of Germany was a source of many evils and of serious
dangers was apparent even to the proverbial blindness of contemporaries.
The dependence of Italy had become the merest name. Even Milan, which
under the Visconti was most closely connected with Germany, was about to
pass to the Sforzas, who did not think it worth while even to apply for
imperial investiture. North of the Alps, Lyons and Dauphiné had long
been absorbed by France. Provence and Lorraine were in the hands of a
French dynasty, and before the end of the century the former had been
acquired by the French crown. Savoy was more independent of France, but
hardly more closely tied to Germany. The Old League of High Germany, as
the Swiss confederation was then called, had paraded devotion to the
empire as a means of resisting the claims of the Hapsburgs, but the
cantons really desired freedom from all external control, and by the end
of the century they had practically acquired it. Franche-Comté was ruled
by a Valois duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who was absorbing one
after the other a number of imperial fiefs in the Low Countries. The
Scandinavian kingdoms, strengthened for a time by the union of Kalmar,
were beginning to recover their previous losses, and the Hanseatic
League, the champion of German interests in the Baltic and the North
Sea, was no longer at the height of its power. In the north-east, the
Teutonic knights had been fatally weakened by the union of Poland and
Lithuania, and since the battle of Tannenberg in 1410 were waging what
seemed to be a hopeless struggle against the powerful Jagellon kings.
The danger of a general Slav revolt against German encroachments had
been brought even more nearly home to the princes of Germany by the long
Bohemian war. It is true that the extreme Hussites had been defeated in
1434, but it was by their own countrymen; and the sentiment of national
independence, which was necessarily anti-German, was almost as strong as
ever. And in the south-east a new and far more terrible danger was
approaching. The Turks had already established themselves in the Balkan
peninsula, and threatened to sweep up the Danube valley. Hungary was the
only substantial guard to the German frontier; and if Hungarian
resistance failed, it was hardly likely that the German troops, impotent
to crush the ill-armed followers of Ziska, would be able to resist the
all-conquering Janissaries.
Losses on the extremities were the inevitable result of weakness at the
centre. But although this weakness continued, Germany escaped from some
of the extreme disasters which seemed almost inevitable. It is possible
that a too vigorous attempt to bring about a compulsory union might have
broken the state up into its component parts, and Germany, like Italy,
might have become a mere geographical expression. That this complete
disruption was avoided, and that Germany retained at any rate some
symbols of unity, may be attributed, partly to the very looseness of the
federal tie, which was so little felt that it was hardly worth while to
make an effort for its rupture, and partly to the extraordinary series
of events which enabled a single family, the House of Hapsburg, to
obtain a sort of hereditary primacy within Germany. In view of the
danger threatened by Slavs and Turks, it was of supreme importance that
Germany should retain its hold upon the border states of Bohemia and
Hungary, which had been gained by Sigismund. But with Sigismund’s death
in 1437 the male line of the House of Luxemburg became extinct, and the
family was only represented by two women—Sigismund’s own daughter,
Elizabeth, who was married to Albert V. of Austria, and his niece,
another Elizabeth, the widow of Antony of Brabant.
Although Albert of Austria might claim through his wife the succession
to the Luxemburg inheritance, the most [Sidenote: The House of
Hapsburg.] sanguine of contemporary observers could hardly have foretold
that the Hapsburgs would bring even partial salvation to Germany. Since
the first great expansion of the family under Rudolf I. and his
immediate successors, its power and prestige had sensibly diminished.
This had been caused, partly by defeats at the hands of the Swiss, and
partly by the subdivision of Hapsburg territories effected in 1370
between the two brothers, Albert III. and Leopold III. (see p. 137).
Albert had taken the archduchy of Austria, and Leopold the other
territories of the House—the Swabian lands, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola,
and Tyrol. The Albertine line in Austria had been continued by the
successive rulers Albert IV. (d. 1404) and Albert V. The history of the
Leopoldine line had been less simple. Leopold himself had fallen in 1386
in the famous battle of Sempach, and had left his dominions to the joint
rule of four sons—William, Leopold, Ernest, and Frederick. But the first
precedent of subdivision was again followed, and in the end the two
surviving sons, Ernest and Frederick, shared the inheritance between
them. Ernest, the founder of the Styrian, and ultimately the dominant,
branch of the House, was called ‘the Iron’ on account of his physical
strength, and his marriage with Cymburga, a niece of the Polish king, is
said to have brought the famous Hapsburg lip into the family. On his
death in 1424 his two sons, Frederick and Albert, succeeded as joint
rulers to Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. Meanwhile Frederick, who had
received Tyrol and the Swabian lands, had played a prominent part in the
early stages of the Council of Constance, and his territories had been
confiscated by Sigismund in 1415. But the imperial authority was not
strong enough to make the penalty permanent, and in 1417 Frederick
recovered his dominions with the approval and aid of his subjects. He
lived till 1439, when he left a young son, Sigismund, to succeed him.
The death of the Emperor Sigismund gave rise to three problems of
considerable magnitude. It extinguished a dynasty which had held the
imperial crown for [Sidenote: Succession in Hungary and Bohemia.] nearly
a whole century, and it opened the succession in two kingdoms which were
of supreme importance to Germany in her relations with the Slavs on one
hand and with the Turks on the other. The House of Luxemburg had built
up a unique territorial power on the eastern frontier of the empire, and
it was very doubtful if it could be retained by any other family. In
Hungary little opposition was made to the accession of Albert V. of
Austria, who had already won a reputation in the Turkish wars for valour
and sagacity. But before his coronation he had to promise to refuse the
imperial crown if it should be offered to him, a stipulation which shows
how little the Hungarians valued the connection with Germany. In
Bohemia, Albert had identified himself with the orthodox party, and
could reckon on its support. But the Hussites, still a majority of the
population, were resolutely opposed to him, not only on religious
grounds, but also because his accession would continue the hated German
domination, and his claim ran counter to their contention that the
Bohemian crown was elective. The result was a renewal of civil war.
Albert was accepted and crowned by his partisans, while the Hussites
sought to gain the general support of the Slavs by offering the crown to
Casimir, the brother of Ladislas of Poland.
Meanwhile the electors in Germany had to fill the imperial throne. The
reforming party, which had been stirred to activity by the disasters of
the Hussite war, was still in existence and still headed by Frederick of
[Sidenote: Election of Albert II., 1338.] Hohenzollern. If they could
control the election, it might be possible to return to the policy which
Sigismund had pursued in his early years. Their desire was to choose a
prince whose interests lay within Germany and not outside, and who would
sacrifice any personal or family considerations for the general welfare.
The candidate whom they put forward was Frederick of Hohenzollern
himself, who had already given an example within Brandenburg of that
reforming activity which was needed to put an end to the selfish and
distracting divisions of Germany. But the majority of the German princes
were little influenced by patriotic considerations. They valued
independence far higher than unity. It was no grievance to them that
Sigismund had neglected Germany since 1417, and had busied himself with
affairs in Bohemia and Hungary. They turned their eyes to Albert V. of
Austria, who seemed to occupy precisely the same position as Sigismund
had held in his later years. His immediate objects lay so far outside
the empire that he was not likely to interfere with princely
independence, while the pursuit of his own interests in the east might
indirectly render no small service to Germany. Another and perhaps
decisive argument in Albert’s favour was that he had adopted that policy
of neutrality in the struggle between Pope and Council which commended
itself to most of the German princes. When the Electoral College met in
March 1438, it was speedily evident that Albert had a secure majority in
his favour, and Frederick of Brandenburg gracefully withdrew his
candidature in order to allow the election to be unanimous. The election
does not bulk very largely in either contemporary or later narrative,
but it was really of quite decisive importance. Until the fall of the
Holy Roman Empire in 1806, with the exception of one short interval in
the eighteenth century, the Hapsburgs retained practically hereditary
possession of the imperial crown. Under them Germany became a loose and
ineffective federation, held together by tradition and habit and by the
ascendency of a dynasty which showed remarkable astuteness and obstinacy
in the pursuit of its own interests. The monarchy of the Ottos and the
Hohenstaufen had ceased to exist, and the traditions of Ghibellinism
became an anachronism after 1438. The choice in that year lay between a
Hapsburg and a Hohenzollern; and it is of more than superficial interest
to note that when the empire of the Hapsburgs had come to an end, when
the evils of disunion had at last worked their own cure, the first
attempt to revive German unity was the election of a Hohenzollern to the
throne which the Hapsburgs had failed to fill.
Albert II., as he is called in the list of emperors, only accepted the
proffered dignity with considerable reluctance, and was never able to
visit Germany, even for the [Sidenote: Death of Albert II.] purpose of
being crowned. His first occupation was to enforce his claim in Bohemia
against his rival, the Polish prince Casimir. With the aid of a German
force, Albert laid siege to Tabor, which was still the great Hussite
stronghold. The besiegers were repulsed by a sally headed by a young
Bohemian noble, George Podiebrad; and though Albert was more successful
in Silesia, where there was a large German element in the population,
the fate of Bohemia was still doubtful when he was called away by the
news that the Turks had invaded Servia and were threatening Hungary.
Leaving his representatives with instructions to patch up a truce with
Poland, Albert hurried to meet this new danger. But he wholly failed to
relieve Semendria, and his troops were decimated by dysentery contracted
in the marshy valley of the Theiss. Albert himself was attacked by the
disease, and hurried homeward in the hope of seeing his capital and his
wife once more. On the way he learned that his cause in Bohemia was
jeopardised by treachery, that the Council of Basel had revived the
schism by electing Felix V. as anti-pope, and that the Turks were
advancing upon Belgrad, the key of Hungary. At this crisis, when
disaster or ruin seemed imminent from every side, Albert succumbed to
disease just as he had reached the outskirts of Vienna (October 27,
1439). His death seemed to make the general confusion worse confounded.
Not only was the empire again left without a head, but the
recently-established connection of Austria with Hungary and Bohemia was
dissolved before it had had time to gain any strength, and it was
extremely doubtful whether it would ever be restored. The only children
born to Albert and Elizabeth were two daughters, but Elizabeth was
pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, and until the child was
born any question of hereditary right must remain in abeyance. It will
perhaps be clearer to consider the imperial election and the general
history of Germany before turning to the tangled series of events which
ensued in Albert’s personal dominions.
The election of 1438 was too recent for any marked change to have taken
place in the balance of parties, and the principles which had then
prevailed were re-affirmed [Sidenote: Election of Frederick III.] in
1440 with even greater emphasis. In choosing Albert the electors could
argue with some force that they were giving the imperial office to the
strongest candidate. Albert was the legitimate successor of the late
emperor, and he was a powerful prince. Not only was he archduke of
Austria, but he had been crowned king in Hungary and Bohemia, and though
he was opposed in the latter country he had a better claim than his
opponent. Moreover, his personal character and his past achievements
commanded general respect. None of these arguments could be advanced in
favour of Frederick of Styria, who was now brought forward by the
electors who had supported Albert. In his father’s territories of
Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola he was only joint ruler with his brother
Albert. He was barely twenty-four years old, so that little was known of
his character and abilities, but he had given no proof either of energy
or capacity for affairs. But these considerations had no weight with men
who desired only a King Log, and Frederick was chosen by five votes to
two on February 2, 1440. The rival candidate was Lewis of Hesse, who was
put forward and supported by Frederick of Brandenburg. Events had
convinced the latter that in face of the jealous hostility of the house
of Wettin neither he nor any member of his family had a chance of
success.
His vote on this occasion was almost the last public act of the first
Hohenzollern elector of Brandenburg, though he received one more proof
of the esteem in which [Sidenote: Death of Frederick I. of Brandenburg.]
he was held. A council of forty-seven was formed in this year to choose
a new king for Bohemia. Ten votes were split among several candidates,
while thirty-seven were given for Margrave Frederick. But he was too old
and too weary to entertain any new ambitions, and the flattering offer
was declined. On September 21, 1440, he died, leaving his territories to
the joint rule of his four sons. For nearly fifty years, ever since he
saved Sigismund’s life in the battle of Nicopolis, he had played a
foremost part in German politics. He had met with failures as well as
triumphs, but he had always secured respect, both for distinguished
ability and for purity of motive. He was the last champion of the grand
imperial traditions, which had really perished at the time of the Great
Interregnum, though Henry VII. and, at one time, Sigismund had made an
effort for their revival. It was fitting that Frederick should die in
the year in which the ideas which he represented met with their final
reverse. But he was much more than the champion of the mediæval past. He
was the real creator of the modern state of Prussia, which has become
the centre of a revived German nationality, and has thus succeeded to
some extent in carrying out the schemes in the advancement of which its
great founder spent his life.
Frederick III., who held the German crown for fifty-three years, was
almost as inefficient a ruler as the drunken Wenzel, but his inaction
was due rather to set purpose than [Sidenote: Character of Frederick
III.] to incompetence. He is described by a German chronicler as
handsome and well built, of quick intelligence but of placid spirit,
fond above measure of peace and quiet. Even the labours of the chase
were distasteful to him, and his chief delight was in architecture and
the collection of precious stones. By many he was considered a coward.
His acute contemporary, Philippe de Commines, calls him ‘the most
perfectly niggardly man that ever lived.’ In another passage, however,
Commines admits that his long experience of men had given him wisdom.
This was quite true. Frederick had none of the energy and decision of a
statesman who wishes to control the course of events. But he had the
merit of self-control, and a cheery confidence that patience and delay
would bring improvement, no matter how hopeless might seem the condition
of affairs. His reputation for cowardice arose from his habit of evading
difficulties when he felt unable to face them. Thus, in 1451, when he
was threatened by a simultaneous rising in Austria and Styria, he left
the rebels to do their worst, and hurried off to Italy to receive the
imperial crown. In 1473 he had his famous interview at Trier with
Charles the Bold, who desired to receive the royal title. Unwilling
either to grant the request or to exasperate the duke by a direct
refusal, the emperor escaped by night to Cologne. Such expedients were
not very dignified, nor were they calculated to produce any great
triumphs of statesmanship, but they were not ill suited to avoid fatal
disasters. In Germany Frederick was threatened with reforms which should
annul the royal power, and even with deposition, yet he succeeded in the
end in defeating his opponents. In his hereditary dominions he suffered
many humiliations; and at one time the greater part of Austria,
including the capital, Vienna, had fallen into the hands of the
Hungarians. But at the time of his death, Frederick left the house of
Hapsburg infinitely more powerful than it had been at the time of his
accession. The family territories, which had been subdivided since 1370,
were gradually re-united in the hands of the Styrian line. And the
marriage of his son Maximilian with Mary of Burgundy raised the
Hapsburgs to be one of the great dynasties of Europe, and prepared the
way for still greater pre-eminence in the future.
Of Germany as a state there is naturally very little history under a
king who deliberately neglected his duties. For nearly thirty years
Frederick III. remained obstinately [Sidenote: German opposition to
Frederick III.] secluded in his own territories, and never visited any
other part of Germany. Diets were held and matters of the gravest
importance debated, but neither entreaties nor threats could induce the
emperor to attend. In the first great problem of his reign, the quarrel
between the papacy and the Council of Basel, Frederick showed the most
cynical disregard of national interests and prejudices. The pope was
anxious to annul the pragmatic sanction of 1439, which had given some
measure of independence to the German Church. Frederick allowed himself
to be bribed into a secret treaty with the papacy, and the diplomacy of
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was employed to divide and gain over the
princes and electors. Eugenius IV. lived just long enough to accept the
preliminary treaty, and the final concordat was concluded with Nicolas
V. (see p. 241). Equally discreditable, though less treacherous and
self-seeking, was Frederick’s conduct when the news came that
Constantinople had fallen before the Turkish attack. The pope and the
emperor, as the joint heads of Christendom, were the natural leaders of
resistance to the encroachments of the infidel. And Frederick III. had
strong personal and territorial interests at stake which he might
consider more important than the obligations of his high dignity.
Nicolas V. hastened to issue exhortations to a new crusade, and Æneas
Sylvius set himself to rouse the martial spirit of Germany. But
Frederick III. shut himself up in his room, and with tears lamented the
instability of human greatness. The German diet met at Ratisbon in 1453,
and at Frankfort in 1454, but the emperor would not appear, and in his
absence no decision could be come to. Bitter indignation was felt and
expressed at such pusillanimous inactivity. The archbishop of Trier,
Jacob von Sirk, who had never pardoned Frederick for his betrayal of the
German Church to the papacy, took the lead of the opposition. With him
was allied the Elector Palatine Frederick the Victorious, who had
supplanted the infant nephew for whom he had been guardian, but had
never been able to obtain the imperial sanction for his usurpation. The
deposition of the emperor was discussed, and Philip of Burgundy, who
professed great ardour for the projected crusade, was suggested as his
successor. Ultimately in 1455 a more practical scheme was put forward
for the creation of a central administrative body, in which the emperor
might appoint a deputy if he would not attend in person. This council,
in which the electors would have preponderated, was to put down
disorder, to raise a revenue by an imperial tax upon clergy and laity
alike, and was to take measures for the defence of the empire against
the Turks. The scheme came to nothing. Frederick III. opposed a passive
resistance, and the archbishop of Trier was more interested to gain
power and prominence for himself than to effect any real reform. In 1456
Mohammed II. laid siege to Belgrade, and the fall of the fortress would
have opened the whole valley of the upper Danube to the Turks. The
danger was warded off, not by the exertions of emperor or princes, but
by the heroism and skill of a Hungarian soldier.
With the opposition to the emperor was combined hostility to the papacy.
Many of the princes looked back with regret to the pragmatic sanction of
1439, and envied the French who still retained the pragmatic [Sidenote:
German hostility to the papacy.] sanction of Bourges. The death of
Nicolas V. in 1455 and the election of Calixtus III. gave an opportunity
for formulating the old complaints against the Roman see. Some of the
electors proposed to summon a new general council in a German city to
take up the work of ecclesiastical reform which the council of Basel had
failed to carry through. At the same time the reform of the imperial
administration was again mooted, and Frederick III. was called upon to
attend a meeting of the diet. But the princes had ceased to be a united
party. Albert Achilles, the brother of the elector of Brandenburg, had
quarrelled with the Elector Palatine, and now came forward as the
supporter of the emperor. The archbishop of Trier was dead and his
successor was gained to the side of Frederick III. The opposition
leaders still threatened to depose the emperor, but they had no longer a
majority behind them. Frederick III. by a masterly inactivity had
thwarted the projects of administrative reform, and thus set the seal
upon German disunion. His triumph brought with it a victory for the
papacy. Ecclesiastical tenths were constantly levied on the pretext of a
Turkish crusade, but the money passed into the pope’s coffers. Half the
benefices in Germany were practically in the gift of the Curia. In 1459
Æneas Sylvius became pope as Pius II. in succession to Calixtus III. In
1460 he dealt a fatal blow to the conciliar opposition with which he had
been so closely associated in earlier years. The bull _Execrabilis_
declared any appeal from a papal decision to a general council to be
impious and heretical. From this time the opposition to the papacy in
Germany was only weak and fitful until a new era began in the next
century.
For his inaction in Germany, Frederick III. had a fairly substantial
excuse in the constant troubles in which he was involved at home. Not
only had he to contend with the factious opposition of his brother
Albert and the Styrian nobles, but in 1439 the death of his uncle
Frederick left him to act as guardian for the young Sigismund of Tyrol,
and later in the same year he was called upon to deal with the very
serious problems to which the death of Albert II. gave rise. As
Sigismund’s guardian, Frederick III. had to administer Tyrol and the
Swabian territories, and the latter brought him into collision with the
Swiss. For a long time jealousy had existed between the [Sidenote:
Frederick III. and the Swiss.] rural cantons and the city members of the
League, especially Zürich. This was brought to a head in 1436 by the
death of the count of Toggenburg. His inheritance was claimed by the
emperor, by the Confederation as a whole, and by Zürich. When the
citizens seized a large part of the disputed territory, the rest of the
confederates, headed by Schwyz, took up arms and compelled them to
disgorge their booty. It was the prominent part taken by the men of
Schwyz on this occasion which helped to give their name to the whole
Confederation. Indignant at the humiliation, Zürich drew aloof from the
League and appealed to Frederick III. as both emperor and representative
of the House of Hapsburg. Frederick could not resist the temptation to
enforce the imperial claims to Toggenburg, and also to recover the
Aargau which the Swiss had taken from his uncle, Frederick of Tyrol, at
the time of his quarrel with the Emperor Sigismund. The war broke out in
1442, and in spite of Frederick’s assistance Zürich was again closely
besieged by the forces of the Confederation. Unable to spare more troops
from his own territories, Frederick resorted to the extraordinary
expedient of employing French mercenaries against his German subjects.
Charles VII., freed for the time from his war with England, was only too
glad to get rid of some of the _écorcheurs_, who had become a curse to
France. Instead of the 5000 men whose services were demanded, he sent
nearly 20,000 so-called ‘Armagnacs’ to invade Swabia under the nominal
command of the dauphin. Devastation and misery marked the track of this
vast force as it advanced to raise the siege of Zürich. A few hundred
Swiss tried to block the way, and on the field of St. Jacob, the German
Thermopylæ, they were completely annihilated. But their heroism had
gained its end. The invaders, who had suffered terrible losses, hastened
to conclude a truce with such resolute foes, and retired to Alsace. In
1445 they were induced to evacuate the country, but it was long before
the horrors of the raid were forgotten in Germany. Frederick III., who
had brought such sufferings upon his subjects, gained nothing by his
unpatriotic action. The Swiss were more than ever determined to resist
the hated Hapsburgs to the last. The war went on till 1450, when Zürich
deserted the Austrian alliance and returned to the League. Frederick had
to give up the guardianship of his cousin [Sidenote: Sigismund of
Tyrol.] Sigismund, who became independent ruler in Tyrol and the Swabian
territories. His subsequent history may be briefly traced. Involved in
constant quarrels with the Swiss, for which he was inadequately provided
with men and money, he pledged his Swabian lands in 1469 to Charles the
Bold. They proved as fatal a possession to the Burgundian duke as they
had been to the Hapsburgs. The wily Louis XI. gained one of his greatest
diplomatic triumphs when he reconciled the Swiss with Sigismund of
Tyrol, and stirred them up to make war against their powerful neighbour.
After successive defeats at Granson and Morat, Charles the Bold fell in
1477 before the walls of Nancy. Sigismund of Tyrol recovered his Swabian
inheritance, but he had no children, and before his death in 1496 he
handed his territories over to Frederick III.’s son Maximilian, in whose
hands all the Hapsburg territories were reunited.
The succession to Albert II. in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia gave rise
to a series of complications in the east, and involved Frederick III. in
many difficulties. Albert’s widow, Elizabeth, gave birth to a son,
Ladislas Postumus, on February 22, 1440. In [Sidenote: Succession in
Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia.] Austria, where the rule of male
succession was unquestioned, the infant duke was immediately
acknowledged, and was placed under the guardianship of Frederick III.
But in Bohemia and Hungary, where Hapsburg rule was both novel and
unpopular, the problem was by no means so easily settled. In Hungary
there was no absolute rule of inheritance, and female succession was not
excluded either by custom or law. Sigismund’s claim to the crown had
rested on his marriage with the daughter of Lewis the Great, and Albert
had been accepted as the son-in-law of Sigismund. It was possible to
contend that there was no real vacancy, and that Elizabeth was lawful
queen. The primary need of Hungary was defence against the Turks, and in
order to strengthen the kingdom the nobles compelled Elizabeth to offer
her hand, and with it the Hungarian crown, to Ladislas III. of Poland.
On the birth of her son, Elizabeth repudiated the engagement, and had
the infant crowned king. But she was not strong enough to enforce her
will, and on her death in 1442 the Polish king was generally
acknowledged in Hungary. But he perished in the great battle of Varna
against the Turks in 1444, and in the following year the Hungarians
returned to the direct line and recognised Ladislas Postumus as king.
But he was still a minor in the guardianship of Frederick III.; and as
the Hungarians would not allow a foreigner to administer their kingdom,
they gave the office of governor in 1446 to John Hunyadi, who had won a
brilliant reputation in the Turkish war. Meanwhile, Bohemia had pursued
its own course. The Utraquists, the most numerous and powerful party in
the kingdom, refused to recognise claims based upon hereditary right or
dynastic treaties, and insisted upon the right of election. In all
probability they would have chosen the Jagellon king of Poland, if he
had not already been accepted in Hungary. The connection with Hungary
was no more popular than that with Austria. The crown was offered to
Frederick of Brandenburg, but he would not have it, and in the end it
was decided to elect Ladislas Postumus as king, and to intrust the
administration during the minority to a council of Regency. But this
settlement of the succession failed to produce any harmony among the
contending parties. The Roman Catholics, headed by Ulrich von Rosenberg,
desired a complete reconciliation with Germany and the Papacy. The
Utraquists, who found a capable leader in George Podiebrad, were
resolute to maintain the national independence and the religious
settlement arranged in the _Compactata_ with the Council of Basel. A
prolonged civil war ended in the Utraquist victory and the appointment
of George Podiebrad as governor of Bohemia in 1452.
The Hapsburg rule in Hungary and Bohemia was nominally prolonged by the
recognition of Ladislas Postumus in his father’s dominions. But in
actual fact there was [Sidenote: Ladislas Postumus.] little strength in
the connection, as each state arranged its own affairs with intentional
disregard of its fellows. To Frederick III., the guardianship of his
young cousin brought little but incessant worries and annoyances.
Neither Hungary nor Bohemia would allow him any authority whatever, and
even in Austria Styrian administration was extremely unpopular. Both the
Austrian nobles and John Hunyadi were urgent in demanding that Ladislas
Postumus should be released from external tutelage and intrusted to the
care of his own subjects. George Podiebrad, on the other hand, who had
no wish to jeopardise his own authority by the presence of a young king,
who might fall under the influence of his opponents, urged Frederick to
maintain his rights as guardian. In 1451 a simultaneous rising broke out
in Austria and in Styria. Frederick III. chose this moment for a journey
to Rome, to receive the imperial crown at the hands of the Pope. He
endeavoured to checkmate the rebels by taking Ladislas Postumus with
him. The coronation, on March 19, 1452, was the last that was destined
to take place in the ancient capital of the empire. On the emperor’s
return to Germany, he was disgusted to find that his absence had only
exasperated his opponents. The Austrian nobles entered Styria and
attacked him in his own capital of Neustadt. Unable to resist any
longer, Frederick agreed in September 1452 to hand over his ward to the
Count of Cilly, who carried him in triumph to Vienna.
Ladislas Postumus seemed to have a brilliant career before him, when he
emerged from tutelage to be Duke of Austria and King of Hungary and
Bohemia. He was at the time in his thirteenth year, and he had only five
troubled years to live. Hungary and Bohemia remained under the
administration of Hunyadi and Podiebrad, but Ladislas was involved in
quarrels with the two regents by the evil influence of the Count of
Cilly. It was still uncertain whether the young king would succeed
[Sidenote: Relief of Belgrad, 1456.] in asserting his personal
authority, when the fall of Constantinople and the pressing danger from
the Turks compelled a temporary pacification. In 1456, Mohammed II. with
a huge army laid siege to Belgrade, and Turkish vessels sailed up the
Danube to exclude any attempt to relieve the garrison by way of the
river. Hungary and south-eastern Germany would be exposed to invasion if
the great fortress were allowed to fall. For a moment, something like
the old crusading fervour was excited by the preaching of an
enthusiastic Franciscan, Fra Capistrano, and Hunyadi undertook the
command of the motley host that was collected by the eloquence of the
friar. A flotilla of rafts and boats was prepared, and the destruction
of the Turkish ships, under the very eyes of the Sultan and his army,
enabled the relieving force to enter Belgrad. But Mohammed II. refused
to acknowledge his defeat. As a blockade was no longer possible, he
determined to carry the fortress by storm. One by one the outworks were
carried by sheer force of numbers in spite of the heroic resistance of
the defenders. The crescent was about to be elevated to announce a
signal victory, when Hunyadi and Capistrano headed a last sally. The
Turks were driven in headlong flight from the walls, their camp was
stormed and burned, and before evening the Sultan’s army was in full
flight for Sofia, leaving 20,000 men on the field (July 22, 1456). The
relief of Belgrade was a magnificent achievement, but it cost the life
of the two leaders. Hunyadi died of camp fever on August 11, and a few
weeks later Capistrano followed him to the grave.
The death of the Hungarian regent was welcomed by Count Cilly as
removing a rival from his path. But the great soldier had left two sons,
Ladislas and Mathias, who inherited their father’s popularity [Sidenote:
Death of Ladislas Postumus.] and might aspire to hold his position in
the state, and Cilly schemed to effect their ruin. Ignorant that his
intrigues had been discovered, he accompanied the young king on a visit
to the rescued fortress. No sooner were they within Belgrade than they
found themselves prisoners, and Cilly was brought before Ladislas
Hunyadi, reproached for his treachery, and put to death. Ladislas
Postumus was shrewd enough to dissimulate his wrath and to pretend to
pardon the murderers. But he was only waiting his time. Early in 1457 he
returned to Pesth, and as soon as he had surrounded himself with his own
partisans, he had Ladislas Hunyadi taken prisoner, tried and executed
for the murder of Cilly. Mathias, the younger brother, he carried off to
Vienna and thence to Prague. At the latter city he was preparing to
celebrate his marriage with Madeline, daughter of Charles VII. of
France, when he died suddenly on November 23, 1457. So tragic an event
made a profound impression in Europe. Ladislas Postumus was too young to
be regarded as responsible for the demerits of his government, and his
handsome face and winning manners had always made him personally
popular. In Vienna the news was received with paroxysms of grief, and a
suspicion was naturally entertained that the young prince had met with
foul play. That he should have died in Prague was almost conclusive
proof of crime. German dislike of the Slavs and Roman Catholic
detestation of heretics combined to formulate the charge against George
Podiebrad. Before long men told in detail how the poison had been
administered, its effects on the unfortunate victim, and the way in
which the doctors had been suborned by the Bohemian regent. But there is
not the slightest foundation for these stories, and Ladislas
unquestionably died of the plague or Black Death which devastated Europe
at intervals throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
For the second time within a few years the connexion between Austria,
Hungary, and Bohemia was dissolved, and as Ladislas Postumus left no
descendants, it seemed extremely unlikely that it would be renewed. In
each of the three countries which he ruled he represented a different
dynasty. In Austria he was the last of the Albertine line, and his death
left the primacy to the Styrian branch of the Hapsburgs. In Hungary he
had ruled, through the marriage of his grandfather Sigismund, as the
ultimate descendant of the Angevin dynasty, which had held the crown for
a century and a half. In Bohemia, through his mother Elizabeth, he
represented the house of Luxemburg. Great interest attached to the
succession. Austria, by family agreement, passed to the joint rule of
the three surviving Hapsburg princes, Frederick III. and his brother
Albert, and their cousin Sigismund of Tyrol. Such an arrangement gave
rise to quarrels, which were only terminated by the death of Albert in
1463, when Frederick III. bought off Sigismund with a money payment and
assumed the undivided government of the Austrian duchy. In Hungary it
was decided to disregard all hereditary claims, and to fill the throne
by free [Sidenote: Elections of Mathias Corvinus and George Podiebrad.]
election. On January 24, 1458, the choice of the diet fell upon Mathias
Corvinus, the surviving son of Hunyadi, whose final exploit in relieving
Belgrade had made him a national hero. In Bohemia a similar contempt was
shown for dynastic or treaty claims, and the growing national sentiment
found expression in the election of George Podiebrad (March 2, 1458).
These two elections were events of no ordinary significance. They marked
a popular protest against dynastic arrangements which had paid no regard
to national interests, and had so often brought about the rule of alien
princes. The practical assertion of the rights of the people, of the
principle of nationality, and of the idea that merit rather than birth
confers a claim to rule, was a serious blow to the vested interests of
European kings and princes.
The termination of Hapsburg rule in Hungary and Bohemia was a bitter
disappointment to Frederick III., who had hoped to succeed his cousin in
these kingdoms. But as usual, his exertions were unequal to his
ambition; and after a futile struggle he was compelled to acknowledge
his successful rivals. Common interests drew the new kings together, and
the marriage of Mathias with the [Sidenote: War between Hungary and
Bohemia.] daughter of Podiebrad seemed likely to be the basis of a close
and lasting alliance. Such an alliance would have been of the greatest
value to Europe, and would have constituted a formidable barrier to
Turkish aggression. George Podiebrad had already shown consummate
statesmanship in restoring order in the distracted state of Bohemia, and
Mathias soon proved that he had inherited no inconsiderable share of the
military skill and energy of his father. But unfortunately religious
differences placed an impediment in the way of the concerted action of
two princes who had no superior among the monarchs of their time.
Mathias was an orthodox member of the Church, while his father-in-law
had been born and bred a Utraquist, and had consistently directed his
policy to the maintenance of the Compacts of 1433. But these concessions
to the Hussites had been extorted with difficulty from the Council of
Basel, and successive popes were eager to restore uniformity of belief
and ritual by their revocation. Pius II., encouraged by a confident
expectation of the revival of crusading ardour, ventured to annul the
Compacts in 1462, and his successor, Paul II., in 1466 decreed the
deposition of Podiebrad as a heretic. The result of these papal measures
was to rekindle a religious war in Bohemia, and Breslau became the
centre of a rebellious Catholic league. But Podiebrad was well able to
hold his own against domestic opposition, and the Pope, with the
connivance of the Emperor, set himself to obtain the active assistance
of the Hungarian king. Mathias had no sympathy with heresy, his wife had
died in 1464, and he was tempted by the prospect of acquiring the
Bohemian crown for himself and of gaining the active support of the
German states against the Turks. War broke out in 1468, but Mathias, in
spite of occasional victories, gained little honour or substantial
advantage. In fact the chief result of hostilities was to deprive him of
the prospect of gaining Bohemia. George Podiebrad, driven by Hungarian
invasion to seek the support of Poland, suggested Ladislas, the son of
Casimir of Poland, as his successor. The proposal was not unwelcome to
the diet. The sentiment of nationality was conciliated by the choice of
a Slav prince, and the only lingering sentiment of loyalty to the
ancient dynasty was gratified by the thought that Ladislas’s mother was
the younger daughter of Albert II. and Elizabeth of Luxemburg, and that
therefore some of the blood of Charles IV. ran in his veins. On the
death of Podiebrad in 1471, Ladislas succeeded in attaining the crown in
spite of all the efforts of Mathias to exclude him.
Mathias had good reason to suspect that the emperor, his professed ally,
had supported the candidature of Ladislas, and during the later part of
his reign he was engaged in almost continual hostilities with Austria.
Frederick III. was no soldier, and for a time he was glad to purchase
the restoration of conquered territories by a money payment to his
formidable neighbour. His attention was absorbed during a whole decade
by the important events in the [Sidenote: Frederick III and Burgundy.]
west which preceded and followed the death of Charles the Bold. His
great desire was to secure the hand of Charles’s daughter for his son
Maximilian, but he must many times have despaired of achieving his end.
In 1473 he evaded by flight Charles’s imperative request for a royal
title. In the next year he had to raise an imperial army in order to
relieve Neuss from the Burgundian besiegers, though he was careful to
avoid actual hostilities, and rejected the artful proposals of Louis XI.
for a partition of the territories of a common enemy. Yet he used his
influence to bring about the war between Charles and the Swiss, which
restored to the Hapsburgs their ancient lands in Swabia, and in which
Charles met with his defeat and death. Then at last Frederick found his
opportunity. Pressed by the selfish aggression of Louis XI., Mary of
Burgundy concluded the marriage with Maximilian which had been so long
debated, and brought to her husband the great Burgundian inheritance,
though the treaty of Arras (1482) shore off some provinces which Louis
XI. would not relinquish.
This notable triumph was followed by an equally signal humiliation. The
war with Hungary was renewed, and Mathias Corvinus overran the whole of
Austria and great part of Styria and Carinthia. In 1485 Vienna was
compelled to surrender, and Frederick III., driven from his [Sidenote:
Last years of Frederick III.] capital, was forced to wander as an
imperial mendicant from one German monastery to another. Yet the old man
never lost his cheerfulness or his confidence in the future. He refused
to allow Maximilian to conclude a treaty in which any permanent cession
of Austrian territory should be stipulated, and insisted upon waiting
for a favourable turn in the course of events. In 1486 he induced the
electors to choose Maximilian as King of the Romans, and thus secured
the continuance of the imperial dignity in his family. In 1490 Mathias
Corvinus died leaving no legitimate heir to continue the line of
Hunyadi. Neither Frederick nor Maximilian could secure the succession,
and the Hungarian diet offered the crown to Ladislas of Bohemia. But
though the extension of Jagellon power was in itself displeasing, the
change of rulers enabled the Hapsburgs to recover their losses. In 1491
Ladislas was compelled to sign the treaty of Pressburg, by which all the
conquests of Mathias were restored, and it was arranged that on the
extinction of his male line his territories should pass to the
Hapsburgs. By a series of chances, this condition was actually carried
out within the next forty years. But the exertions of Maximilian to
extort these terms from the Hungarian king had involved him in a great
humiliation in the west. The heiress of Brittany, to whom he had been
actually married by proxy, was forced to give her person and her
province to the French king Charles VIII., and his only daughter,
Margaret, who had been for years betrothed to the latter, was repudiated
and sent back to her father. But the wrong brought with it some
compensation when Charles VIII., in 1493, found it a necessary
preliminary to his Italian expedition to conciliate his injured rival by
the restoration of Artois and Franche-Comté. The year before, Maximilian
had received Tyrol and Alsace from Sigismund, so that Frederick III.
lived to see the Hapsburg dominions not only reunited in a single line,
but vastly extended. For some time he had allowed all power to fall into
the hands of his impetuous son, and little interest was aroused in the
midst of more exciting events by the news that the old emperor had died
on August 19, 1493. For years he had inscribed the five vowels as a
mystic sign on all his buildings, books, and ornaments, and it appeared
that their significance was _Austriæ est imperare orbi universo_, or in
German _Alles Erdreich ist Œsterreich unterthan_. The implied prophecy
was never literally fulfilled, but it came nearer to fulfilment than any
contemporary of Frederick III. could have anticipated. And to this
result the patient and rather ignoble diplomacy of the long-lived
emperor contributed in no small degree.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE AND THE SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOMS
Relations of Germany in the fourteenth century with Scandinavians
and Slavs—The towns of southern and northern Germany—Unions of
German merchants abroad—Trade in the Baltic and the North
Sea—Alliance of Lübeck and Hamburg—Origin of the Hanseatic
League—Aggressions of Eric Menved—Collapse of Denmark and revival of
the League—Waldemar III. and the capture of Wisby—The Hanse towns at
war with Waldemar—Treaty of Stralsund—The League at the zenith of
its power—Queen Margaret and the Union of Kalmar—War between Denmark
and Holstein for the possession of Schleswig—Deposition of Eric of
Pomerania—Christopher of Bavaria re-unites the three
kingdoms—Christian I. of Oldenburg and the severance of Sweden from
the Union—Karl Knudson and the Stures—Christian I. acquires
Schleswig and Holstein—Gradual decline of the Hanseatic League.
The fourteenth century is not a period to which Germans look back with
pride or satisfaction. It produced no great [Sidenote: Relation of
Germany with Scandinavians and Slavs.] rulers, like the Ottos, or
Frederick Barbarossa, or Frederick II., who are the favourite heroes of
German history in the middle ages. In their place we have Lewis the
Bavarian and his pusillanimous struggle with French popes, Charles IV.
with his subtle and cold-blooded policy which has been little understood
or appreciated because it produced no great obvious results, and Wenzel,
whose drunken incompetence led to deposition and schism. There is an
obvious decline of German power and prestige. The crowns of Italy and of
Arles confer upon their holder a nominal dignity as unreal as that of
the Roman Empire itself. The German kingship is more substantial, but
possesses little efficient authority. The king’s influence depends more
upon his private territorial possessions than upon his royal position,
and his chief interest is in the aggrandisement of his family rather
than the extension of the powers of the crown. He cannot extort
obedience from his powerful vassals, still less can he defend the
distant frontiers of his kingdom. Yet in spite of the impotence of the
central authority, there were two points on the frontier on which the
cause of Germany was championed with brilliant though not very lasting
success. To the north-west lay the Scandinavian kingdoms of Norway,
Sweden and Denmark, of which Denmark was the nearest and for a long time
the most powerful. The Danes were of German origin, and for generations
they had recognised the overlordship of German emperors. But they had
gradually become severed from the southern members of their own race,
and their interests and prejudices were in many respects anti-German.
Knud VI. (1182-1202) repudiated any allegiance to the emperor, and the
break-up of the Saxon duchy by Frederick Barbarossa destroyed the most
efficient bulwark of northern Germany against Danish aggression.
Geographical position enabled the Danes to claim a control of the
Baltic, which more than one king from Waldemar II. (1202-1241) to
Waldemar III. (1340-1375) sought to convert into absolute supremacy.
Resistance to a design which would have been disastrous to Germany was
undertaken, not by the emperors, who showed a curious incapacity to
appreciate the importance of the Baltic, but by the famous association
of North German towns which is known as the Hanseatic League. Their
motive was neither patriotism nor a sense of nationality, but a selfish
pursuit of trading interests: nevertheless their action saved Germany
from a serious danger. Farther east was a still greater problem. In the
ninth century the whole of the southern coast of the Baltic was
inhabited by Slavs, who had displaced the earlier German settlers. With
the tenth century began a long struggle on the part of the Germans to
drive back this alien migration, or at any rate to extort submission and
the acceptance of Christianity from the conquered Slavs. Thanks to the
exertions of two great families, the Welfs in Saxony and the Ascanians
in Brandenburg, this task was in great measure accomplished by the
thirteenth century. As far as the Vistula German preponderance had been
established and secured by the introduction of German settlers and the
foundation of German towns. But to the east of the Vistula the struggle
was still going on, and it still involved religious as well as political
and commercial interests. Here again, as in the north-west, the emperors
were absolutely inactive, and the Teutonic Order was left almost unaided
to carry on a crusade in Lithuania and Livonia for the extension at once
of Christianity and of German civilisation. These two very different
corporations, the Hanse towns and the Teutonic knights—with the equally
different Swiss Confederation in the south—are in many ways the most
interesting developments of German life in an age when Germany as a
whole was weak and anarchical.
The towns of Germany developed more slowly than the great Italian
republics, and never attained to the same measure of independence or
fame. Yet in many respects their history is similar. Both owed
[Sidenote: The German towns.] their municipal self-government to the
weakness of the central authority, and both owed their prosperity to an
advantageous position for carrying on trade. The great commercial
routes, by which the commodities made or collected in Italy were
distributed throughout central Europe, ran through southern Germany, and
it was their position on these routes that gave importance to such towns
as Ulm, Ratisbon, Augsburg, and Nürnberg. In the north an almost equally
lucrative trade was conducted along the shores of the Baltic and the
North Sea, and this trade was almost a monopoly in the hands of German
merchants. And the northern sailors had another source of wealth in the
fishing industry, which was of special importance in the Middle Ages,
when strict rules as to fasting were enforced by the Church. The
combination of trade and fishing brought prosperity to the great
northern towns of Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock, Danzig, and many
others. Between the north and the south lay the great city of Cologne,
interested in the southern trade as it found its way along the Rhine
valley, and having also a large stake in the commerce with England and
other countries bordering on the North Sea. But the real meeting-place
of north and south was in the Flemish city of Bruges, whither merchants
from all parts of Europe thronged to exchange their respective wares.
The fourteenth century is the golden age of the German towns, the period
in which their wealth and political importance were higher than at any
other period. But there is a marked and noteworthy distinction
[Sidenote: Distinction between northern and southern towns.] between the
northern and the southern groups. The great southern cities had many
interests in common with each other. They had to resist the growing
power of the territorial princes, always jealous of municipal
independence; they were eager to put down disorder and private war; and
obvious motives impelled them to oppose excessive tolls on roads and
rivers and to obtain security for travellers. These interests, and
especially the need of police measures to put down robbery or to extort
redress, induced them from time to time to form alliances among
themselves. But still stronger than community of interest was the
jealousy with which the cities regarded each other, and none of these
leagues proved lasting. The dominant aim of the southern cities was
independence and isolation. In the north the sense of rivalry was
equally strong, but the dangers and difficulties were in many ways
greater, and thus there was a more powerful impulse towards union. The
surrounding states were all of them more backward and less civilised
than the Germans; and this gave to the northern towns an infinitely
greater political influence than could be exercised by those of the
south, which had to deal with powerful and highly developed communities.
Hence, while the southern cities could never combine together except for
a short time and an immediate object, those in the north gradually
formed a league, faulty and ill adjusted in many ways, but which gave
its members far greater importance than they could have acquired by
isolated action, and even enabled them to play for a short time a
dominant part in the politics of northern Europe.
The word ‘hansa’ is of some importance in the Middle Ages. In its
earliest known use it means a band or troop of soldiers. Hence it
acquires its later meaning of a union or association, especially for
mercantile purposes. It is also used for the charge made by a superior
authority for leave to carry on trade. When Henry the Lion wished to
encourage trade in his newly acquired town of Lübeck, he authorised
foreign merchants to enter and leave it _absque theloneo et absque
hansa_, ‘without tax or toll.’ But its most usual signification is
association or guild; the _hansa_ is the merchant-guild, the _hans-hus_
is the guild-hall. And it is in this sense that it came to be applied to
the great _Hansa_, the league of north German towns. The very name
expresses the important fact that the league of towns had its origin in
a league or leagues of traders.
The whole social and economic life of the Middle Ages is dominated by
the principle of association. The village community or manor is the most
familiar illustration; the Church with its inner corporations is
another. In urban communities we find the same thing. Whoever wished to
practise a handicraft must belong to a guild: whoever wished to engage
in commerce must enter a trade-guild or _hansa_. The individual was
powerless. Only through union with others did he obtain capacity of
action and protection for his activity. Any comparison of the modern
association with the mediæval union is as a rule superficial and
misleading. What is now a matter of use and advantage was then a matter
of necessity, of actual if not of formal compulsion. The essential
distinction is to be found in the very limited area of state action in
early times. In the Middle Ages the corporation fulfilled most of the
duties which the undeveloped state had neither the will nor the power to
undertake.
If the home trader required an association, the merchant who journeyed
to foreign countries needed one still more. There were few commission
agents in the Middle Ages, and the merchant in person had to superintend
[Sidenote: Unions of German merchants abroad.] the carriage and the sale
of his goods. The perils of travelling by land were great; those by sea
were far greater. Pirates were almost as numerous and more difficult to
resist than land-robbers, and the dangers of navigation were a very
serious consideration when sailors had no compass to guide their course,
and owners had no system of insurance to cover their risks. It was no
wonder that traders desired to travel in considerable numbers in order
that perils and disasters might be avoided, or at the worst, chronicled.
But it was when the merchants reached a foreign soil that the necessity
of union became most pressing. It often took a long time to dispose of a
cargo; and as winter travelling was considered impossible, it was
frequently necessary to spend several months in a foreign land. Hence
the merchants combined to acquire joint property in the chief markets
they visited: not only inns for personal lodging, but warehouses for the
stowage of goods, and harbourage for their ships. These ‘factories,’ as
they were called, became the central point of the union or _hansa_
formed by the merchants. The mediæval system of law gave another impulse
towards combination. Law in early time was personal, not territorial; it
did not apply to all persons on the soil. The guest, as the foreigner
was called, if not altogether lawless, was yet at a great disadvantage
as compared with the native. Any disputes among the foreign merchants
had to be settled among themselves and by their own law. In disputes
with natives it was difficult for them to obtain justice, unless they
could secure some powerful support within the state. To carry on trade
at all they required privileges and concessions, which were not easily
to be gained by individuals. All these considerations forced the
merchants to adopt a corporate organisation. At the head of the _hansa_
were elders or aldermen, who administered justice among the members,
held assemblies for the consideration of common interests, and
represented the community in its relations with the outside world. The
more efficient this organisation was, the better able were the merchants
to obtain privileges, especially the remission of duties upon trade,
from the community with which they had to deal. The new-comer could only
share these privileges by obtaining admission to the _hansa_, and for
this he had to obtain the consent of the members and to pay a money fee.
The two chief scenes of mercantile activity in the north were the Baltic
and the North Sea, connected with each other only by the narrow straits
which separate the [Sidenote: Trade in the Baltic and North Sea.]
islands and peninsulas of Scandinavia. The great centre of the Baltic
trade was Wisby, the capital of the island of Gothland. So important and
flourishing was Wisby in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that many
merchants took up their abode there; and though it remained a part of
the Swedish kingdom, it became to all intents and purposes a German
town. Thus an important distinction grew up between the German residents
in Wisby and the older union of merchants, who only visited the town for
purposes of trade. From Wisby factories were organised for the extension
of eastern trade. Of these, by far the most important was at Novgorod,
which became the great centre of trade with Russia. In the course of the
thirteenth century the ascendency of Wisby in the Baltic was threatened
by the rise of a group of towns upon territory which had been won back
for Germany from the Wends, the most westerly of the Slav settlers on
the Baltic coasts. These ‘Wendish’ towns, as they are called, though in
population and character they were wholly German, were Lübeck, Rostock,
Wismar, Stralsund, and Greifswald; and among them Lübeck, thanks to its
advantageous position on the Trave and to the efficient patronage it
received, played from the first by far the most prominent part. In the
North Sea there were three great foreign markets to which German
merchants resorted, and where they formed _hansas_ of notable
importance. These were Bergen in Norway, London in England, and Bruges
in Flanders. For a long time the majority of the North Sea traders came
from Cologne, which was as predominant in the west as Wisby had become
in the east. But other towns became rivals of Cologne, notably Hamburg
on the Elbe, and Bremen on the Weser. Even from inland towns, such as
Soest, Dortmund, and Münster in Westphalia, merchants journeyed to the
coast and hired vessels for the conveyance of their goods to England or
Norway.
It was inevitable that these unions of German merchants in foreign parts
should exercise a marked influence upon the conduct of the towns from
which they came. [Sidenote: Influence of trade on the relations of the
towns.] The merchants were only occasional sojourners in their foreign
abodes; the greater part of their lives was spent at home. And it is
important to remember that the councils of most of the north German
towns were composed almost solely of merchants. Artisans were jealously
excluded and looked down upon, and there are few traces of a land-owning
nobility in the German towns such as that which played a prominent part
in the history of Florence and other Italian cities. Hence the policy of
the town councils was guided by the mercantile interests of their
members. And the foreign _hansas_, if they failed to gain what they
wanted, appealed for support to the towns from which the members came.
Thus when merchants were closely associated in trade, their towns were
naturally drawn into co-operation for common interests. This joint
action for the furtherance of trade and the protection of the fisheries
gave the first great impulse to the formation of town leagues. As long
as the Baltic and the North Sea were fairly distinct units, the tendency
was to form two or more separate groups. The towns on the North Sea
tended to group themselves round Cologne or Hamburg, while in the Baltic
one or two leagues might have been formed under the guidance of Wisby or
of Lübeck. But a new era in the development of northern Germany set in
when the Baltic towns began to encroach upon the North Sea trade, and
when Lübeck undertook to dispute the primacy of Cologne in the west, as
she had already disputed the pre-eminence of Wisby in the east. The
great struggle took place in London. Here German merchants had been
active since the reign of Æthelred II., one of whose laws enacts that
‘the men of the emperor shall be held as worthy of good laws as
ourselves.’ These early traders must have come mostly from Cologne, and
it was the men of Cologne who formed the first German _hansa_ in
England. Other merchants had to obtain admission by payment to the
_Hansa_ of Cologne, and gradually it expanded to admit most of the
traders from the Rhine and Westphalia. But natives of other districts
found it difficult to gain admission, and when the men of Lübeck
appeared upon the scene they set themselves to break down the monopoly
of Cologne. In this struggle they had the support of Hamburg, already a
serious rival to Cologne, and possessed of a more advantageous site for
trade with England. When applicants had money and influence behind them,
it was not difficult to obtain concessions from the English government,
which found a pecuniary interest in the protection of foreign merchants.
In 1266 and 1267 Hamburg and Lübeck were allowed to form _hansas_ of
their own on the model of that of Cologne. These were not in London, but
at Lynn, a favourite port of the Germans on the east coast. In the early
years of Edward I. the three separate _hansas_ were fused into a single
_Hansa Alamanniæ_, of which we first find official mention in the year
1282. Its members were known to the English as the Easterlings or
Osterlings, a name which they afterwards adopted for themselves.
The combination of all German merchants to form a single hansa in
England is in many ways a very significant event. It marks a union
between Baltic and North Sea [Sidenote: Alliance of Lübeck and Hamburg.]
traders, which for the first time rendered possible a general league of
all the towns of northern Germany. It was brought about by the joint
action of Lübeck and Hamburg, and there is a well-founded tradition
which attributes to the alliance of these two towns the origin of the
Hanseatic League. For free trade between the Baltic and the North Sea it
was imperative, if possible, to secure the passage through the narrow
channels of the Sound and the Belt. But these were dominated by Denmark,
which in those days held not only the peninsula of Jutland and the
island of Zealand, but also the southern provinces of what is now
Sweden. Geography enabled the Danes either to close the straits or to
levy a toll upon the vessels that passed through. Moreover, the great
centre of the herring fishery in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
was the coast of Skaania, on the eastern side of the Sound. Here again
the Danes had it in their power to inflict damage upon the German
merchants and sailors who flocked to the coast of Skaania during the
fishing season. Hence one of the most pressing needs of the north German
towns was to protect the straits and the fisheries from Danish
aggression, and the lead in this defence naturally devolved upon the two
towns which stood nearest to the barrier between the two seas—Lübeck to
the east of Jutland, and Hamburg to the west. The two towns were not
very distant from each other; and if, at the worst, the passage of the
Sound was blocked, a merchant could unlade his goods at either port,
carry them overland to the other, and thence renew his voyage either on
the Baltic or the North Sea. The earliest alliance between the two towns
had for its object the protection of the roads leading from one to the
other, and from this they advanced to common action in England and in
Flanders.
It was no wonder that other towns tended to ally themselves with the two
cities which could and did render such invaluable services to a cause
which was common [Sidenote: The origin of the Hanseatic League.] to all.
By the end of the fourteenth century we can find sufficient traces of
combination among the north German towns to justify the fixing of this
as the date of the origin of the Hanseatic League. Lübeck was the more
active and enterprising of the two allies, and had the more commanding
position through her intimate connection with the Wendish and other
Baltic towns, which were already united together by the acceptance of
the Lübeck laws. It was an obvious advantage for German merchants to
have a common legal system for the settlement of disputes in which any
of them might from time to time be involved; and in spite of the
opposition of Wisby, Lübeck had succeeded in procuring the adoption of
its code by most of the eastern traders. The hegemony which was thus
acquired within a limited area both fitted and encouraged Lübeck to
undertake the leadership of a larger and more ambitious combination. It
was from Lübeck that invitations were issued to the other towns to send
delegates for the discussion of matters of common interests, and many of
the early meetings were held within its walls. In 1284 a complaint of
injuries received from Norway led to a decision of the towns at an
assembly at Rostock to close all export and import trade with Norway
until redress had been obtained. It was further determined to cease all
intercourse with Bremen if that city should refuse to accept the
decision of the other towns. In 1293 a meeting of delegates from the
Saxon and Baltic towns resolved that henceforth all appeals from
Novgorod should be carried to Lübeck. Wisby was supported only by Riga
and Osnabrück in opposing a resolution which recognised the ascendency
of its rival. In 1300 the consideration of commercial grievances in
Flanders was undertaken in a general assembly at Lübeck, to which all
the north German towns were invited from the mouths of the Rhine to the
Gulf of Riga.
By the beginning of the fourteenth century the unions of German
merchants in foreign parts had lost their independence, and had become
subject to the control and guidance of the towns. But the combination
thus created among the towns was in many ways incomplete. There was
nothing like a federation involving permanent obligations upon its
members. The meetings were only occasional, when any matter requiring
settlement arose, and there was a great variation in the number of towns
represented, according as the matter was of general or local interest.
Within the large area over which the north German trading communities
were spread, there were many smaller combinations of towns, connected by
joint action in the past, by agreements as to the use of common laws or
a common currency, or merely by local contiguity. These smaller
associations were older and possessed more consistency than any general
league. In fact, such a general league can hardly be said to have come
into existence; and so far as it was beginning to grow up, it was
concerned solely with commerce, and had no political significance
whatever. Some of the towns were free imperial cities, as Lübeck had
become on the fall of Henry the Lion, whereas the majority were subject
to a territorial prince. Under such conditions an efficient federation
for political purposes was impossible. This is illustrated by the
history of the early years of the fourteenth century. In 1307 Lübeck,
threatened by the neighbouring [Sidenote: Aggressions of Eric Menved.]
count of Holstein, appealed for assistance to Eric Menved, king of
Denmark, and actually acknowledged Danish suzerainty. Such an act on the
part of the most flourishing German city on the Baltic shows how little
any sentiment of nationality existed among the citizens. Eric was
emboldened to attempt the recovery of that ascendency over the Baltic
coasts which his predecessor, Waldemar II., had for a time established
till it was overthrown at the battle of Bornhöved in 1227. In carrying
out his aim he had to subdue the Wendish towns. Rostock and Wismar were
compelled to submit, and only Stralsund offered a successful resistance
to the Danes. But the striking fact is that the towns rendered no
assistance to each other. The whole episode proves that their union was
limited to the protection of mercantile interests. As long as the Danish
king abstained from any attack upon German commerce, there was no
machinery for common action. Still it would seem that the loss of
political independence brought with it a diminished ability to act
together in any way. For some years after the submission of Lübeck we
lose any traces of combination among the north German towns, and the
foreign merchants were left once more to protect their own interests
without any assistance or any control from the municipalities at home.
But this decline of the towns, which amounted almost to a dissolution of
the growing league, was as short-lived as the revival of Danish
preponderance on the Baltic. [Sidenote: Decline of Denmark.] Eric Menved
had attempted a task beyond the resources either of his own ability or
of his state. His extravagant and reckless policy forced him to purchase
support by lavish grants of lands and privileges, and the consequent
growth of a powerful nobility in Denmark proved a serious hindrance to
later kings. Eric himself died in 1319, and left his brother,
Christopher II., to face the troubles for which he had been responsible.
Christopher found it impossible to resist the combination of foreign
attack with domestic rebellion. The whole of Denmark was lost, either to
the native nobles or to German invaders; while Skaania and the adjacent
provinces were seized by Magnus of Sweden, who had also obtained the
crown of Norway as the grandson of King Hakon. When Christopher died in
exile in 1332 the Danish monarchy seemed for the next eight years to be
practically extinguished. The sudden collapse of [Sidenote: Revival of
the League.] Denmark restored independence to the Wendish towns, and
with it revived the activity of the League. The anarchy and disorder in
the north during and after the reign of Christopher II. rendered the
duty of defending trade-routes and fishing-stations more imperative than
ever. Between 1330 and 1360 we find evidence of more and more regular
meetings of the town delegates; and it is in these years that the name
of Hansa, hitherto used only for the mercantile unions in England and
other foreign countries, came to be applied to the league of towns. In
1358 an assembly was summoned of ‘all towns belonging to the Hansa of
the Germans,’ and the invitation was sent to Cologne and Wisby, to the
towns of Brandenburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Prussia, and Livonia. Already,
in 1352, Magnus of Sweden speaks of ‘the merchants of the sea-towns,
called hanse-brothers.’ The decrees of the assembly are binding upon all
members, and the penalty is expulsion from the League and its
privileges. ‘If any town of the German Hansa shall refuse to observe
this,’ says one decree, ‘the town shall remain for ever outside the
German Hansa, and shall be deprived for ever of German law.’ About this
time Bremen, which had been excluded ever since the quarrel with Norway
in 1284, was restored to membership of the League. Within the wider
association, which champions the interests of all north German traders,
we find distinct evidence of a recognised division into three parts for
more local purposes. The Wendish and Saxon towns under the leadership of
Lübeck constitute one division. Another is formed of the eastern
settlements in Gothland, Livonia, and Sweden, with Wisby as a sort of
capital; while a curious and unexplained combination of Westphalian and
Prussian towns are grouped round Cologne. In 1347 an agreement was made
that each third should elect two elders every year to manage the German
depôt at Bruges. Thus by the middle of the fourteenth century we find
that the Hanseatic League has gained a definite organisation, although
its functions are still limited to matters of trade, and have no
strictly political character. But events were soon to occur which were
to try the stability of the League and to give it more political
importance than it had yet possessed.
For eight years after the death of Christopher II. Denmark was without a
king, but in 1340 Waldemar III., Christopher’s youngest son, undertook
the task of recovering [Sidenote: Waldemar III and the capture of
Wisby.] his father’s dominions. He received the assistance of the
Wendish towns, which had no interest in the prolongation of anarchy,
while they seized the opportunity to obtain a confirmation of their
privileges as the price of their help. They even watched with equanimity
when, in 1360, he wrested the province of Skaania from the feeble hands
of Magnus of Sweden. But they found that success had rendered Waldemar
less easy to deal with than he had been in the days of his weakness, and
they had to pay a heavy sum for the renewal of their fishing rights.
Still, the relations with Denmark were altogether peaceful when, in
1361, the news arrived that a Danish fleet had sailed to the island of
Gothland, and that a Danish army had sacked the ancient town of Wisby,
whose wealth gave rise to the current phrase that the pigs ate out of
silver troughs. The old tradition assigned greed of plunder as the
motive for the raid. Later writers have suggested that it was merely the
continuance of the quarrel with Sweden about Skaania, or that Waldemar
intended to use the central position of Gothland for the purpose of
carrying out the ambitious plans of Waldemar II. and Eric Menved.
The delegates of the Hanse towns were assembled at Greifswald when the
astounding news arrived. The action [Sidenote: First war with Waldemar
III.] of Waldemar created a wholly novel problem for a mercantile
association to deal with. Wisby was subject to Sweden, and it was
against Sweden that an act of open hostility had been committed. But
Wisby was also a great centre of German trade, its wealth had been
created by Germans, and it was one of the chief towns of the Hanseatic
League. It was instinctively felt rather than reasoned that it was
impossible to allow Waldemar’s action to pass without active resentment,
and that the League must justify its existence by undertaking new duties
and responsibilities. The assembly passed a decree forbidding all trade
and intercourse with Denmark, and then adjourned in order to give time
for negotiations with Magnus of Sweden and his son Hakon, who had been
since 1350 independent king of Norway in his father’s place. On
September 7, 1361, the second meeting was held, and it was decided to go
to war with Denmark in alliance with Sweden, Norway, and Holstein. For
the first time a federal tax was imposed, in the form of an export duty
of fourpence in the pound, which was to be levied by all the towns until
Michaelmas 1362.
The Hanse towns had promised to furnish two thousand men with the
necessary ships, and Sweden and Norway were to do the same. In April the
Hanseatic fleet sailed to the [Sidenote: Disastrous campaign of 1362.]
Sound under the command of John Wittenborg, the burgomaster of Lübeck.
The Swedish contingent failed to appear, but the Germans were persuaded
by their allies to abandon the projected attack upon Copenhagen and to
lay siege to Helsingborg, a strong fortress on the coast of Skaania. Too
many of the sailors had been taken from the ships in order to press the
siege, when Waldemar suddenly appeared with the Danish fleet. He at once
attacked the ships of the League—sunk some, and carried off the rest
with their cargoes and the remnant of their crews. Wittenborg had
perforce to abandon the siege, and returned home to pay the penalty for
failure with his life. The disaster was as terrible as it was
unexpected, and the towns considered themselves lucky to be able to
conclude a truce in November for fourteen months, during which trade was
to be resumed and no new charges were to be imposed by the Danish king.
But there was no security that Waldemar would observe his promises,
especially when he succeeded in depriving the Hanse towns of their
allies. Magnus and Hakon had never been eager for the war with Denmark,
which was really the work of the nobles in the Swedish Council. The
Council had arranged a marriage between Hakon and the daughter of the
count of Holstein, but Waldemar seized the lady as she was on her way to
Sweden, and kept her a prisoner until the match was broken off. In 1363
he persuaded Hakon to marry his own daughter Margaret, and thus laid the
foundation for the future union of the three kingdoms. This marriage was
a serious blow to the League, which seemed to be on the verge of
dissolution. The Wendish towns had been most active in the war, and
would have been the chief gainers by its successful issue. Upon them
inevitably fell the chief blame for the disaster. The Prussian towns
refused to pay the export duty; they said that they had granted it for
the protection of the Sound, but the Sound was now less protected than
ever. It was quite useless to make the obvious reply that Lübeck and its
neighbours had spent far more and lost far more, and that their losses
included men as well as money.
If Waldemar had behaved with statesmanlike prudence and moderation, he
might have permanently weakened, if not destroyed, the League, which was
the chief [Sidenote: Temporary peace.] obstacle in his way. If once the
more distant towns had been convinced that their interests in Danish
waters were as secure after defeat as they had been before, they would
hardly have adhered to an alliance which proved costly as well as
useless. But Waldemar was eager to deprive the German traders of all the
privileges they had obtained through the weakness of Denmark since the
days of Eric Menved, and this danger served to keep the Hanse towns
together in spite of their discouragement and their quarrels with each
other. Before the truce had expired, Waldemar set out at the end of 1363
on a long tour to the principal courts of Europe. During his absence the
Danish Council agreed to prolong the truce, but it seemed almost
impossible to arrange any permanent peace upon terms that the German
merchants could accept. It was still doubtful whether the towns would
give way or venture on a renewal of hostilities, when events in Sweden
compelled the Danes to moderate their demands. The Swedish nobles had
long been alienated by the feeble government of Magnus. They had
resented the loss of Skaania and the humiliating conquest of Gothland.
Their fierce indignation was roused by the change of policy in 1363,
when the Holstein alliance was abandoned and Hakon was married to
Margaret of Denmark. In 1364 they declared Magnus deposed, and elected
in his place Albert, the second son of the duke of Mecklenburg, and of
Euphemia, a sister of Magnus. The elder brother was passed over because
he had married Ingeborg, another daughter of Waldemar III., and the
Swedes would have no connection with Denmark. A civil war followed, in
which the forces of Magnus and Hakon were defeated, and the former was
taken prisoner. The greater part of Sweden acknowledged Albert. When
Waldemar returned from his travels, he found his plans checkmated by
this Swedish revolution, and resolved to overthrow the new dynasty in
alliance with his son-in-law Hakon. In order to prepare for this new
war, he concluded the treaty of Wordingborg in September 1365 with the
Hanse towns. Freedom of trade through the Sound and a confirmation of
German privileges on the coast of Skaania were granted, but only for a
period of six years. It was obviously a truce rather than a real treaty;
neither side was satisfied with its terms; and the inevitable struggle
between Danish and German interests in the Baltic was only postponed.
That Waldemar, in attacking the new king of Sweden, was influenced by
wholly selfish motives, is proved by the treaty [Sidenote: Second Danish
war.] which he concluded in July 1366 with the duke of Mecklenburg. In
return for the formal cession of Gothland and other considerable
territories, he abandoned the cause of Magnus and Hakon, and agreed to
recognise and support Albert and his successors in the remaining
provinces of Sweden. This unprincipled policy raised Denmark to a
greater height of power than it had reached since the days of Waldemar
II. Emboldened by success, the king did not scruple to break his recent
agreement with the Hanse towns. In the course of 1367 several German
ships were seized and plundered in the Sound, and increased tolls were
levied upon vessels resorting to the coast of Skaania for the fishing
season. Even the distant south-western towns, which had taken hardly any
part in the previous war, felt that these outrages were intolerable, and
clamoured for active measures in defence of their trade and industry. It
is significant of the greater unanimity of the League on this occasion
that the decisive meeting was held, not as usual in a Baltic town, but
at Cologne. There in November 1367 it was decided to go to war with the
Danish king; and if any town should hold aloof from the common cause,
‘its burghers and merchants shall have no intercourse with the towns of
the German Hansa, no goods shall be bought from them or sold to them;
they shall have no right of entry or exit, of lading or unlading, in any
harbour.’ A new export duty was imposed for a year, and the sum raised
was to be divided among the towns in proportion to the contingent which
each furnished. To avoid the quarrels which had followed the last
campaign, it was expressly enacted that no injury or loss on the part of
any town should give it a claim upon the others for compensation. All
privileges or other advantages which should be gained in the war were to
belong equally to all the members of the League.
It was a formidable array of enemies that Waldemar had to face in 1368.
His treaty with the duke of Mecklenburg [Sidenote: triumph of the
League.] had come to nothing, because the Swedes refused to sacrifice
their own interests to their new dynasty, and would not surrender the
stipulated territories. So Waldemar had to renew both the alliance with
Hakon and the war with Albert of Sweden. On the mainland both
Mecklenburg and Holstein were on the side of his enemies, the nobles of
Jutland were on the verge of rebellion, and now he had provoked the
Hanse towns to a new campaign. In the presence of these dangers he
adopted an extraordinary course of action. In April 1368 he placed all
his accumulated treasure upon a ship, and sailed to Pomerania, leaving
the Danish Council to govern the kingdom during his absence, and to
carry on the war which he had provoked. For two years he wandered about
Europe from one court to another, while his dominions were overrun by
his enemies. The Hanseatic fleet appeared in the Sound soon after the
king’s departure, and at once attacked Copenhagen. The town was taken
and destroyed, and the fortress was occupied by a German garrison. From
Zealand the victorious traders turned to Skaania, and by the end of the
year every fortress, except the redoubtable Helsingborg, had fallen into
their hands. It was decided to keep their forces in the field during the
winter and to prolong the tax on exports for another year. In 1369
Helsingborg surrendered after an obstinate resistance, and the Danes,
attacked also from Holstein and Mecklenburg, opened negotiations with
the Hanse towns. Hakon of Norway had already concluded a truce by which
all the rights and privileges of German merchants in his kingdom were
confirmed. On [Sidenote: Treaty of Stralsund.] May 24, 1370, the Treaty
of Stralsund put an end to the Danish war. For fifteen years all the
castles and fortified places on the coast of Skaania were to be held by
the League, which was to receive two-thirds of the revenue of the
province in order to cover the cost of their maintenance. These terms,
which transferred the control of the Sound and its fisheries from
Denmark to the Hansa, were to be confirmed by Waldemar as the condition
of his return to his kingdom. No future king was to be placed on the
Danish throne without the consent of the Hanse towns and until he had
confirmed all their privileges and concessions.
The second Danish war marks an important epoch in the history of the
Hanseatic League. Not only was it raised to the position of an
influential power in northern [Sidenote: The League at the zenith of its
power.] Europe, but its whole character had undergone an important
change. Hitherto it had been a mercantile league for the extension and
strengthening of trade privileges, and for the settlement of trade
disputes. The decisions of the Cologne assembly in 1377 had superadded
to this mercantile association a political and military alliance. It is
true that that alliance was in express terms only temporary and for the
achievement of an immediate object—the protection of the narrow waters
from outrage and oppression. But the new obligations which success
brought to the League gave to the Cologne decrees a more permanent
importance than had been contemplated at the time of their adoption. The
occupation of the forts on the Sound conceded by the treaty of
Stralsund, and the necessity of constantly watching the changes and
struggles in the Scandinavian kingdoms—a necessity which was all the
more pressing after the Union of Kalmar—compelled the League to maintain
an armed force in constant readiness, and to continue the collection of
a federal revenue for military purposes. When new towns applied for
admission to the League, and there were many such applications in the
years following the Treaty of Stralsund, they had to accept, not only
the old conditions as to trade, but also the more stringent obligations
imposed by the assembly at Cologne. Thus the League became more
concentrated and more highly organised than it had been before the war.
The federal assemblies were more frequent, and their sessions were
longer and more full of business. Every year there was a general
assembly at midsummer, but there were also frequent provincial meetings,
especially of the Wendish towns, which continued to form the most
central and the most influential unit within the League. And not only
was the external activity of the League greater, but it began to concern
itself with the internal affairs of its members. In the fourteenth
century the ascendency of the merchants in municipal government was
threatened by the rise of the artisans in Germany, as it was in Florence
and other southern towns. The Hanseatic League, essentially mercantile
in its origin and its aims, naturally made itself the champion of the
old exclusive oligarchy. In 1374 a rising took place in Brunswick
against the ruling council: some of its members were executed, and the
rest were driven into exile. For this offence Brunswick was formally
expelled from the League, and its merchants were excluded from all the
markets under its control. This mercantile excommunication was now a
formidable weapon, and the men of Brunswick had to make humble
reparation for their democratic aspirations before they could obtain
their readmission to the confederacy. But in emphasising the greater
unity and greater influence of the League after its victory over
Waldemar III., it is imperative to remember that there were several
defects and weaknesses in its federal constitution. The very wide extent
over which the towns were spread, from the Scheldt to the Gulf of
Finland, and the jealousy which mercantile rivalry must almost
inevitably create, rendered any complete real unity of interest and
purpose almost impossible. There was never any assembly at which all the
towns were represented, and, in fact, it would be difficult to give a
precise enumeration of the members of the League at any given date.
Sometimes several towns would combine to give authority to a single
delegate, but no town considered itself bound to take part in the
meeting. Not infrequently the delegates would declare that their
instructions did not allow them to consent to a proposal, and that they
must refer the matter back to their respective town-councils. Hence
arose uncertainty and delay. But the chief defect was that membership of
the League was not and could not be the only political obligation of the
towns. Most of them were subject to some immediate authority, usually
that of a territorial prince. Thus they had a double allegiance, and the
two might come into collision with each other. The princes might allow
their towns to gain trading privileges by joining the League, but they
were not likely to consent to any diminution of their own authority.
Under such conditions it is wonderful that the League held together as
long as it did.
The increased dignity and importance of the Hanseatic League after the
Treaty of Stralsund are illustrated by the action of the emperor.
Charles IV., as is shown [Sidenote: Charles IV and the League.] in the
Golden Bull, disapproved of confederations of towns and of the rapid
growth of municipal independence. Waldemar III. was his personal friend,
and during the recent war the emperor had more than once endeavoured to
use his influence in behalf of the Danish king. But in 1373 Charles had
obtained Brandenburg from the last Wittelsbach Margrave (see p. 120),
and thus acquired a new interest of his own in the politics of northern
Germany. He was now eager to conciliate the League and to obtain the
privileges which it could give to the towns of his new dominion. In 1375
he left Prague to pay a visit to Lübeck, where the magnificence of his
reception made a profound impression on contemporaries. Tradition
declared that he began his speech in acknowledgment of civic hospitality
with the words ‘My Lords’; and when the burgomaster shook his head to
deprecate such a title, the emperor continued: ‘You are Lords! The old
imperial registers prove that Lübeck is one of the five chief towns of
the empire; that your city councillors are also imperial councillors;
and that they may enter his council without waiting for his permission.’
The chronicler complacently adds that the five chief towns were Rome,
Venice, Pisa, Florence, and Lübeck.
The Treaty of Stralsund was followed by a general restoration of peace
in the north. Waldemar III. returned to his kingdom, and obtained the
restoration of the Mecklenburg conquests by a treaty with Duke Albert,
who had established one son on the throne of Sweden, and now hoped with
Waldemar’s support to gain Denmark for his grandson. In 1371 the long
strife between Sweden and Norway came to an end. On condition that
Magnus and Hakon should abandon all claims to the Swedish crown, Albert
agreed to release the former from his imprisonment and to allow him an
annual income till his death, which [Sidenote: Death of Waldemar III.]
occurred three years later. The most pressing question in the north was
the succession to Waldemar in Denmark. His only son had died in 1363, so
that Waldemar was the last male of his dynasty. Of his two daughters who
had lived to become brides, the elder, Ingeborg, had married Henry of
Mecklenburg, the elder brother of the reigning king of Sweden, and the
younger, Margaret, had married Hakon of Norway. Thus the choice lay
between two children—Albert, the son of Ingeborg and Henry, and Olaf,
the son of Hakon and Margaret. The Mecklenburg claimant was recognised
as his heir by Waldemar, and had the support of the Emperor Charles IV.
and of the powerful count of Holstein. But the Danes had not forgotten
the rule of the German invaders in the time of Christopher II.; and when
Waldemar died in 1375, they elected the five-year-old Olaf as his
successor. Both by treaty rights and by actual power the Hanse towns
were entitled to a voice in the decision, and they seem to have
preferred the possibility of a union between Denmark and Norway to an
extension of the already formidable power of the House of Mecklenburg.
Olaf was acknowledged by the League, and one of his first acts was to
confirm the provisions of the Treaty of Stralsund.
In 1380 Hakon of Norway died, and Olaf wore his father’s crown in
addition to that of Denmark. During his minority his mother Margaret
ruled in both kingdoms. [Sidenote: Queen Margaret and the Union of
Kalmar.] In 1386 she found it necessary to conciliate the count of
Holstein by the cession of Schleswig, which was to be held as a fief of
Denmark; but in other respects her government was so successful, that on
her son’s death in 1387 she was invited to succeed him by the Danes and
Norwegians. At the same time she received an offer of the crown of
Sweden. The government of Albert of Mecklenburg, who had rewarded his
German followers with lands and offices, had excited great ill-will
among the Swedish nobles, whose power was more than a match for that of
the king. The conquest of the distracted kingdom proved a comparatively
easy task. At Falköping in 1389 Albert was completely defeated, and
after seven years’ imprisonment he could only procure his liberty by
abdication. Stockholm, aided by forces from Mecklenburg, held out for
some years; and the famous association of the _Vitalien-Brüder_, or
‘Victualling Brothers,’ originally formed for its relief, became a
formidable body of pirates in the Baltic. The interference which they
caused to trade induced the Hanse towns to employ their mediation in
favour of Margaret, who became queen of the three Scandinavian kingdoms.
Her great ambition was to render this union permanent. As she had no
surviving child of her own, she adopted Eric of Pomerania, the grandson
of her sister Ingeborg. In 1397 she convened the councils of the three
kingdoms to Kalmar, and induced them to agree to a formal act of union.
The three kingdoms were to be irrevocably united under the same king,
and the election of successors to the crown was limited to the
descendants of Eric. Each state was to retain its own laws and
institutions, but treaties with foreign powers were to be binding upon
all. The arrangement had one obvious defect. No single electing body was
created; and if each kingdom could choose a king, even within the limits
of a single family, there was no security that their choice would fall
upon the same person.
The fifteenth century was a troubled period in the history of northern
Europe, but its events are far less interesting and far less important
than those of the fourteenth century. There were two great questions at
issue: Whether the Union
of Kalmar could be permanent, and whether the Hanse towns could retain
either their unity of action or the preponderance in the north which it
had given them. Both questions remained in doubt during the century, but
ultimately both were answered in the negative. To maintain the union of
the three Scandinavian kingdoms, which had no great love for each other,
while in two of them a powerful noble class had obtained a considerable
measure of independence, would have required either exceptional good
fortune or exceptional ability, and the successors of Margaret had
neither. Even the ‘Union Queen’ herself made a serious blunder in her
later years. Count Gerhard of [Sidenote: War between Denmark and
Holstein.] Holstein, to whom she had granted Schleswig, as a hereditary
fief, died in 1404, leaving a young son Henry to succeed him. Encouraged
by her previous triumphs, Margaret could not resist the temptation of
trying to escape from the bargain she had made in 1386, and to gain
Schleswig for the crown. Various claims to the duchy were put forward on
behalf of Denmark, but the Schauenburg princes were resolute in support
of Gerhard’s son. The struggle lasted for thirty years, and in the
course of it most of the north German states became involved. Margaret
died suddenly in 1412, but Eric of Pomerania continued to maintain the
claims which his great-aunt had put forward with the mingled obstinacy
and violence which marked his character. The authority of the king of
the Romans was called in to settle the dispute, and twice Sigismund gave
a formal decision in favour of the Danish crown. But as had happened
more than once before, the Hanseatic League showed a greater regard for
the interests of Germany than the German king. Hamburg, closely
associated with Holstein, from the first supported the House of
Schauenburg, and gradually Lübeck and the other Hanse towns were
involved in the war against Eric. Their intervention, combined with
disturbances in Sweden, turned the balance; and in 1435 Adolf of
Holstein, who had succeeded his brother Henry in 1428, was recognised as
duke of Schleswig.
The war with Holstein was not only unsuccessful, it also involved Eric
in serious domestic difficulties. Sweden and Norway, which required the
constant attention of the king, were left unvisited and unregarded. In
Denmark, Eric could only induce the nobles to serve in a war in which
they had little interest by lavish concessions which further weakened
the royal authority. In all the kingdoms discontent was excited by
increased taxation and by debasement of the coinage. Another grievance
was furnished by Eric’s partiality for his Pomeranian relatives, and his
avowed desire to secure the succession to his cousin, Boguslav. In 1434
the first rising took place in Sweden among the peasants of Dalecarlia,
but Eric succeeded in conciliating Karl Knudson, the leader of the
nobles, who was appointed Marshal of the kingdom, and in 1435 the Union
of Kalmar was confirmed by the Swedish diet. But the king’s neglect of
the duties of government had become intolerable, and in 1439 he was
formally deposed [Sidenote: Deposition of King Eric.] by the Danish
Council. As neither of the other kingdoms had the slightest desire to
support Eric, this act rendered vacant the three Scandinavian thrones.
The deposed king lived for another twenty years, but he never had any
chance of recovering the dignity he had forfeited.
The Danes proceeded in 1439 to offer the crown to Christopher of
Bavaria, whose mother was a sister of Eric, [Sidenote: Christopher of
Bavaria.] and he accepted it upon conditions which narrowly limited the
royal power. One of his first acts was to settle the dispute about
Schleswig by confirming the duchy to Adolf of Holstein as a hereditary
fief. The action of Denmark had no binding force upon the other
kingdoms, but lavish bribes to Karl Knudson and the clergy purchased the
acceptance of the Swedish diet; and Norway, which had shown less enmity
to Eric than the other states, was induced to follow the example of its
neighbour. In 1442 Christopher was recognised in the three Scandinavian
kingdoms, and the Union of Kalmar was continued for another generation.
In 1446 he strengthened his position by marrying Dorothea of
Brandenburg, but no heir had been born to continue the Bavarian dynasty,
when Christopher was carried off by a sudden death in January 1448.
With the death of Christopher the severance of the kingdoms seemed to be
inevitable. There was no obvious heir to any one of them, and it was
hardly possible that they should combine to find the same [Sidenote:
Severance of Sweden.] successor. Sweden and Denmark were the first to
act, and neither paid the slightest regard to the proceedings in the
other. In Sweden there was a strong party hostile to the union; and an
organised demonstration on the part of the mob led to the hasty election
of Karl Knudson, who had been for years the most powerful and wealthy
noble of the kingdom (June 1448). Meanwhile the Danes had offered the
crown to Adolf, count of Holstein and duke of Schleswig. He refused the
offer, but suggested the choice of his sister’s son, Christian of
Oldenburg, who could claim descent from a daughter of Eric Glipping, the
predecessor and father of Eric Menved. Christian was accepted, but the
conditions which were imposed upon him gave the chief control of the
government to the council of nobles. And he also had to pay for his
uncle’s support by a formal document, in which assurance was given that
the duchy of Schleswig or south Jutland ‘shall never be united or
annexed to the kingdom of Denmark, so that one person shall be lord of
both.’ In Norway, less energetic and independent than the other two
kingdoms, there was a prolonged struggle as to whether the Danish or the
Swedish king should be chosen. Karl Knudson believed that he had assured
his own election, and he actually assumed the crown in Trondhjem, but
the party which supported the Danish connection proved the stronger, and
in August 1450 the diet decreed the permanent union of Denmark and
Norway.
Denmark and Norway remained united under the Oldenburg dynasty until the
latter was combined with Sweden by the [Sidenote: Christian I. recovers
Sweden.] decision of the allies in 1815. It would probably have been
better if Christian I. had abandoned all idea of recovering Sweden. But
the Union of Kalmar was not to perish without giving rise to a long and
exhausting struggle. Many of the Swedish nobles were jealous of the
elevation of Karl Knudson to royal rank, and the archbishop of Upsala
headed an opposition party which appealed for Danish intervention.
Christian could not resist the temptation of gaining a third crown. In
1457 Karl Knudson was forced to flee to Danzig. Christian was crowned at
Upsala, and his son John or Hans was acknowledged as his heir. This
success was followed by another conspicuous triumph. In 1459 the death
of Adolf of Holstein [Sidenote: Schleswig and Holstein.] and Schleswig
extinguished the male line of the chief branch of the House of
Schauenburg. Christian could advance a double claim to the vacant county
and duchy. He was the nearest relative of his uncle Adolf on the female
side, and he could contend that Schleswig as a Danish fief escheated to
the overlord on the extinction of the family to which it had been
granted. On the other hand, the surviving Schauenburg princes claimed to
be the nearest male heirs, and they could point to Christian’s own
pledge in 1448 that Schleswig should never be united to the Danish
crown. The dispute enabled the estates of the two provinces to exercise
powers which had never hitherto belonged to them. On condition that
Schleswig and Holstein should remain united, and that they should be
free to elect any member of the family and not be bound to take the
successor to the Danish throne, they accepted Christian as duke and
count in March 1460. The Schauenburg princes were bought off by a money
payment. In 1479 the Emperor Frederick III. raised Holstein from a
county to a duchy, and granted the formal investiture to Christian I.
Good fortune had suddenly raised the House of Oldenburg to an
extraordinary preponderance of territorial power in the north. No
previous ruler had succeeded in uniting the [Sidenote: Independence of
Sweden.] three Scandinavian kingdoms with two considerable provinces on
the mainland. But the real strength of Christian I. was in no way
proportioned to its appearance. He had purchased every state by
concessions which sapped the very foundations of the central authority.
In Sweden especially his kingship was merely nominal. The strong
national sentiment of the Swedes objected to the Union of Kalmar
because, in spite of stipulated equality, it made their state little
more than a province of Denmark. The archbishop of Upsala, whose quarrel
with Karl Knudson had given the crown to Christian, was really more
powerful than the king. Disputes were inevitable, and in 1467 Karl was
invited to quit his exile in Danzig and to resume possession of the
crown. On his death in 1470, his nephew, Sten Sture, was proclaimed
regent of Sweden. Christian led an army to compel his submission, but
was completely defeated and driven from the kingdom. For the next half
century a succession of Stures ruled Sweden in practical independence.
Sweden was not the only territory that was lost to Christian I. In 1469
his daughter Margaret was married to James III. of Scotland; and the
Orkneys and Shetlands, which had been in the hands of Denmark since the
tenth century, were pledged to the Scottish king as security for the
princess’s dowry. As the pledge was never redeemed, the islands were to
all intents and purposes ceded to Scotland. The death of Christian in
1481 left his dominions to his eldest son John. The new king was
weakened by having to divide Schleswig and Holstein with his younger
brother Frederick, and by an unsuccessful war which he carried on to
extort the submission of the independent peasants of Ditmarsh. Thus
though he was able for a time to recover Sweden and to assume the crown,
he could not retain his hold upon the kingdom. Sten Sture regained the
government in 1500, and after his death it was transmitted to his
successors, Svante Sture and a younger Sten. The desperate effort of the
next Danish king, Christian II., to restore the Kalmar Union, and the
cruelty which he displayed in the famous ‘blood-bath of Stockholm’ only
led to the final vindication of Swedish independence by Gustavus Vasa.
Meanwhile the fifteenth century had been a period of difficulty and
stress to the Hanseatic League. The Union of Kalmar in itself
constituted a serious danger [Sidenote: Gradual decline of the Hanseatic
League.] to the north German towns. The privileges which they had
extorted from the Scandinavian rulers amounted to a practical monopoly
of trade and fishing rights along their coasts. The obvious interest and
duty of a really strong ruler would impel him to repudiate such
restrictions on the freedom of his subjects. Fortunately for the League,
the Union was never much more than nominal. The policy of the Wendish
towns was steadily directed to place difficulties in the way of the
Scandinavian rulers, and to encourage every tendency to independence in
the subject provinces. Thanks to the weakness of the successive kings
and the turbulent opposition of the Swedes to the Union, this policy was
successful, and the Hanse towns were enabled to retain for a time their
political and mercantile ascendency in the north. But in spite of this
the century was on the whole a period of decline in the history of the
League. The weaknesses which were inherent in the coalition from the
first became more and more visible. Foreign competition, especially that
of the English, was a constant and increasing source of trouble. In the
fourteenth century the Germans still had a preponderant share of the
import and export trade of England. In the fifteenth century the native
traders steadily set themselves to get the better of the privileged
foreigners, and by the reign of Henry VII. the English had established a
considerable direct trade, not only with Flanders and Norway, but also
with the countries on the Baltic. But foreign competition was a less
serious danger than internal weakness and disruption. In the course of
the fifteenth century a notable change began in the balance of northern
trade. At first the western towns of the League had been for the most
part engaged in trade in the North Sea, whereas the eastern towns had
carried on their trade in both the North Sea and the Baltic. In the
fifteenth century the western towns, and especially those of the
Netherlands, began to encroach upon the Baltic trade and entered into
rivalry with Lübeck, Rostock, Stralsund, and Danzig. This growing
importance of the western and non-Baltic merchants was completed by two
changes which could neither be foreseen nor controlled. For more than a
century the gregarious herrings had made the coast of Skaania their
favourite summer resort, and in consequence this had been the scene of
the largest and most lucrative fishing industry in Europe. In the middle
of the fifteenth century the fish made one of those sudden and
inexplicable changes of habitat, which have more than once affected the
social and economic relations of the northern states. They ceased to
enter the Baltic in any large numbers, and transferred themselves to the
coast of Holland. The privileged position in Skaania for which the Hanse
towns had struggled so long and so successfully became all at once
almost valueless, and the gains of the Dutch were measured by the losses
of the Wendish and other Baltic towns. This change was followed by the
great geographical discoveries which began at the end of the century.
These had the effect of transferring the great trade routes from
European waters to the outlying oceans, and this proved as fatal to the
towns on the Baltic as it was to those on the Mediterranean.
Commercial jealousy and the growth of wholly separate interests of their
own impelled the towns of the Netherlands to independent political
action, which in the end led to the severance of their connection with
the League. Thus in the war waged by King Eric to gain possession of
Schleswig the chief Hanse towns supported Holstein, but the
Netherlanders sent assistance to Eric in order to gain a share in those
commercial privileges in the Scandinavian kingdoms which Lübeck and its
immediate associates tried to keep in their own hands. Also it must be
remembered that the Netherlands became less German as they fell under
the rule of the Valois dukes of Burgundy. There was no formal rupture of
vassalage to the empire, but practically there was complete independence
of control, and the new rulers directed the conduct of their subjects to
suit their own ends. This points to the fundamental weakness of the
Hanseatic League, which led to its gradual dissolution in the course of
the next century and a half. If Germany could have been made into a
single united state, the League, as the champion of common German
interests, might have had a prolonged existence. But Germany became a
very loose federation of territorial princes, and in such a state there
was no room for an active and efficient league of towns. The local
prince would not allow the burghers within his dominions sufficient
independence to make their membership of such a league a reality. As the
provinces became more compact, the towns were withdrawn from their
federal allegiance and tied down to their direct duties as subjects of
the prince. This gradual process destroyed the Hanseatic League. A few
imperial cities, as Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, retained the name of
Hanse towns till the present century, but the name was used to express
independence rather than union.
CHAPTER XIX
THE TEUTONIC ORDER AND POLAND
Foundation of the Teutonic Order—Struggles of Germans and Slavs in
the Baltic provinces—The Knights are invited to Prussia—Their
conquests—Quarrel with the Papacy and complete transfer of the Order
to Prussia—Further territorial acquisitions—The Order at the height
of its power under Kniprode—Union of Poland and Lithuania—The Battle
of Tannenberg—Decline of the Order—Internal discontent and disorder
in Prussia—The Prussian League—Civil war and Polish conquest—The
Peace of Thorn—End of the Teutonic Order and of the Order of the
Sword.
The great Emperor Frederick Barbarossa died in Asia Minor as he was
leading his forces to take part in the Third Crusade. The German army
broke to [Sidenote: Foundation of the Teutonic Order.] pieces after the
loss of its leader, and only a few scanty fragments reached Palestine to
take part in the siege of Acre (1189). The besiegers were decimated by
the diseases to which troops are liable in an unaccustomed climate, and
complaints were made that the German sick were neglected in such scanty
hospital arrangements as then existed. Under the pious care of some
merchants from Lübeck and Bremen, an order was formed to combine the
functions of soldiers and nurses. The ‘German Knights of St. Mary’
borrowed most of their rules from the Hospitallers or Knights of St.
John, but some of their military regulations were adopted from the still
more famous Order of the Temple. In 1191 the new crusading order
received a bull of confirmation from Pope Clement III., and the first
grand-master fixed his headquarters in Acre, which had now fallen before
the assaults of the Crusaders. Its origin and its peculiarly national
character were emphasised by the limitation of membership to men of
German birth and speech. Like the Templars and Hospitallers, the
Teutonic knights were the recipients of numerous gifts and bequests from
pious benefactors, and acquired considerable estates in western Europe.
But crusading ardour had begun to decline in the West, and the Germans
had never taken quite as prominent a part in the movement as the Romance
nations. If the activity of the Teutonic Order had been confined to
Palestine, it is not likely that its existence could have been either
prolonged or important. But within forty years from its foundation a new
sphere was provided for its military exertions.
By the end of the twelfth century immense strides had been made by
Christianity and German civilisation [Sidenote: Germans and Slavs.]
among the Slavonic peoples to the south of the Baltic. Bohemia and
Poland, the two outposts of the Slavs to the south-west, had been
converted and brought into some sort of submission to the German
Emperors. Their most thriving towns were filled with German settlers;
and some of the border provinces, such as Silesia, had already received
a preponderantly German element in their population. To the north-west
the efforts of Henry the Lion and Albert the Bear had conquered and
converted the Wends; Lübeck and other towns had been founded to serve as
centres of German commerce and German influence; and bishoprics had been
created for Mecklenburg and Pomerania. But from the valley of the
Vistula to the Gulf of Finland there stretched an immense tract of
dreary country, alternately sandy wastes and undrained marsh, in which a
number of Slavonic peoples—Prussians, Lithuanians, Esthonians, and
Livonians—still lived their primitive life, engaged in hunting, pasture,
and rudimentary agriculture. They retained their heathen religion and
their ancient customs, and were regarded by their more advanced
neighbours as little better than savages. In the tenth century St.
Adalbert of Prague had met with a martyr’s death as he sought to preach
the Gospel to the Prussians, and ever since there had been a nominal
bishopric on the eastern Baltic, but its holders had never ventured to
reside in their diocese.
In the thirteenth century a vigorous effort was made to extend
Christianity among these eastern Slavs. [Sidenote: Teutonic knights
invited to Prussia.] The Bishop of Riga founded in 1200 the Order of the
Sword to compel the acceptance of the faith by the people of Livonia.
Soon afterwards Christian, a Cistercian monk of Oliva, undertook to
preach the Gospel among the Prussians. The Pope gave him the title of
Bishop of Prussia; and a Polish duke, Konrad of Masovia, who claimed the
border district of Kulm, promised him active assistance. But the task
proved beyond the powers of duke and bishop. The Prussians rose against
the intruders, destroyed their settlements, and carried fire and sword
into the Kulmerland and Masovia itself. This war between the Christian
and the heathen Slavs gave occasion for the introduction of the Teutonic
knights into Prussia. In 1226 an embassy from Konrad of Masovia appeared
before the grand-master in Italy, and offered to cede the Kulmerland if
the Order would undertake to defend him from the Prussians.
Hermann von Salza, who was grand-master at the time, was an intimate
adviser of the Emperor Frederick II., who had given the black eagle of
the empire as the Order’s standard, and a man of no small importance in
the politics of southern Europe. Endowed with equal energy and
foresight, he welcomed the opportunity of founding a new Christian state
in the north, where greater security and distinction could be gained
than in upholding a losing cause in the Holy Land. But he had no
intention of fighting the battles of the Polish duke or the Prussian
bishop without adequate reward, and he took the most painstaking
precautions to secure the independent rule of the Order in what was
destined to be its future home. Frederick II., who knew little and cared
less about the fate of the Baltic provinces, was easily induced to grant
to the Order a formal investiture of the district of Kulm with all
future conquests in Prussia. This was followed by treaties with the Duke
of Masovia and with Christian of Oliva, whose original alliance had been
broken by their rival claims to suzerainty; and finally, to remove any
difficulties with Rome, Pope Gregory IX. was persuaded to claim the
lands of the heathen as the property of St. Peter, and to grant them to
the Order on payment of a nominal tribute (1234).
In 1231 the first detachment of Knights entered Prussia and commenced
the work of conquest. In spite of their smaller numbers, their superior
arms and [Sidenote: Conquest of Prussia.] discipline gave them an
immense advantage over the disorderly hordes which opposed them. As each
district was reduced to submission, a fortress was built to enforce
obedience and to serve as a base for further operations. Thus, in the
first few years, Thorn, Kulm, and Marienwerder were built and garrisoned
in rapid succession. In 1237 the Knights of the Sword agreed to form a
close alliance with the Teutonic Order, of which they became a
subordinate branch, though retaining a considerable measure of autonomy.
Thus the heathen were threatened with attack on both sides—on the west
from the valley of the Vistula, and on the north-east from Riga and the
coast of Livonia. But the rapid successes of the Knights provoked
jealousy and opposition. The Poles were indignant at the establishment
of a German state between their own borders and the Baltic, and
political and race antipathy soon overpowered the original alliance on
religious grounds. Konrad of Masovia bitterly repented his shortsighted
cession of Kulmerland, and both from Poland and from Pomerania aid was
sent to the heathen Prussians. Even the bishop, Christian of Oliva, was
alienated by the Order’s assumption of ecclesiastical independence, and
did his utmost to enforce his own claims to superiority in the conquered
districts. But the Papacy remained loyal to the warrior priests, whom it
regarded as submissive vassals. The usual indulgences were offered to
all who would undertake the pious duty of joining a crusade against the
heathen, and crowds of recruits were induced to secure their temporal
prosperity and their future salvation by fighting in the service of the
Knights. The most famous of the princely allies was Ottokar of Bohemia,
the lord of Austria, and the most powerful of German princes in the
middle of the thirteenth century. In 1255 he led a large army into
Prussia, and the fortress of Königsberg was named in his honour.
But the conquest of Prussia was not achieved without difficulties and
reverses. In 1260 a general rising was organised among the Slav
population, and for the next ten years the Knights were in serious
danger of losing all they had gained. But their dogged resolution
prevailed in the end, and by 1280 the land had once more been forced
into sullen submission. The desperate struggle had seriously diminished
a population which was always thinly scattered over a huge area. To fill
the place of those who had fallen or had migrated eastwards to preserve
their independence in Lithuania, the Order encouraged the settlement of
German peasants and German burghers. The conquest of Prussia was a
victory for Germany as well as for Christianity. The Slavs had to accept
the religion and the language of the conquerors.
The end of the thirteenth century ushered in a period of trial for the
great crusading orders. The fall of [Sidenote: Quarrel with the Papacy.]
Acre in 1291 marked the ultimate failure of the attempts to recover the
Holy Land for Western Christendom. The military associations were
discredited by their ill-success; and while they lost their hold upon
popular favour, their immense wealth excited the avarice of the temporal
princes. The Papacy had fallen from the lofty position which it had held
in the time of Innocent III., and was forced to become the accomplice
and the agent of the royal spoilers. The Templars were first persecuted
and then suppressed by Philip IV. of France and his creature Pope
Clement V. The Knights of St. John only escaped a similar fate by
throwing themselves into Rhodes, and by holding the island as a bulwark
of Christendom against the encroaching Mohammedan power. The position of
the Teutonic Order was as insecure as that of their older and, for a
time, more prosperous rivals. The grand-master had removed his
headquarters from Acre to Venice, and thence could watch the approach of
danger. When, in 1309, Clement V. issued a hostile bull against the
Order, the Knights were prepared with a practical and efficient answer.
The only way to prove their strength and their value to Europe was to
concentrate their undivided energies upon the work which had been
undertaken on the Baltic coast. The hostility of a distant Pope would
there be comparatively impotent, and they could strengthen themselves by
a close alliance with the interests and forces of Germany. It was, no
doubt, a great sacrifice for the Knights to abandon a residence in
southern Europe, where they had enjoyed considerable wealth and
influence, and to bury themselves in a [Sidenote: Transference of the
Order to Prussia.] remote and barbarous district in the inclement north.
But there was no other alternative if they would escape destruction; and
in 1309 the grand-master transferred his residence from Venice to
Marienburg, which became henceforth the headquarters of the Order.
The severance of the Teutonic Order from all connection with Palestine
and its concentration in Prussia had many important results. The close
connection which had been hitherto maintained with the Papacy was
weakened, and the ties with Germany and the Empire were drawn closer.
Henry VII. hastened to assure the Knights of his protection and to
confirm their rights and privileges. Hitherto they had conquered in the
name of the Church, henceforth their triumphs are to be for the
extension of Germany. And these triumphs were for a time proportioned to
their increased unity and strength. In 1311, by dexterously taking
advantage of a dispute between Brandenburg [Sidenote: Acquisition of
Pomerellen.] and Poland, they seized the district of Pomerellen on the
left bank of the Vistula, which contained the important city of Danzig.
This acquisition enormously strengthened the position of the Order on
its western or German border; but, at the same time, it led to the long
and desperate struggle with Poland which ultimately brought disaster in
its train. And the conquest illustrates the changed attitude of the
Order, for which the quarrel with the Papacy was partially responsible.
Its aims have become political rather than religious. It is no longer
solely absorbed in the task of forcibly converting the heathen, but can
turn aside to the pursuit of self-aggrandisement at the expense of its
Christian neighbours.
The Papacy, which had been so enthusiastic a supporter of the Teutonic
Order in the thirteenth century, was on the side of Poland in the
fourteenth. But its ecclesiastical [Sidenote: The Order at the height of
its power.] weapons were blunted by the energetic support which was
given to Lewis the Bavarian, and by the complete alienation of Germany
owing to the residence in Avignon. The first war with Poland ended in
the victory of the Order. In 1343 Casimir the Great concluded the Treaty
of Kalisch, by which he confirmed the cession of Pomerellen and other
disputed territories near the valley of the Vistula. In 1346 Denmark
handed over to the Order its ancient claims on the province of Esthonia.
The Knights had now acquired almost the whole of the Slav territories to
the south-east of the Baltic. Only the Lithuanians remained obstinately
heathen and obstinately independent, and against them the Order waged a
fairly successful war during the grand-mastership of Winzig von Kniprode
from 1351 to 1382. During these years the Teutonic Order was at the
zenith of its power and prosperity. Brandenburg, which might have
contested its ascendency in the north, was rendered impotent by the
extinction of the Ascanian line, and by its rapid transfer through the
hands of successive Wittelsbach and Luxemburg margraves. In Poland
Casimir the Great was succeeded in 1370 by his nephew, Lewis of Hungary,
who had no sympathy with the anti-German prejudices of the Polish
nobles, and was disinclined to employ his forces in the defence of the
heathen peasants of Lithuania. The campaigns of the Order had become a
recognised school of warfare for the active and ambitious youth of
northern Europe. Among the numerous allies who gave their services to
the cause of Christianity were the adventurous John of Bohemia, who lost
his eyesight in the marshes of Prussia, and Henry of Derby, son of John
of Gaunt, who later established the Lancastrian dynasty on the English
throne. Chaucer, in describing the career of his knight, says that
‘Full ofte tyme he had the bord bygonne
Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce,
In Lettowe had he reysed and in Ruce.’
The death of Kniprode in 1382 was followed by the death of Lewis the
Great of Hungary and Poland. The party of strong Slav sympathies among
the Polish nobles were determined to put an end to the union with
Hungary and the rule of a foreign king. Lewis’s [Sidenote: Union of
Poland and Lithuania.] younger daughter, Hedwig, was invited to assume
the crown of Poland, but she was compelled to offer her hand to Jagello,
the grand prince of Lithuania. Jagello agreed to purchase a bride and a
kingdom by accepting Christianity, and was baptized and crowned by the
name of Ladislas in 1387. The accession of this Lithuanian dynasty,
under whose rule Poland rose to the height of its power, dealt a fatal
blow to the interests of the Teutonic Order. The two great enemies of
the Order, whose quarrels with each other had more than once given the
Knights both military and diplomatic triumphs, were henceforth united in
a common cause. And the conversion of the Lithuanians, who now adopted
the faith of their neighbours and allies, struck at the very foundations
of the Order, which rested upon the conception of a crusade against the
heathen. Now that Prussia was surrounded by a ring of Christian states,
there could no longer be any pretext for a religious war; and foreign
princes and nobles were not likely to take an active interest in what
became from this time a purely political struggle. The stream of
auxiliaries from Europe was dried up at its source, and the Order had to
fall back upon the expensive and unsatisfactory expedient of filling its
armies with mercenary troops.
For more than three hundred years Germany had been steadily conquering
the Slavs, driving them eastwards, or subjecting them to overwhelming
German influences. [Sidenote: War with Poland.] Thanks to the Hanseatic
League and to the Teutonic Knights, the Baltic had been made into a
German sea. But with the fifteenth century a reaction set in in favour
of both Scandinavians and Slavs. Just as the Union of Kalmar involved a
serious danger to the Hanse towns, so the close association of Lithuania
and Poland threatened the vital interests of the Teutonic Knights. In
Bohemia the same reaction against German predominance found expression
in the Hussite movement, and in the internal quarrels within the
University of Prague (see p. 209). But it was in Prussia that the Slavs
gained their most durable successes, though the victories of Ziska and
Prokop over the crusading armies of Germany made the greater impression
upon Europe at the time. The inevitable struggle which altered
conditions forced upon the Teutonic Order broke out in 1409. In the next
year the largest armies which had ever met in these northern wars
confronted each other on the field of Tannenberg. After a [Sidenote:
Battle of Tannenberg.] terrible contest, in which John Ziska, the future
leader of the Hussites, fought for the men of his own race, superior
numbers gave a decisive victory to the forces of Poland and Lithuania.
The grand-master and the flower of his Knights fell in the battle, and
Prussia seemed to be at the mercy of the conquerors. But the progress of
King Ladislas was checked by the heroic resistance of the fortress of
Marienburg; and he consented, in the Peace of Thorn (1411), to give up
all his conquests except one district, which was to be ceded only for
his own lifetime. The ruin of the Order was postponed for half a
century.
The defeat at Tannenberg might have proved less fatal in its results if
it had not been accompanied by growing internal weakness. An order of
militant monks may provide [Sidenote: Decline of the Order.] a
magnificent fighting force, but it is unlikely to prove a satisfactory
conductor of civil administration. The great evil in Prussia was the
absence of any substantial common interest between the governors and the
governed. At first the German settlers were bound to the Knights as
their protectors against the original inhabitants; but as time went on,
and new generations grew up in the country of their birth, the original
enmity between Germans and Slavs gradually cooled, and the two peoples
were brought closer together in the ordinary intercourse of industry,
trade, and social life. But this growing union was a source of danger
rather than of gain to the ruling Order, because it deprived them of the
aid of that section of the population which might naturally have been
expected to support the Government. The Knights themselves, being bound
by the priestly vow of celibacy, could not train up successors with a
hereditary knowledge of the people and the country. Each generation of
Knights came from other districts, and had to learn the work of
government afresh. They came for the most part from southern Germany,
and their habits and even their language differed in many respects from
those of the Low Germans who had come in to settle in their towns and
villages. And strict as the disciplinary code of the Order was, it was
difficult to enforce its rules among men who were not secluded from the
world in monasteries, but were busily engaged in the work of war and
administration, and were in constant intercourse with visitors from all
countries. The charges of immorality and unbelief which had been urged
against the Templars could certainly be brought with equal if not with
greater force against the members of the Teutonic Order. The Knights had
none of the ordinary restraints of family affection, private property,
and home life; and it would have been superhuman if most of them had
been able to resist the temptations to which their mode of life and
their despotic authority over their subjects exposed them. For there was
nothing like constitutional life in Prussia outside the Order itself.
The authority of the grand-master was limited by the necessity of
gaining the consent of his chapter and by the great independence of the
provincial masters. But there was no machinery by which the Knights
could receive advice and information from the people whom they ruled.
Even the Prussian nobles, whether of German or Slavonic origin, were
excluded from all voice in the government. After the battle of
Tannenberg an attempt was made to establish a representative diet, in
order to enlist popular sympathy in the task of resisting invasion. But
it was the arbitrary act of an individual grand-master, and it broke the
standing rule which forbade priests to be guided by the counsel of
laymen. The economic policy of the Order was peculiarly affected by this
want of easy intercourse with the traders whose interests were at stake.
The most important towns within its dominions—Danzig, Elbing, Memel,
Thorn, Kulm, and Königsberg—were extremely flourishing, and all except
Memel were members of the Hanseatic League. On the whole, a wise
instinct impelled the Knights to maintain a close alliance with the
League, which so ably championed the cause of Germany in the western
Baltic, and thus the danger of conflicting interests between the Order
and the Hanse towns proved less than might have been expected. But the
Knights themselves embarked in trade, especially in amber; and, after
the fashion of rulers, they sought to regulate the market to bring gain
to themselves, a course of action which excited the jealous hostility of
the professional merchants. And their imitation of the action of the
League proved disastrous. For the maintenance of their great war against
Denmark, the Hanse towns had imposed a duty upon all exports to be
levied at each port (see p. 434). The Teutonic Order imposed a similar
tax for the Polish war, and endeavoured to make it a permanent source of
revenue. But the inevitable comparison was not in their favour. The
Hanseatic League was fighting in the common interests of all German
traders, and it was reasonable to ask them to contribute. The Order was
conducting a war in which the merchants as such had no appreciable
interest at all. The heavy taxation necessitated by the employment of
mercenaries raised the question whether the government of the Order was
worth the expense. Both nobles, citizens, and peasants were gradually
convinced that their welfare was by no means bound up with crusades in
Lithuania and perpetual warfare with Poland. In 1440 a number of nobles
and twenty-one towns combined to form a ‘Prussian League’ for the
defence of their liberties and common interests. There was no overt
defiance of the Order, but the League constituted a state within the
state, and a collision with the older government was sooner or later
inevitable. And when it did occur, it was more than probable that the
foreign enemies of the Order would be able to make use of the League to
serve their own purposes.
As the alienation of their subjects became more and more pronounced, the
Knights were driven to maintain their power by measures of
ever-increasing severity. They denounced their opponents as traitors.
But they themselves had no better claim to be considered as patriots.
They were not native Prussians, and they had none of that instinctive
devotion to the cause of their country which can hardly ever be acquired
except under the subtle influences of birth and early training. For this
love of the soil loyalty to a corporation proved a very inadequate
substitute. Henry of Plauen, the hero of the defence of Marienburg in
1410, was rewarded for his services by election to the vacant
grand-mastership. But a few years later he incurred the displeasure of
the chapter and was formally deposed. In his chagrin he did not hesitate
to open treacherous negotiations with the Polish king, and ultimately he
died in the prison to which he was justly condemned. Such an instance
was by no means isolated; and, in fact, many of the Knights were
secretly members of the Prussian League. The wonder is, not that the
Order fell, but that its rule was for a time so successful, and that it
lasted as long as it did.
Under the circumstances that grew up in the fifteenth century, with the
Government divided in itself and confronted by the growing hostility of
its subjects, a renewal [Sidenote: Civil war and Polish invasion.] of
the Polish war could only be attended with disaster. For many years a
quarrel was averted by a series of abject concessions, which were
interpreted as a sign of weakness, and naturally encouraged further
demands. At last the final catastrophe was hurried on by the outbreak of
civil war. The Prussian League had become more and more openly
antagonistic to the rule of the Order, and it was determined to make a
resolute effort to crush the disaffection. In 1453 the Emperor Frederick
III. was induced to condemn the League, and the Order armed its forces
to carry out the imperial decree. The result might have been foreseen.
The League renounced all allegiance to the Teutonic Order, and offered
the suzerainty of Prussia to Casimir of Poland. The offer was accepted.
The Polish king declared Prussia to be annexed to his dominions, and an
army was led by Casimir himself to aid the rebels. For twelve years the
unfortunate country was doomed to suffer all the horrors of civil strife
and foreign invasion. In spite of the tremendous odds against them, the
Knights offered a resistance worthy of their military reputation in the
past. In 1457 the grand-master was forced to quit the fortress of
Marienburg, where seventy of his predecessors had held their residence
for a century and a half. A refuge was found for a time in the eastern
castle of Königsberg, which was to be the future home of kings of
Prussia in times of similar distress. But the town of Marienburg held
out with heroic obstinacy for another three years, and siege operations
there and elsewhere delayed the progress of the Poles long after they
had crushed all resistance in the open field. The grand-master made
frantic appeals to the Emperor and the German princes for aid against
the Slavonic conquerors of the great province which the Order had won
for Germany. To Frederick II. of Brandenburg he sold the Neumark (1455),
which had been handed over to the Teutonic Knights by Sigismund in 1402.
But prayers and bribes were equally unavailing to excite any sentiment
of nationality among princes who had long ceased to regard anything but
their own territorial interests. In 1466 it was at last necessary to
submit to the consequences of defeat [Sidenote: Treaty of Thorn, 1466.]
and to sign the Treaty of Thorn. The whole of western Prussia, with
Pomerellen, including the towns of Danzig, Thorn, Elbing, and Kulm, was
ceded to Poland, and the valley of the Vistula passed once more into the
hands of the Slavs. Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg as its capital, was
left in the hands of the Order, but it was to be held as a Polish fief.
All allegiance to any other secular prince was to be repudiated, and
thus the connection with Germany was formally ended. Future
grand-masters were to do homage on election to the king of Poland, and
were to sit on his left hand in the Polish Diet.
It is needless to dwell at any length on the subsequent fate of the
Teutonic Order, which had fallen so lamentably [Sidenote: End of the
Teutonic Order.] from its high estate. The Knights of the Sword
repudiated their subordination to a grand-master who was no longer a
sovereign prince, and assumed the independent rule of Livonia and
Esthonia. The House of Jagellon went from one triumph to another; and
its ascendency in eastern Europe seemed to be established when Ladislas,
a younger son of Casimir IV., was elected to the crown of Bohemia in
1471, and to that of Hungary in 1490. Resistance to so great a power as
Poland had now become must have seemed chimerical, yet the Knights
continued to cherish the idea of recovering their lost independence.
With this object in view they resisted all proposals to unite the
grand-mastership with the Polish monarchy, and adopted the policy of
electing successive chiefs from the great families of northern Germany,
in the hope of enlisting their support for the cause of Prussia. Thus in
1498 they chose Frederick of Saxony, and in 1511 Albert of Hohenzollern.
The latter was for a time encouraged by the promise of assistance held
out by Maximilian I. But the Hapsburgs ever preferred the interests of
their house to those of Germany; and the hopes of Albert were dashed to
the ground when he learned that Maximilian had, in 1516, concluded a
treaty and a double marriage alliance with the Jagellon princes in order
to secure to his grandson Ferdinand the succession in Hungary and
Bohemia. In anger and despair Albert determined to repudiate his
allegiance both to Church and Empire. In 1525 he adopted the Protestant
faith, confirmed the cession of West Prussia to Poland, and received
East Prussia as a hereditary duchy for himself and his heirs. Although
an obstinate minority of the Knights refused to acknowledge the validity
of the grand-master’s action, the Teutonic Order was practically
dissolved. The remnant of the state which it had built up with such
strenuous exertions fell a century later to the main line of the
electors of Brandenburg, and gave a title to the monarchy which has
become in later times the paramount power in a united Germany.
The Order of the Sword lingered a few years longer, only to meet with a
similar fate in the end. In 1561 the last grand-master, Gotthard
Ketteler, finding it impossible [Sidenote: End of the Order of the
Sword.] to maintain independence, imitated the action of Albert of
Hohenzollern. He carved out for himself the secular duchy of Courland,
to be held in vassalage to Poland, while the rest of Livonia and
Esthonia was thrown as an apple of discord into the midst of the rival
Baltic states—Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. The struggle which
followed is noteworthy, not only because it led to the temporary
ascendency of Sweden in the Baltic, and so to the achievements of its
warrior-kings, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles X., and Charles XII., but also
because it gave occasion for the first appearance of Russia as a
European power.
CHAPTER XX
THE CHRISTIAN STATES OF SPAIN
Suspension of the Moorish wars in the middle of the thirteenth
century—Constitution of Castile—Disorders in the kingdom—Alfonso
XI.’s victories over the Moors—Peter the Cruel and Henry of
Trastamara—John of Gaunt in Spain—John II. of Castile and Alvaro de
Luna—Henry III. and the accession of Isabella in Castile—The
Constitution of Aragon—Acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia—The
general Privilege and the Privilege of Union—Reign of Peter
IV.—Re-union of Sicily with Aragon—Accession of the House of
Trastamara in Aragon—Alfonso V. gains Naples—Relations of Aragon and
Navarre—John II. and Charles of Viana—Union of Castile and
Aragon—Government of Ferdinand and Isabella—The _Santa Hermandad_
and the Inquisition—Conquest of Granada—Geographical discoveries of
Portugal and Castile—The Bull of Borgia and the Treaty of
Tordesillas.
The middle of the thirteenth century was an important turning-point in
the history of Spain. Hitherto the Christian [Sidenote: Suspension of
Moorish wars.] states had been engaged in a continuous crusade for the
conquest or expulsion of the Moors, who had held almost the whole
peninsula in the eighth century. But the capture of Cordova in 1236, and
of Seville in 1248, with the reduction of the province of Murcia in
1266, drove the Moors to their last stronghold in the kingdom of
Granada, which they were allowed to retain in comparative peace for
nearly two centuries and a half. This cessation of military activity in
the south was due to several causes. Granada itself was strongly
defended by nature, and its population was more homogeneous than that of
the dominions which had been lost. And the old enemies of the Moors were
now diminished in number. Portugal was cut off from all direct contact
with the infidel by the district round Seville and Cadiz, and Aragon was
equally isolated by the intervention of the Castilian province of
Murcia. The only state which had a conterminous frontier with the Moors
was Castile, and the attention of Castile was distracted from its
southern neighbours by internal feuds and foreign interests. One result
of the termination of the religious war is that Spanish history loses
such unity as it had hitherto possessed, and it is henceforth necessary
to follow the separate history of its component states. And with its
unity the history of the peninsula loses much of its dignity and
importance. The record of internal feuds, of dynastic revolutions, and
of criminal bloodshed, which fills the annals of the Spanish kingdoms,
and especially of Castile, would hardly be worth preserving if it were
not the necessary prelude to the rise of Spain in the sixteenth century
to a foremost position among the powers of Europe.
Castile, permanently united with Leon since 1230, was the largest, and
ultimately the dominant state of Spain. It had been formed in the course
of a prolonged religious [Sidenote: Constitution of Castile.] war, and
this had left a permanent impress on the constitution. While the kings
had risen to power as military leaders, the nobles and cities had also
earned great independence in a struggle which had often depended more
upon sudden local effort than upon the action of large armies; and the
clergy, as the preachers of religious ardour against the infidel,
retained more authority than in any other country in Europe. When
national exertion was relaxed by the diminution of external danger, a
struggle between the rival forces was inevitable; and though the victory
rested in the end with the monarchy, it was long before this result was
assured. The national assembly, or Cortes, was composed of three
estates—clergy, nobles, and citizens—and its importance varied very much
from time to time. But the royal power was more effectually limited by
the danger of armed resistance than by any formal constitutional
restrictions. The great nobles were independent princes in their own
domains, and could command the allegiance of their vassals in private
feuds with each other, and even in warfare against the crown. For the
vindication of their own rights, and for resisting the encroachments of
the barons, the towns claimed and exercised the right of forming an
armed union or _hermandad_. It was fortunate for the kings that
conflicting interests and mutual jealousy prevented any common action
between classes whose power both of offence and defence was so extremely
formidable.
Alfonso X., who ruled in Castile from 1252 to 1284, is known in history
as ‘The Wise,’ but the epithet was earned [Sidenote: Disorders in
Castile.] by his remarkable learning rather than by his ability as a
ruler. The only territorial acquisition of his reign, Murcia, was won
for him by the arms of Aragon. He abandoned the war against the Moors
for a vain effort to gain the imperial dignity, which he disputed during
the Great Interregnum with an English rival, Richard of Cornwall. His
later years, and the reigns of his successors, Sancho IV. (1284-1295)
and Ferdinand IV. (1295-1312), were disturbed by a disputed succession
to the crown. Alfonso’s eldest son, Ferdinand de Cerda, died in 1275,
leaving two sons, who are known as the Infantes de Cerda. According to
modern ideas, their hereditary claim would be incontestable. But in the
Middle Ages it was frequently held that nearness of blood gave a better
claim than descent in an elder line. On this ground Alfonso’s second
son, Sancho, was recognised as his father’s heir, and succeeded in
ousting his nephews. But the Infantes de Cerda had many partisans in
Castile, and a prolonged but desultory struggle ensued, in which the
neighbouring kings of Aragon and Portugal were involved. The actual
contest was ended by a treaty in 1305, by which the claimants were
bought off with lavish grants of land. But the disorders to which it had
given rise were not so easily suppressed. Two successive kings,
Ferdinand IV. and Alfonso XI. (1312-1350), came to the throne in their
childhood, and a minority is always an evil in an early stage of
society. Castile in this matter was almost as unlucky as was Scotland a
little later, and the results in the two countries were very similar.
The noble families fought out private wars among themselves, and the
kings became rather partisans than arbiters among their subjects. In
fact, the chief force for the maintenance of order was supplied, not by
the monarchy, but by a great _hermandad_ or brotherhood, which was
formed in 1295 by thirty-four Castilian towns.
The obvious weakness of Castile, after nearly seventy years of anarchy,
encouraged the Moors to make an effort for the recovery of their lost
power. Abul Hakam, the [Sidenote: War of Alfonso XI. with the Moors.]
Emir of Fez, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 1339 with a large army.
He was joined by the ruler of Granada, and their combined forces laid
siege to Tarifa. The approach of danger had a wholesome and healing
effect upon Castile. Alfonso XI. was enabled to make peace with his
rebellious subjects, and also with the king of Portugal, whose daughter
he had married only to desert her for the beautiful Eleanor de Guzman.
In 1340 he advanced to the relief of Tarifa, and gained in the battle of
the Salado the first victory which had fallen to a Castilian king for
nearly a century. The complaisant chronicler of the royal achievement
tells us that only twenty Christians perished in a battle which cost the
lives of two hundred thousand Moslems. It is at any rate authentic that
Abul Hakam was driven back to Africa, and that in 1344 Alfonso captured
the town of Algeciras. He hoped to complete his success by the reduction
of Gibraltar, which would have excluded any further reinforcement from
Africa to the Moors of Granada. But he was carried off by the Black
Death in 1350, and this event led to the abandonment of the siege.
Alfonso’s successes against the infidel have outweighed in the histories
of Spain both the vices of his private character and the disorder that
prevailed in the kingdom during his minority and the greater part of his
reign.
Few historical epithets have been more thoroughly deserved [Sidenote:
Peter the Cruel.] than that of ‘the Cruel,’ as attached to the name of
Peter I. (1350-1369). Numerous attempts to whitewash his character have
been made in vain, and all that can be said in his favour is that he had
received very great provocation. He was the only son of Alfonso XI. and
Maria of Portugal, and during his father’s reign both he and his mother
had been kept in ignominious seclusion, while every mark of favour was
showered upon the royal mistress, Eleanor de Guzman, and her numerous
children. Henry, the eldest of the bastards, was Count of Trastamara,
and his twin-brother Frederick held the grand-mastership of the great
Order of St. James. It was by no means unnatural that the dowager queen
should urge her son, when he came into power, to avenge the insults
which she had so long endured in angry impotence. Eleanor de Guzman was
strangled in 1351, and two of her sons in later years were murdered by
the king’s own hand. Henry of Trastamara sought safety in exile, first
in Portugal, and afterwards in France. It would be disgusting even to
enumerate the atrocious acts which have been attributed, some with more
and some with less authority, to the youthful monster in his early
years. His treatment of Blanche of Bourbon, whose hand he had solicited
from the French king, is a conspicuous but rather mild illustration of
his ruthless temperament. He was living openly with a mistress, Maria de
Padilla, when the princess arrived, and he refused even to see her.
Later, under considerable pressure, he went through the form of
marriage, but immediately returned to the arms of his mistress; and the
bride, who was never a wife, was consigned to a solitary prison, and
ultimately poisoned. In 1356 Peter put down a rebellion among his
nobles, and took the most sanguinary vengeance upon his defeated
opponents. His thirst for bloodshed seems, in moments of excitement, to
have amounted almost to mania. Yet, for a long time at any rate, he was
not unpopular with the lower orders among his subjects. It was upon the
nobles and the Jews, neither very popular with the people, that his hand
fell with such severity, and he could show at times a coarse good-nature
and a taste for rough buffoonery which won him some popular applause.
This helps to explain why he met with little or no opposition when he
endeavoured to secure the succession to his own illegitimate children.
In 1362 he solemnly swore to the Cortes, and his oath was supported by
the archbishop of Toledo, that he had been for ten years the lawful
husband of Maria de Padilla, and the docile Cortes recognised her
children as legitimate heirs to the crown. But this settlement was not
destined to be carried out. Bastardy in Spain, as in Italy, was not
considered so fatal a bar to inheritance as it was regarded in northern
countries. Henry of Trastamara found supporters in Peter of Aragon and
Charles V. of France, who had both grounds of quarrel with the king of
Castile. The latter, who was preparing to repudiate the treaty of
Bretigni and to renew the war with the English, was not unwilling to
allow Bertrand du Guesclin to train on Spanish soil the military
companies which he was forming for the service of France. In 1365 a
large army crossed the Pyrenees into Aragon, and thence proceeded in the
next year to establish Henry of Trastamara upon the Castilian throne.
Peter fled to Bordeaux to implore the aid of the Black Prince, and
unfortunately succeeded in touching a chivalrous chord in his host’s
character. At the battle of Najara the war-hardened troops, which had
won the victory of Poitiers, proved more than a match for the only
half-trained recruits of du Guesclin (1367). Peter recovered his
kingdom, but he showed as much ingratitude to his auxiliaries as he
showed barbarity towards his own subjects. Neither the Black Prince nor
his army ever completely recovered from their successful but disastrous
campaign in Spain, and Charles V. was able in a few years from 1369 to
expel the English from nearly the whole of their possessions in France
(see p. 95). But the betrayer had no better fortune than the betrayed.
The departure of Peter’s allies enabled Henry of Trastamara to return to
Castile, and with French aid to win the battle of Montiel. In a personal
interview the two half-brothers came to blows, and Henry’s dagger
avenged the death of his murdered kinsfolk. The two surviving children
of Peter and Maria Padilla, Constance and Isabella, had been left at
Bordeaux, and were married to two brothers of the Black Prince—John of
Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and Edmund Langley, duke of York.
Henry II. had by no means reached the end of his troubles when the death
of Peter enabled him for the [Sidenote: Henry II., 1369-79.] second time
to ascend the throne of Castile. His title was contested by two rival
candidates—Ferdinand of Portugal, whose grandmother had been a daughter
of Sancho IV., and John of Gaunt, who asserted the legitimacy and rights
of his wife as recognised by the Cortes of 1362.[12] The Portuguese king
was the nearer and, for the moment, the more formidable opponent, but
French aid enabled Henry to attack Lisbon and extort a treaty of peace.
The illness of the Black Prince left the conduct of the war in France to
John of Gaunt, and so Henry was able at once to harass his rival and to
repay some of his obligations to Charles V. by sending a Castilian fleet
to cut off direct communication between England and Gascony. Thus the
reign, which had opened so stormily, ended in complete peace, and Henry
of Trastamara handed on the crown to his son [Sidenote: John I.
1379-90.] John I. (1379). His accession gave the signal for a renewal of
the war with Portugal and of the Lancastrian claim. In 1385 the
Portuguese troops won a crushing victory at Aljubarrota, and in the next
year John of Gaunt came to the Peninsula in person to uphold his wife’s
cause. His daughter Philippa was married to the new king of Portugal,
John I., and their united forces invaded Castile and occupied
Compostella. But the Castilians had no desire to accept a foreign
dynasty; and John of Gaunt, never very lucky or very resolute in his
enterprises, was induced to desert his son-in-law and to conclude a
separate peace (1387). Catharine, the only daughter of John of Gaunt and
Constance, was betrothed to John of Castile’s eldest son Henry, the
first heir to the crown who received the title of Prince of Asturias,
and the mother’s claim was renounced in favour of the youthful bride.
Henry III., though he was only a boy when his father was suddenly killed
by a fall from his horse, proved to be one of [Sidenote: Henry III.,
1390-1406.] the ablest kings in the history of Castile. He insisted on a
resumption of domain-lands which had fallen into the hands of the
nobles, and maintained greater order in the kingdom than had been known
for many generations. His marriage with Catharine of Lancaster freed him
from any rival claimants to the throne, and also contributed to the
maintenance of peace with Portugal, whose queen was Catharine’s
half-sister. But, unfortunately, his health was never strong, and he
died in 1406 at the early age of twenty-seven, leaving a boy of two
years old to succeed him. As it happened, the minority [Sidenote: John
II., 1406-1454.] of John II. proved to be the most successful and
orderly part of his reign. The regency was shared between his mother and
his uncle Ferdinand; and so great was the respect inspired by the
latter, that he might easily have supplanted his nephew with the general
approval of the Castilians. But Ferdinand acted with perfect loyalty;
and after his elevation to the throne of Aragon in 1412, he continued to
give honest and disinterested advice to his sister-in-law.
Unfortunately, when John II. was old enough to take the government into
his own hands, he proved wholly unworthy of the care with which his
kingdom had been administered for him. Unwarlike and averse to the cares
of business, he allowed himself to be completely overshadowed by the
famous Alvaro de Luna, grand-master of the [Sidenote: Alvaro de Luna.]
Order of St. James, and constable of Castile. Alvaro de Luna was no
commonplace favourite. He was by general recognition the most
accomplished knight of his country and his age, and he combined with his
brilliant personal attractions political abilities of no mean order. He
set himself to increase the authority of the crown because that
authority was wielded by himself, and he achieved no small measure of
success. He trampled upon the privileges of his brother nobles, and he
prepared the way for the humiliation of the third estate by reducing the
representation in the Cortes to seventeen of the principal cities. But
his government, although despotic, was by no means conducive to order.
The absolutism of a king may be submitted to and even welcomed, but the
absolutism of a subject is certain to excite discontent among those who
consider themselves to be legally his equals. The reign of John II. was
filled by a series of conspiracies and rebellions, and the malcontents
in Castile received formidable assistance from the king’s cousin, John
of Aragon. The constable, however, was as successful in the battle-field
as in the tilt-yard, and no Castilian rebel or foreign foe was strong
enough to effect his overthrow. His ultimate downfall was due to the
ingratitude of his master. John’s second wife, Isabella of Portugal,
indignant that her authority counted for so little in the state, set
herself to sow distrust between her husband and the all-powerful
minister. The more domestic influence triumphed for the moment over the
feeble mind of the king, and Alvaro de Luna was put to death after a
parody of a trial in 1453.
John II. only survived the constable a year, and his death in 1454
ushered in a still more troubled period for Castile. He left behind him
three children—Henry, the son of his first wife, Mary of Aragon, and
Isabella and Alfonso, the offspring of Isabella of Portugal. Henry IV.,
[Sidenote: Henry IV., 1454-74.] who succeeded his father, was the most
incapable king of Castile until the accession of the unfortunate Charles
II. in the seventeenth century. He was equally feeble in mind and body,
and the contempt of his subjects found expression in his appellation of
‘Henry the Impotent.’ There were several aspirants to fill the position
which Alvaro de Luna had held in the previous reign, and success rested
with Beltran de la Cueva, who had all the showy without any of the solid
qualities of the famous constable. It was currently reported that the
handsome favourite supplemented his influence over the king by securing
the affections of the queen, Joanna of Portugal. The birth of a daughter
increased instead of allaying the scandal, and the unfortunate infanta
was generally known as ‘la Beltraneja.’ Jealousy of the favourite and
disgust with the king’s incompetence combined to provoke a formidable
rebellion (1465). At Avila the rebels went through the formal ceremony
of deposing a puppet dressed up to represent the king. The crown was
offered to Henry’s half-brother Alfonso, on the ground that Joanna was
illegitimate, but the young prince died in 1468, before the civil war
had come to a decisive end. Isabella, to whom the malcontents now
turned, showed that she had inherited the qualities of her mother rather
than those of her father. With a calculating wisdom beyond her years,
she [Sidenote: Isabella.] refused to weaken her claim by allowing her
cause to be associated with rebellion against the monarchy. At the same
time she was equally resolute to avoid any recognition of the legitimacy
of her niece. Her firmness extorted a treaty from Henry IV., by which
she was recognised as his heiress, and on this condition the rebels were
induced to lay down their arms (1468). In the next year Isabella
concluded her all-important marriage with Ferdinand, the heir to the
crown of Aragon. As soon as the immediate danger of deposition was
removed, Henry IV. embarked in a struggle to repudiate the recent treaty
and to secure the succession to his wife’s daughter. But he died in 1474
without having succeeded in his aim, and his half-sister inherited the
crown. The cause of Joanna was now espoused by her uncle, Alfonso V. of
Portugal, but Isabella succeeded in maintaining the position she had
won. Her accession, and the subsequent union of the crowns of Aragon and
Castile, ushered in a new and more distinguished epoch in the history of
the Spanish peninsula.
The kingdom of Aragon was formed by the union of the three provinces of
Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The union was very imperfect, as each
province jealously [Sidenote: Constitution of Aragon.] insisted upon
retaining its own laws and institutions, and resented any attempt to
introduce uniformity of administration. The powers of the monarchy were
more narrowly restricted than in the neighbouring kingdom of Castile.
The privileges of the _ricos hombres_, or great nobles, were so
extensive as to make them almost the equals of their king, and the
desire to maintain these privileges brought about among them a wholly
unusual unity of interest and political action. Ferdinand the Catholic
expressed this difference between the two kingdoms in his saying that
‘it was as difficult to divide the nobles of Aragon as to unite the
nobles of Castile.’ And the citizens were not far behind the nobles in
the spirit of independence, which was especially strong in the maritime
province of Catalonia. The representation of towns in the Cortes of
Aragon dates back to 1133, thirty-three years before any similar
concession was made in Castile, and more than a century before any
regular practice of central representation was established in England.
The Cortes was not a general assembly of the whole kingdom, but each
province had its own Cortes, which possessed within its borders the
supreme control of jurisdiction, legislation, and taxation. In Valencia
and Aragon the assembly consisted, as in Castile and France, of the
ordinary three estates—clergy, nobles, and citizens. But the Cortes of
Aragon contained four estates or arms (_brazos_). Besides the clergy and
the delegates of towns, the secular nobles were divided into two
distinct classes—(1) the _ricos hombres_, who had the right of attending
either in person or by proxy, and (2) the _infanzones_, or lesser
tenants-in-chief, and the _caballeros_, the sub-tenants, who were
entitled to attend in virtue of their knighthood. In the office of
Justiciar, Aragon possessed a unique institution which has always
attracted the interest of historical students. Originally the Justiciar
was merely the president of the Cortes when it sat as a court of
justice, and his functions were of no special political importance. But
in course of time he became the mediator, and ultimately the supreme
arbiter, in all disputes between the monarch and his subjects. In this
capacity he was regarded as at once the depositary and the champion of
constitutional traditions and liberties. The dignity of the office was
enhanced by the character of its successive holders, and the history of
Aragon abounds with instances of their resolute resistance to despotism
on the one hand or to lawless disorder on the other. It is noteworthy
that the responsibility of the Justiciar to the Cortes was secured by
his selection from the lesser nobles or knights. The _ricos hombres_,
whose privileges included exemption from execution or any corporal
punishment, were always excluded from the office.
James I. of Aragon (1213-1276) is known by the honourable title of the
Conqueror. He brought the long Moorish wars to an end, and completed the
extension of the kingdom by the annexation of the Balearic Islands,
which had long been a nest of Mussulman pirates, and of Valencia. He
also effected the reduction of Murcia, but with rare loyalty handed it
over to the king of Castile, in whose name he had carried on the war
(1266). One result of these victories was that his successors, freed
from the pressure of continual warfare at home, were able to turn their
attention eastwards to events in Italy. Peter III. (1276-1285) was
married to Constance, the daughter and heiress [Sidenote: Aragon and
Sicily.] of Manfred, and thus acquired a claim to be regarded as the
successor of the Hohenstaufen in Naples and Sicily. But it is doubtful
whether this claim would have led to any practical results but for the
massacre of the French in the famous Sicilian Vespers (1282). To protect
themselves from the vengeance of Charles of Anjou, the islanders
appealed to the king of Aragon, and offered him the crown. Hence arose
the prolonged wars against a coalition formed by the Angevin rulers of
Naples, the popes and the kings of France, which constitute the most
prominent episode, not only in the later years of Peter III., but also
in the reigns of his two sons and successors, Alfonso III. (1285-1291)
and James II. (1291-1327). These wars have already been referred to in
connection with the history both of France and of Italy (see pp. 25,
48), and it is unnecessary to tell the story again. The essential points
to remember are that in 1295 Boniface VIII. negotiated a treaty by which
James II. was to marry Blanche, the daughter of Charles II. of Naples,
to receive the island of Sardinia, and resign his claim upon Sicily; but
the Sicilians refused to agree to terms in which they had had no voice,
offered the crown to James’s younger brother Frederick, and succeeded in
1302 in establishing him upon the throne. Hence in the end there was a
double gain. Sicily was secured to a younger branch of the house of
Aragon, and on its extinction reverted to the main line. Some years
later James III. (1327-1336) took Sardinia from the Genoese and Pisans
in virtue of a treaty which had been very imperfectly carried out on his
side, as the only price which he paid for his acquisition had been an
ineffectual attempt to expel his brother from a kingdom which he had
deemed himself too weak to retain. Sardinia remained united with Aragon,
and so with Spain, until the treaty of Rastadt in 1714 gave it to
Austria, and the treaty of London in 1720 transferred it, with the title
of king, to the duke of Savoy.
These Italian wars were not without their influence on the history of
Aragon. They were waged in the interest of the dynasty, not of the
kingdom, and the Aragonese [Sidenote: Concessions to the Aragonese.] had
a substantial grievance in being called upon to furnish money, men, and
ships for an enterprise in which they had no particular concern. Hence
the kings were compelled to appease their subjects by concessions, which
went far beyond any sacrifices extorted from contemporary rulers in
other countries. The ‘General Privilege,’ granted by Peter III. in 1283,
has been compared, and justly compared, with the English _Magna Charta_.
It provided salutary securities for general and individual liberty, and
its frequent confirmation shows that it was highly valued. But four
years later Alfonso III. went to a dangerous extreme when he signed the
famous ‘Privilege of Union’ (1287). By this his subjects were formally
authorised to take up arms against their sovereign if he attempted to
infringe their privileges. Rebellion may be and often is the only
effectual safeguard against oppression, but it is harmful and
unnecessary to formulate a right to rebel. The Privilege of Union put a
very formidable weapon into the hands of the nobles, who could always
disguise the selfish pursuit of their own interests under the pretence
that they were engaged in opposing despotism.
Peter IV. of Aragon (1336-1387) was the first king who set himself to
free the monarchy from some of the excessive [Sidenote: Reign of Peter
IV.] restraints which had been imposed upon it. He annexed to the crown
the Balearic Islands, which had been held since 1374 by a younger son of
James the Conqueror and his descendants, under the title of kings of
Majorca. The reigning king, James II., made a prolonged struggle to
retain a dominion which he had done nothing to forfeit, but was
compelled to submit to the superior force of his imperious cousin. This
arbitrary act was followed by an attempt to settle the succession
according to the personal wishes of the king. At the time (1347) Peter
had only one child, a daughter Constance, and the heir-presumptive to
the throne was his half-brother James, Count of Urgel. There was no law
or custom excluding females from the succession in Aragon, but there was
a very strong prejudice in favour of male heirs, and they had usually
been preferred to heiresses, even though the latter stood nearer in the
line of descent. The attempt of James to procure a settlement in favour
of his daughter, combined with the generally high-handed character of
his government, provoked a formidable rising among the nobles, and also
gave them a powerful leader in James of Urgel. Claiming the rights
accorded by the Privilege of 1287, the rebels formed a Union at
Saragossa and formulated their demands. The king, taken by surprise, was
compelled at first to feign compliance; but the opportune death of James
of Urgel, attributed by contemporaries to poison administered by his
brother’s command, together with a rally of the Catalans to the cause of
the king, turned the balance in favour of Peter IV. In 1348 the royal
forces met the rebels on the field of Epila, and gained a complete
victory. The Privilege of Union was promptly revoked, and the parchment
on which it was written was destroyed by the king’s own hands. Thus the
monarchy gained a really considerable triumph, and the nobles were the
only immediate sufferers. In fact, Peter made no attempt to curtail any
popular liberties, and the authority of the Justiciar was more firmly
established in his reign by the grant of a life-tenure to the holders of
the office. His later years were occupied with wars against his cruel
namesake in Castile, with a struggle against the Genoese in Sardinia,
and with the suppression of an attempt on the part of James III. to
recover his father’s kingdom of Majorca. The original doubt about the
succession was removed by the birth of two sons, who successively came
to the throne as John I. (1387-1395) and Martin I. (1395-1410). Their
reigns are chiefly noteworthy for the reunion of Sicily with Aragon. The
two crowns had [Sidenote: Reversion of Sicily.] been separated since the
repudiation of his claims by James II. had given his younger brother
Frederick the opportunity of gaining a kingdom. Since 1302 Sicily had
been peacefully held by the descendants of Frederick I.; and on the
extinction of the male line had fallen to an heiress, Mary, the daughter
of Frederick II. by a marriage with a daughter of Peter IV. of Aragon.
Mary was married in 1391 to her cousin, Martin the Younger, the only son
of Martin I., who was enabled by the support of his uncle and father to
obtain the Sicilian crown. On his early death in 1409, the island
kingdom fell to his father, who for the one remaining year of his life
was king both of Aragon and of Sicily.
The death of Martin the Younger not only brought the crown of Sicily to
the king of Aragon, but also gave rise to a disputed succession in the
latter kingdom. The [Sidenote: Disputed succession.] elder Martin was
now the only surviving male descendant of Peter IV., and he died in
1410, before any arrangement had been come to about his successor. If
male descent were insisted upon, the obvious heir was James of Urgel,
whose grandfather had been the second son of Alfonso IV. Recent
precedents, notably the accession of Martin himself in preference to the
daughters of John I., were in favour of the exclusion of heiresses, but
there remained the open question whether the male descendants of a woman
could derive a claim through her. Of such candidates, two were most
prominent—Louis, the eldest son of Louis II. of Anjou and John I.’s
daughter Yolande, and Ferdinand, the regent of Castile in the minority
of John II., whose mother was Eleanor, a daughter of Peter IV.[13] There
can be no doubt that the count of Urgel had by far the strongest
hereditary claim; but his own rash assumption that he had only to take
the crown provoked opposition among the rather contentious Aragonese,
and he was ultimately excluded. A joint committee was appointed from the
Cortes of the three provinces to inquire into precedents; and after an
interregnum of two years, their choice curiously fell upon Ferdinand of
Castile, whose claim by descent was unquestionably weaker than that of
his rivals (1412).
Thus the lucky house of Trastamara, in spite of its illegitimate origin,
had come to furnish a king in Aragon as well as in Castile. And within a
generation events enabled the family to add to these possessions the
kingdom of Naples, and for a time the kingdom of Navarre. Ferdinand I.
did not live long enough to display in Aragon the great qualities which
his administration in Castile had shown him to possess. His elder son
Alfonso V. (1416-1458) [Sidenote: Alfonso V. and Naples.] is more
associated with the history of Italy than with that of Spain. He
inherited from his father Sicily and Sardinia as well as Aragon, and in
1423 his adoption by Joanna II. opened to him the prospect of inheriting
Naples. But the vicious queen soon changed her mind, disinherited
Alfonso, and adopted in his place Louis III. of Anjou, who could claim
through his mother a better right to the crown of Aragon than Alfonso
himself. This double adoption led to the long war between the house of
Aragon and the second house of Anjou, which raged for the last twelve
years of Joanna’s reign, and for eight years after her death. It ended
in the victory of Alfonso, who reigned peacefully in Naples until his
death in 1458 (see p. 271). As he left no legitimate children, Aragon,
Sicily, and Sardinia passed to his brother John II. (1458-1494), but
Naples was transferred to his bastard son Ferrante I. Half a century was
to elapse before the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was re-formed by
Ferdinand the Catholic.
While Alfonso was engaged in winning the crown of Naples amidst the
turmoil of an Italian war, his younger brother John had succeeded in
establishing an intimate [Sidenote: Relations of Aragon and Navarre.]
relation with Navarre. This little kingdom, which comprised territory on
both sides of the Pyrenees, had for a long time been more closely
connected with France than with Spain.[14] United with the French crown
by the marriage of Blanche of Navarre with Philip IV., it had again
become independent on the extinction of the direct line of the house of
Capet. When Philip of Valois ascended the throne of France, Navarre
passed to the rightful heiress, Jeanne, the daughter of Louis X., and
she was crowned with her husband, Philip of Evreux, in 1329. Their son,
Charles the Bad (1349-1387), played a prominent, though not very
creditable part in French history during the wars with Edward III. (see
Chapter IV.). Charles II. (1387-1425), who succeeded his father, devoted
more attention to art and letters than to politics, and kept his kingdom
in peace and obscurity. His daughter and heiress, Blanche, married John
of Aragon, but the succession was secured to her children. As long as
she lived Blanche ruled Navarre in her own right, and on her death in
1442 her son, Charles of Viana, was entitled to the crown of [Sidenote:
John II. and Charles of Viana.] Navarre. He actually undertook the
administration of the kingdom; but in deference, apparently, to his
mother’s wishes, he forbore to assume the royal title, which was still
borne by his father. In the ordinary course of things, no special
difficulty need have arisen, as Charles would have succeeded his father
in Aragon as well as Navarre. But in 1447 John concluded a second
marriage with Joanna Henriquez, daughter of the Admiral of Castile, and
a woman of equal energy and ambition. She persuaded her husband to
intrust her with the administration of Navarre, and Charles of Viana
found plenty of advisers to remind him that the kingdom was lawfully his
own, and to urge resistance to such an encroachment upon his authority.
Hence arose a civil war between the father and the stepmother on the one
side, and the son on the other. The great Navarrese families of Beaumont
and Egremont, as uniformly hostile to each other as the Orsini and
Colonnas in Rome, gladly welcomed so congenial a pretext for warfare.
The Beaumonts were intimately associated with Charles, so the Egremonts
had perforce to espouse the cause of his father. At Aybar, in 1452, the
royal troops won the victory, and Charles fell a prisoner into his
father’s hands. He was released soon afterwards, but his power had been
destroyed by his defeat, and his position was rendered worse by the
birth of a son, afterwards Ferdinand the Catholic, to the queen in 1452.
Joanna hardly concealed her intention to secure the recognition of her
own son as heir to his father, and her influence over John was
unbounded. The unfortunate prince of Viana set out to Naples in 1458 to
implore the advice and assistance of his uncle Alfonso V. But Alfonso
died in 1458, and John was now king in Aragon instead of merely
lieutenant for his brother. In 1460 Charles of Viana ventured to return
to his father’s kingdom, and, after a feigned welcome, was thrown into
prison at Lerida. This gross injustice—for there was no shadow of a
charge to be brought against the prince—excited a rebellion among the
liberty-loving Catalans. The revolt rapidly spread to the other
provinces, and the king of Castile showed a suspicious interest in the
welfare of the heir to the crown of Aragon. John II. found it politic to
yield to such general pressure. Charles of Viana was released and
appointed governor of Catalonia, but before he could undertake the rule
of his province he was removed by poison.
This terrible crime enabled John to retain possession of Navarre for his
lifetime, but it rather increased his difficulties [Sidenote: Rebellion
in Catalonia.] in his lawful kingdom. The Catalans renewed their
rebellion to avenge the death of the prince whose cause they had
championed with such fatal results, and besieged the queen and her son
in the fortress of Gerona. Unable to force his way through to their aid,
John was compelled to purchase the assistance of Louis XI. of France by
pledging the provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne to cover his expenses.
French troops raised the siege of Gerona, but the Catalans maintained an
obstinate resistance. They went so far as to offer the crown to Réné le
Bon of Anjou and Provence, who was a grandson, through his mother, of
John I. Réné, old, and averse to risk or exertion, sent his chivalrous
son, John of Calabria, who had already fought a desperate war against
the reigning Aragonese king of Naples (see p. 277), to carry on the war
with the same family on the soil of Aragon. For a time John was almost
in despair. He had become blind, and in 1468 he lost the wife whom he
had loved and trusted too well. But the old man fought on with a dogged
obstinacy which deserved its reward. In 1469 John of Calabria died, and
in 1472 the fall of Barcelona completed the reduction of Catalonia. On
his death in 1479 John bequeathed to Ferdinand an inheritance which was
only diminished by the loss of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and these
provinces were restored by Charles VIII. in 1493 in the hope of
preventing the sending of aid from Aragon or Sicily to the bastard ruler
of Naples, whom Charles was preparing to attack.
Death had at last relaxed the tenacious grip which John II. had so long
maintained upon the kingdom of Navarre. Of his three children by his
first wife Blanche—Charles [Sidenote: Navarre after 1479.] of Viana,
Blanche, and Eleanor—only the last, who had married Gaston de Foix,
survived her father; Charles had been poisoned by his father, and
Blanche had been poisoned by her sister. And, after all, Eleanor only
outlived her father for a few weeks. Her grandson, Francis Phœbus,
succeeded her, but died in 1483, and his sister Catharine carried the
kingdom to the house of d’Albret. From this family Ferdinand the
Catholic wrested that part of Navarre which lay on the Spanish side of
the Pyrenees. The remainder came to the house of Bourbon by the marriage
of duke Antony to Jeanne d’Albret, and by the accession of their son
Henry IV. to the throne was ultimately annexed to France. When in the
following century Roussillon and Cerdagne were finally handed over to
the same state (1659), the Pyrenees at last became, as nature seemed to
have intended, although history was always thwarting her intention, a
boundary between two separate states.
The union of Castile and Aragon by the accession in the two kingdoms of
Isabella (1474) and Ferdinand (1479) laid the foundations of a kingdom
of Spain, and [Sidenote: Union of Castile and Aragon.] opened the way
for a brief period of Spanish predominance in Europe. Yet the union of
the kingdoms was merely personal: it was no more, in some ways it was
even less, than the union of England and Scotland effected by the
accession of James I. in the former kingdom in 1603. The great states of
the peninsula were not welded into one; they remained distinct units,
each with its own national characteristics, its own laws and
institutions, its own sense of corporate life and interests. This
imperfection of the union is a fundamental fact in later Spanish
history; it marks the essential difference between Spain and its more
successful neighbour France; it is a chief cause of the rapid and
apparently irreparable decline of Spain in a later age. Nevertheless, in
spite of its defects, the union was a necessary condition of the
emergence of Spain from its mediæval isolation. The very want of harmony
among the component states contributed to the rise of the royal power,
and the strength and weakness of Spain were equally bound up with the
fate of the monarchy. Without the forces of Aragon it would have been
impossible for Isabella to put down the disorderly independence of the
Castilian nobles, or for Charles V. to repress the communes and to
degrade the Cortes to impotence. And without the forces of Castile
Philip II. could never have ventured to trample upon the hardy liberties
of Aragon.
The grand period of Spanish history, and even great part of the reigns
of Ferdinand and Isabella, lie beyond the limits of this volume, which
is only concerned with [Sidenote: Government of Ferdinand and Isabella.]
the earlier achievements of these monarchs. The primary duty of the
queen was to strike at the independence of the Castilian nobles, and to
put an end to the lawless anarchy which had reached its height under the
feeble rule of her brother. For this purpose she found an instrument
ready to her hand in the time-honoured privileges of the burgher class.
In 1476 she proposed and carried in the Cortes the organisation of the
_Santa Hermandad_, or Holy Brotherhood, which was to supply a force of
civic police on a most extensive scale. Its affairs were managed by a
central junta, composed of deputies from all the cities of Castile,
which was convened once a year. A small army of two thousand cavalry,
with attendant archers, was formed to enforce the decisions of local
magistrates and of the supreme court. The nobles protested against the
measure as unconstitutional, but the protest of the chief evil-doers is
a proof of its value and its efficiency. Other measures followed in
rapid succession. The extravagant grants of lands and pensions which had
been made to the nobles in recent years were revoked, the fortresses
which had served as centres of brigandage were destroyed, and steps were
taken to codify the numerous laws which had been enacted since the reign
of Alfonso X. The grandmasterships of the orders of Calatrava,
Alcantara, and St. James, which conferred upon their holders powers too
great to be safely intrusted to subjects, were on successive vacancies
annexed to the crown. And the strengthened monarchy showed itself the
enlightened protector of the material interests of its subjects. Trade
and industry were encouraged by the remodelling of taxation, by a
much-needed reform of the currency, and by the removal of the barriers
to commercial intercourse between Castile and Aragon. It has been
reckoned that the royal revenue, without any increased charges upon the
people, was multiplied thirty-fold between Isabella’s accession in 1474
and her death in 1504.
The greatest of rulers have their defects, and Isabella’s were a
fanatical hatred of heresy and a feminine passion for religious
uniformity. There can be no doubt that her influence predominated in
bringing about [Sidenote: The Spanish Inquisition.] the introduction of
the Inquisition, which was authorised by a bull of Sixtus IV. in 1478,
and was set in working in 1483 under the presidency of Torquemada. It
may be regarded as the first institution of a united Spain. Its
extension to Aragon excited much opposition among the liberty-loving
people, but the iron will of Ferdinand proved irresistible. One of the
first outcomes of religious persecution was the expulsion of the Jews in
1492. Some two hundred thousand Jews are said to have been driven from
Spain by this edict. It was a cruel measure, but it was not so
disastrous as it has been represented by some writers, who seem to have
forgotten that it was followed, not by the immediate decline of Spain,
but by a period of unexampled prosperity.
The first overt proof to the world that a new power had arisen in Spain
was furnished by the final extinction of the [Sidenote: Conquest of
Granada.] Moorish dominion in the peninsula. The most signal
illustration of the weakness caused by the internal disorders of Castile
for the last two hundred years is to be found in the prolonged existence
of the kingdom of Granada. The establishment of a united and efficient
state upon their borders was fatal to the Moors. The war began in 1481,
and was steadily but not impetuously prosecuted for ten years. On
November 25, 1491, the capitulation of the Moorish capital was signed.
The terms granted to the conquered were as liberal as prudent policy
could dictate or as their heroic resistance had deserved. Full liberty
as to the exercise of their religion and the maintenance of their own
laws was granted to all who would peacefully submit to Christian rule.
But unfortunately the terms were not observed. After seven years of
tranquillity the bigotry of the Castilian government proved stronger
than considerations either of honour or of policy. The Moors were
suddenly called upon to choose between conversion and exile. Those who
accepted the former alternative had to live under a sort of ban in the
midst of an alien and hostile majority, until the insane edict of
expulsion against the Moriscoes in 1609 deprived Spain of a harmless and
industrious element of its population just at the time when it could
least afford to lose them.
In one great department of activity—geographical discovery and
expansion—Spain was anticipated and to some extent [Sidenote: Portugal.]
guided by her neighbour Portugal. Portugal began life as one of the
struggling Christian states of Spain, with no essential difference from
the other petty counties or kingdoms which were in the end combined to
form larger states. Gradually Portugal had been hardened into something
like nationality by a long struggle, first to secure its existence
against the Moors, and then to resist that absorption into Castile which
considerations of geography and race seemed to render not only natural,
but almost inevitable. The first end was achieved by the victories of
Alfonso I. (1112-1185), who exchanged the title of count for that of
king; the second by the victory of Aljubarrota in 1385 (see above, p.
474), and the wise government of John I. (1383-1433). It was in the
reign of the latter that Portugal [Sidenote: Geographical discovery.]
began to interest itself in the task of exploring the west coast of
Africa, which was destined to bring to the small kingdom such a lavish
measure of wealth and renown. His third son, who was also the grandson
of an Englishman, John of Gaunt, was the famous Prince Henry the
Navigator. He was inspired with a confident belief that it was possible
to sail round Africa, and that the Portuguese might by this route divert
to themselves the great gains which the Venetians and Genoese enjoyed
from their indirect trade with India through the Levant. His dream was
not fulfilled during his own lifetime, but his efforts contributed to
its later realisation. For forty years he laboured to fit out
expeditions for African exploration, and to these were due the
successive discovery, or in some cases the re-discovery, of Porto Santo
(1419), Madeira (1420), the Canaries, which were later surrendered to
Castile, the Azores (1431-1444), the White Cape or Cabo Blanco (1441),
and Cape Verde (1446). When once the great shoulder of Africa had been
rounded it was easy to reach the Guinea coast. The death of Prince Henry
in 1460 checked, but did not arrest the progress of discovery. Africa
had been found to produce one very valuable commodity—slaves—and
Portugal was keenly interested in the lucrative but demoralising
slave-trade. This served to stimulate frequent voyages to the west coast
of Africa, and it was certain that before long some of the more
adventurous sailors would be induced, either by design or by accident,
to prolong their journeys. Moreover, as the fifteenth century advanced,
the impulse to find a new route to India became constantly stronger. The
Levant was becoming more and more a Turkish lake. First the coast of
Asia Minor and then Constantinople fell into their hands. There was a
growing danger that the great markets in which the Venetians and Genoese
had purchased from Arab caravans the products of the East would be
closed to Christian merchants. Europe could not afford to dispense with
commodities which had become almost necessaries to her peoples, or to
purchase them upon terms which drained the western countries of their
all too scanty supply of the precious metals. A great prize was offered
to the discoverers of a direct maritime connection with India, and the
competition became more and more keen. Portugal, thanks to Prince Henry,
had been first in the race, and she deservedly won the prize. In 1486
Bartholomew Diaz reached Algoa [Sidenote: The Cape route to India.] Bay,
having at last rounded the Cape, to which he gave the well-merited name
of _Cabo Tormentoso_, or the stormy cape; though King John II., with
greater prescience and less familiarity, insisted upon calling it the
Cape of Good Hope. Twelve years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama completed
the work by conducting a continuous voyage from Lisbon to Calicut.
Meanwhile Castile had attempted to solve the great problem of the age.
By the treaty of 1479, when Isabella was recognised and the claims of
Joanna were abandoned by her uncle and husband, Alfonso V., Portugal had
given up the Canaries, but had received the confirmation of past and
future discoveries on the African coast. Thus Spain was debarred from
competing with Portugal on the route to India which Henry the Navigator
had pointed out. But Christopher Columbus, a Genoese mariner who entered
[Sidenote: Discovery of America.] the service of Castile, proposed to
find a way to Asia by sailing westwards. In 1492 the first of his
ever-famous voyages brought him to land which he conceived to be part of
India. He had really found the new world of America, but his fruitful
error has given to the islands at which he first touched the name of the
West Indies.
These two discoveries, of America and of the route to India round the
Cape, are perhaps the greatest events of the fifteenth century. They
brought men face to face with new problems, new conceptions, new
interests, [Sidenote: Partition of the New World.] which have drawn a
conspicuous line of demarcation between the Middle Ages and later times.
But these belong to a subsequent period. The most immediate result was
to create a danger of collision between Spain and Portugal, which
contemporary statesmanship set itself to avert. A bull of Alexander VI.
in 1493 drew an imaginary line a hundred leagues west of the Azores, and
gave the countries to the west of the line to Spain and those to the
east to Portugal. This arrangement was modified in the next year by the
treaty of Tordesillas between the two countries, which shifted the line
of demarcation some hundred and seventy leagues farther west. This
served to give to Portugal its subsequent claim to Brazil. But the
monstrous pretension of the two pioneers of discovery to monopolise all
its fruits to themselves provoked before long the vigorous resistance of
northern countries which were equally fitted by geography for oceanic
trade. When Spain in 1580 annexed Portugal, the struggle against a
single monopoly became more desperate; and it was this, even more than
differences of religion, which led to those prolonged wars with the
English and Dutch in which the power of Spain was shattered.
Footnote 12:
See Genealogical Table Q, in Appendix.
Footnote 13:
See Genealogical Table R, in Appendix.
Footnote 14:
See Genealogical Table S, in Appendix.
CHAPTER XXI
THE GREEK EMPIRE AND THE OTTOMAN TURKS
The Greek Empire after the recovery of Constantinople in 1261—The
reigns of Michael VIII. and Andronicus II.—The Grand Company of the
Catalans—Civil war and deposition of Andronicus II.—The Seljuk and
Ottoman Turks—Conquests of Othman and Orchan—The tribute of
children—John V. and John Cantacuzenos—Stephen Dushan and the Empire
of Servia—First conquests of the Turks in Europe—Vassalage of the
Greek Empire—Turkish successes against the Slavonic States—Bajazet
I. attacks Constantinople—Battle of Angora—Revival of the Ottoman
power—The Emperor John VI. and the Council of Florence—Wars of
Amurath II. with Hungary—Revolt of Albania under Scanderbeg—Mohammed
II. takes Constantinople—Conquest of Servia, Wallachia, and
Bosnia—Conquest of Greece—War with Venice—The Turks in Otranto—Death
of Mohammed the Conqueror.
It is not a little curious that the two powers which claimed to
represent the ancient Empire of Rome both perished in the thirteenth
century. The fall of the Hohenstaufen [Sidenote: The Greek Empire after
1261.] and the Great Interregnum mark the real end of the western
Empire. Henceforth it is nothing more than a feeble kingship of Germany
with a shadowy claim to suzerainty over Italy. The eastern Empire was
annihilated by the destructive triumph of the Crusaders in 1204. Its
so-called revival in 1261 was merely the recovery of Constantinople by a
prince who had previously ruled in Nicæa. The rule of Michael Palæologus
and his successors, though the forms of ceremonies of Roman tradition
were carefully maintained, has no claim to be called a Roman Empire at
all; at the most, it is a Greek or Byzantine Empire. Their territories
were smaller than those of several of the western kings. In Europe they
held little more than Constantinople itself, with the adjacent district
of Roumelia and the peninsula of Chalcidice. To the north and west they
were hemmed in by the independent kingdoms of Bulgaria and Servia. The
greater part of the Morea was split up into small states in the hands
either of Frankish princes or of Venice. Venice also held the important
islands of Corfu, Crete, and Negropont, and many of the lesser islands
in the Ægean were ruled by Venetian families. In Asia Minor the
Palæologi succeeded in retaining for a time the greater part of the west
coast with a few towns on the Black Sea; but the rest of the peninsula
was in the hands of the Turkish sultans of Iconium, with the exception
of a small strip in the south-eastern corner of the Black Sea, which
constituted the so-called Empire of Trebizond. It is true that Michael
VIII. himself, and even some of his feeble successors, made a few
acquisitions of territory, especially in the Morea, but these were
counterbalanced by quite equal losses. The Knights of St. John, who
lived in Crete for a few years after their expulsion from Acre in 1291,
seized Rhodes and the small adjacent islands in 1310. And the Genoese,
who had rendered valuable service in the war with the Latin emperors,
demanded very large concessions as their reward. Not only did they
receive the suburb of Pera or Galata, which they fortified against the
Greek emperors, but they established their power at Kaffa in the Crimea,
and in Azof, at the mouth of the Don, thus securing a monopoly of the
Black Sea trade, and they also seized upon the islands of Lesbos and
Chios.
It is a sorry task to trace the fortunes of the decadent Greek Empire
during the two centuries that were secured to it, not by any ability on
the part of its rulers or any heroism on the part of their subjects, but
partly by a series of accidents which checked the advance of encroaching
neighbours, and partly by the extraordinary defensive strength of the
capital. There is hardly a single episode in this period of Greek
history that inspires any interest or would deserve any attention, but
that the weakness of the Empire was a prominent cause of that rapid rise
of the Ottoman Turks which is one of the great events in history. In
Constantinople itself there is little to record except miserable court
jealousies and intrigues, and the most puerile discussions of minute
questions of religious dogma. The recent establishment of Latin rule had
inspired the Greeks with a bitter hatred of Roman Catholicism, and at
the same time with a consciousness of their own weakness. Hence the
stolid conservatism which characterised the administration in both
Church and State under the Palæologi. ‘The Greeks gloried in the name of
Romans; they clung to the forms of the imperial government without its
military power; they retained the Roman code without the systematic
administration of justice, and prided themselves on the orthodoxy of a
Church in which the clergy were deprived of all ecclesiastical
independence, and lived in a state of vassalage to the imperial Court.
Such a society could only wither, though it might wither slowly’
(Finlay).
The fall of the Latin Empire could not take place without causing a
sensation in western Europe, and for some time Michael VIII. had to fear
a possible attempt to effect its restoration. Charles of Anjou, who as
[Sidenote: Michael VIII. and Andronicus II.] the champion of the Papacy
has gained Naples and Sicily from the Hohenstaufen, twice pledged
himself to carry his victorious forces across the Adriatic, in 1266 by
the treaty of Viterbo with the exiled Baldwin II., and in 1281 by the
treaty of Orvieto with Venice and Pope Martin IV. So alarmed was Michael
VIII., that he resorted to the last expedient of a Greek emperor in
distress, and sought to conciliate the Pope by offering to bring about
the union of the Greek with the Latin Church. But his pusillanimity made
him unpopular with his subjects, and proved to be wholly unnecessary.
Both schemes of the Neapolitan king were rendered abortive; the former
by the attack of the luckless Conradin in 1267, the latter by the
Sicilian Vespers in 1282 (see p. 25). These events enabled Michael, who
died in the latter year, to leave an undiminished dominion to his son,
Andronicus II. The new emperor was as superstitious and as timidly
orthodox as any of his bishops could desire, and his personal character
was far better than that of the majority of Eastern despots; but he was
a thoroughly worthless and incompetent ruler. His long reign, which
lasted from 1282 to 1328, was marked by three events which brought the
Empire to the verge of ruin. Ruling over a comparatively small and
unwarlike population, the Greek emperors after 1261 were peculiarly
dependent upon mercenary troops for either defensive or aggressive
warfare. In 1303 chance gave to Andronicus the service of perhaps the
finest fighting force in Europe at that time. The twenty years’ struggle
for the possession of Sicily between the houses of Anjou and Aragon had
just ended in the victory of the latter, and Frederick I. of Sicily was
not unwilling to rid himself of the hardy soldiers from Catalonia and
the other Aragonese provinces who had gained him his crown, but were
likely to be a source of trouble and disorder now that peace had been
concluded. Under the leadership of a brilliant adventurer, Roger de
Flor, these men were formed [Sidenote: The Grand Company.] into the
‘Grand Company of the Catalans,’ and were transported to the eastern
Empire. Properly led, these troops might have taken advantage of the
dismemberment of the Seljuk dominions to gain the whole of Asia Minor
for the Palæologi. But Andronicus II. was incapable of even planning so
ambitious a project. The strength of the Company was wasted in petty
operations; and when the withholding of arrears of pay provoked a
mutiny, the emperor recklessly endeavoured to intimidate the mercenaries
by procuring the assassination of their idolised commander. Vowing
vengeance, the Catalans turned their arms against their employer, routed
the armies that were sent against them, and for the next few years lived
in luxurious idleness upon the spoils which they wrested from the
emperor’s unfortunate subjects. Nor was it possible to expel them, and
they only quitted the dominions of Andronicus when they were tempted in
1310 to enter the service of the duke of Athens. The emperor’s last
years were darkened by a civil war which was almost as disastrous as his
quarrel with the foreign mercenaries. His grandson, another Andronicus,
a [Sidenote: Civil war, 1321-1328.] young man of considerable ability
but of vicious habits, raised the standard of rebellion in 1321 because
he was not admitted to the position of joint-emperor which had been held
by his father till his death in the previous year. The war was
interrupted by several futile attempts to bring about a reconciliation;
but at last the partisans of the young prince, among whom John
Cantacuzenos was the most prominent, gained a complete victory in 1328,
when the capital was taken and Andronicus II. was deposed in favour of
his grandson. Four years later the aged emperor died, after having been
compelled to become a monk in order to render his restoration
impossible. The terrible waste of force in the ravages of the Grand
Company and the miserable contest between grandfather and grandson are
the more significant when it is remembered that in this reign occurred
the first collision between the Greek Empire and its destined
destroyers, the Ottoman Turks.
The Ottoman Turks, or Osmanlis, as they call themselves, were by no
means the only or the earliest members of the [Sidenote: The Ottoman
Turks.] Turkish race to gain distinction. Long before their appearance
in history the Seljuk Turks had risen to ascendency in western Asia,
first as the soldiers and then as the masters of the Saracen caliphs. A
Seljuk dynasty established itself in the eleventh century in Nicæa with
the title of Sultans of Rome, as ruling over great part of the Roman
Empire. The early crusades had aided the Eastern emperors to drive the
Turks back from Nicæa to Iconium, but they remained the dominant power
in Asia Minor. The disruption of the eastern Empire after the Fourth
Crusade would probably have enabled the Seljuks to extend their
dominions if they had not been at the same time exposed to attacks from
the Moguls in the east. It was in this war that we first hear of the
Ottoman Turks. One of the sultans of Iconium was hard pressed in battle
by the Moguls, when the scale was turned by the intervention of a small
but warlike band of Turks under Ertogrul, the father of Othman, from
whom their later name was derived. The grateful sultan rewarded his
unexpected auxiliaries with a considerable grant of lands; and when the
Seljuk power was broken up on the death of Aladdin III. in 1307, Othman
was one of the numerous emirs who acquired independence. Among these
emirs Othman and his successors gradually rose to acknowledged
pre-eminence, chiefly through their victories at the expense of the
Greek emperors, which attracted to their service the ablest and most
ambitious Turks from [Sidenote: Conquests of Othman and Orchan.] the
other provinces. Just before Othman’s death in 1326 his forces captured
the Greek city of Brusa, which became the Asiatic capital of the
Ottomans. Under his son and successor, Orchan, the Turkish power made
immense strides. Orchan’s first enterprise was the attack on Nicæa,
which may be regarded as the second capital of the Byzantine Empire. No
formal siege was laid to the city, but the Turks constructed strong
forts in the neighbourhood, from which they could harass the inhabitants
and cut off supplies of water and food. Andronicus III. and his
minister, John Cantacuzenos, crossed the Bosphorus to attempt the relief
of Nicæa, but were defeated at Pelekanon (1329), the first battle in
which a Greek emperor confronted the Ottoman Turks in arms. Nicæa
surrendered in 1330, and was treated with such leniency as to create a
temporary impression that the Greeks would be better off under Turkish
than under Byzantine rule. The military incapacity of the emperor
allowed Orchan to continue his aggressions with comparative ease; and at
the end of the next ten years the only territories retained by
Andronicus in Asia Minor were the two towns of Phocæa and Philadelphia,
together with a small strip of territory along the eastern coast of the
Bosphorus.
Orchan is famous in Turkish history not only as a conqueror, but also as
a legislator and administrator. One of his institutions proved
invaluable to his successors. The law of Mohammed offered two
alternatives to unbelievers—the Koran or tribute. By payment of tribute
the conquered could purchase the security of life and property and the
permission to retain their own religious worship. [Sidenote: The tribute
children.] Orchan introduced the innovation of exacting this tribute not
only in money or goods, but in children. Every Christian village was
compelled to furnish every year a fixed proportion of the strongest and
most promising boys about eight years of age. These children were
brought up in the Mohammedan religion, and were educated with the
greatest care both for body and mind. As they grew older, according as
they excelled in mental or physical qualities, they were drafted either
into the civil administration or into the army. The civil servants taken
from these children formed an administrative body, which was under the
absolute control of the sultan, and was more efficient than could be
found in any other country at that time. The troops were still more
serviceable. They constituted the famous Janissaries (_Yeni Tcheri_ or
new troops), who for two centuries were unsurpassed by any other
military force. With diabolical ingenuity the Turks secured the victory
of the Crescent by the children of the Cross, and trained up Christian
boys to destroy the independence and authority of their country and
their Church.
A critical period in Byzantine history followed the death of Andronicus
III. in 1341. His young son, John V., was left [Sidenote: John V. and
John Cantacuzenos.] under the regency of his mother, Anne of Savoy. But
the authority of the regent was disputed by John Cantacuzenos, who had
been virtual prime minister under Andronicus, and was now persuaded by
his partisans to assume the imperial title. A prolonged strife of
factions followed, in which both sides were base enough to appeal for
the support of the Turks. Cantacuzenos was successful in gaining Orchan
to his side, but by a bargain which even Greek morality considered
disgraceful. His daughter was married to the Mussulman sultan, and was
sent to reside in the harem at Brusa. But the complaisant father
achieved his object. In 1347 he was recognised as emperor by the
empress-regent, and was to be allowed to hold the executive authority
for ten years, when it was to be shared with John V., who was to marry
Helena, another daughter of Cantacuzenos. The latter was now crowned
again with his wife, and John V. was also crowned with his bride. Thus
Constantinople witnessed the unique pageant of two emperors and three
empresses at the same time.
This civil war had not only given to the Turks a dangerous insight and
influence in Greek politics, it had also enabled a rival power to extend
itself on the western side of the empire. Stephen Dushan, who had become
king [Sidenote: Conquests of Stephen Dushan.] of Servia in 1333, took
advantage of the anarchy in Constantinople to seize Albania, Epirus, and
Thessaly, and thus to extend his dominions to the Adriatic on one side
and to the Ægean on the other. He assumed the title of Emperor of
Roumania, Slavonia, and Albania. It would probably have been for the
ultimate advantage of Europe if he could have extinguished the Greek
empire altogether by the conquest of Constantinople. But he was not
strong enough to do this, and his territories were divided after his
death in 1355. His conquests left the European dominions of Byzantium
hardly larger than those in Asia. Besides the capital, with the adjacent
part of Thrace, there were Thessalonica and another strip of territory,
about a third of the Morea, and a few islands in the Ægean. Even between
Constantinople and Thessalonica there was no secure communication except
by sea, as the intervening territory was held by Servia.
The treaty of 1347 was not likely to bring about lasting peace in
Constantinople, and in 1351 a quarrel between John V. and his
father-in-law gives us another illustration of the weakness of the
empire. The dispute became mixed up with the standing quarrel between
the Venetians and the Genoese. The Genoese maintained that alliance with
the Palæologi which had given them their predominance [Sidenote: Renewed
disorder in Constantinople.] in the east, and therefore Cantacuzenos
tried to overthrow them by obtaining the support of Venice. The two
Italian republics fought out their own quarrel in Greek waters, without
much regard to the interests of their allies. The Venetians were
defeated in 1352 in a great naval battle fought within sight of
Constantinople, and Cantacuzenos was compelled to confirm all the
privileges of the victors. His authority never recovered from the blow,
and in 1354 he was compelled to abdicate and become a monk.
The same year in which John V. became sole emperor witnessed the first
permanent establishment of the Turks [Sidenote: The Turks in Europe.]
upon European soil. Hitherto they had only appeared either as plunderers
or as the auxiliaries of Cantacuzenos. But in 1354 Suleiman, Orchan’s
eldest son, took advantage of an earthquake, which had destroyed the
walls of many towns in Thrace, to seize and garrison Gallipoli. John V.,
afraid that the Turks might support Matthew Cantacuzenos, who claimed to
take his father’s place as emperor, was unable to attempt their
expulsion, and Gallipoli became the basis for later conquests. Suleiman
died in 1358, and Orchan in 1359; but the new sultan, Amurath or Murad
I., added one city after another to his rule, till in 1361 he made
himself master of Adrianople, which became the European capital of the
Turks for nearly a century. The fact that these early conquests of
Amurath were gained without serious opposition in the districts in which
the party of Cantacuzenos had been most numerous seems to show that
faction had overpowered all sense of patriotism among the Greeks. The
conquest of Adrianople brought the Turks to the northern boundary of the
Byzantine empire, and for the next few years they were occupied with
wars against the Slavonic states—Bulgaria, Servia, and Bosnia—great
parts of which were conquered or compelled to pay tribute.
John V., finding himself surrounded by the growing dominions of the
infidel, made desperate efforts to obtain aid from western Europe. In
1369 he [Sidenote: Vassalage of the Empire.] actually went to Rome to
meet Urban V., who had just returned to his capital, and agreed to a
written profession of faith, in which he accepted the Roman view on all
the questions at issue between the two Churches—that the procession of
the Holy Ghost is from both Father and Son; that unleavened bread may be
used in the Sacrament; and that the Church of Rome is supreme in matters
of faith and jurisdiction. But the document was worthless to either
side. The emperor could not coerce the faith of his subjects, and the
Papacy in the middle of the fourteenth century was powerless to rouse
any crusading ardour among the European princes. Discouraged by the
failure of this negotiation, the pusillanimous emperor sought a still
more humiliating path to safety. He became the vassal of the Turkish
sultan, allowed him to occupy Thessalonica; and when his own son
Andronicus headed a successful rebellion, it was put down by Turkish aid
purchased by a treaty which stipulated for the payment of tribute by the
Greek emperor (1381).
The Slavonic states to the north and west of Constantinople offered a
more resolute, though not in the end a more successful resistance than
the Greeks. In 1387 a great [Sidenote: Turkish conquests in the north.]
league was formed for mutual protection, under the leadership of the
king of Bosnia. For a time this checked the Ottoman advance; but in 1389
Amurath won a complete victory over the allied forces at Kossova, where
the Servian king was slain. Amurath himself was killed after the battle
by a Servian noble who pretended to be a deserter. But the murder
brought no gain to the Slavonic cause, as Bajazet I. succeeded at once
to his father’s position and reaped all the fruits of the victory. The
new king of Servia had to give his sister in marriage to the sultan, and
to promise both tribute and military service. Wallachia was also made to
pay tribute, and Bulgaria was annexed to the Ottoman dominions, which
were thus extended to the Danube. The most vigorous effort made by a
European combination against the infidel, when Sigismund of Hungary was
joined by a band of French nobles under John of Nevers, heir to the
duchy of Burgundy, only served to give another still more brilliant
victory to Bajazet under the walls of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund
narrowly escaped captivity; and John the Fearless, as he was afterwards
called, was only allowed to save the lives of twenty-four of his
fellow-prisoners, who were to carry back to Europe the tale of the
prowess and the fantastic mixture of cruelty and magnanimity displayed
by their conqueror.
Meanwhile John V. had died in 1391, and was succeeded by his second son,
Manuel II., the elder brother, Andronicus, having died in 1381. Manuel
had been compelled [Sidenote: First Turkish siege of Constantinople.] to
lead a Greek contingent into Asia to aid Bajazet in taking Philadelphia,
one of the last cities in Asia Minor which retained its independence,
and was still at Brusa when the news arrived of his father’s death. He
succeeded in escaping to Constantinople, but it was lucky for him that
the sultan was engaged in reducing to obedience the Seljuk emirates
which had not yet recognised the supremacy of the Ottoman dynasty. This
enabled Manuel to make good his position, but he had to accept the same
subjection as had been imposed upon his father. When, however, the great
coalition was formed under Sigismund to resist the Turks, Manuel had
welcomed the prospect of regaining his freedom, and Bajazet had learned
how little he could trust the fidelity of his imperial vassal. After his
victory at Nicopolis the sultan determined to inflict a signal
punishment on all those tributary princes who had ventured to oppose
him. In 1397 he reduced Epirus and Thessaly, while Manuel was harassed
by the recognition of his nephew John, the son of Andronicus, as
emperor. Recognising the futility of relying upon his own strength to
resist the sultan, Manuel came to terms with his nephew, admitted him as
a colleague, and left the administration in his hands, while he himself
set out on a tour through western Europe to implore assistance. During
his absence Bajazet laid regular siege to Constantinople, and would
probably have completed its conquest if he had not been called away to
Asia to resist the attack of the great Tartar leader, Timour, or
Tamerlane, who had already marched victoriously over the greater part of
Asia. In the famous [Sidenote: Battle of Angora, 1402.] battle of
Angora, the Ottoman Turks met with a crushing defeat (1402). Bajazet
himself fell into the conqueror’s hands, and was still a captive when he
died in 1403.
The battle of Angora gave Constantinople a reprieve for fifty years.
Manuel, whose western journey had given him little beyond experience and
discouragement, was unexpectedly able to return to his capital and to
banish the nephew whom necessity rather than affection had compelled him
to admit as a colleague. It is true that he had to pacify Timour by
paying to him the same tribute as he had owed to Bajazet. But the Tartar
had too much to do in the east to undertake the conquest of Europe, and
his destructive career came to an end in 1405 as he was on his way to
attempt the subjugation of China. The Ottoman power seemed to be
annihilated. Not only did the Seljuk emirs in Asia recover their
independence, but for ten years after Bajazet’s death his four sons
carried on a fratricidal struggle for the succession. Yet all that the
Emperor Manuel could gain from such extraordinary good fortune was the
recovery of Thessalonica and a few districts in Thessaly and Epirus.
When in 1413 Mohammed I. succeeded in reuniting his [Sidenote: Revival
of the Ottoman power.] father’s dominions, the Greek emperor with the
other European vassals hastened to renew their submission; and the
sultan met with so little difficulty in Europe, that he was able to
devote the remaining eight years of his reign to the reduction of the
princes of Caramania and other opponents in Asia. The extraordinary
rapidity with which the Ottomans recovered their power after the
apparently shattering blow of 1402 proves that their authority, thanks
to the wisdom and ingenuity of Orchan, rested upon far stronger
foundations than that of any other Asiatic conquerors.
Mohammed I. was succeeded in 1421 by his son Amurath II. Manuel
Palæologus, rendered confident by the unbroken peace of the last few
years, was bold enough to stir up opposition against the new sultan by
supporting a pretender who claimed to be a son of Bajazet. Amurath had
no difficulty in defeating and putting to death the rival claimant, and
in 1422 he undertook another siege of Constantinople in order to punish
the emperor’s insolence. An attempt to carry the walls by storm was
repulsed with heavy loss to the assailants, but the raising of the siege
was due to a rebellion in Asia in favour of a brother of the sultan.
When in 1424 Amurath returned to Europe after putting down disorder in
the east, Manuel hastened to appease his wrath by the payment of
increased tribute and by the cession of several cities in Thrace.
John VI., who succeeded his father, Manuel II., in 1425, was perhaps the
feeblest of all the Palæologi. His whole reign was spent in endeavouring
to evade dangers [Sidenote: Reign of John VI.] which he was incapable of
confronting. The best known event of his reign is the Council which was
held in 1438 and 1439, first at Ferrara, and then at Florence, to
negotiate for the union of the eastern and western Churches (see p.
236). As far as the powers of the Council went, the treaty of union was
fully and finally ratified. But the Greeks could resist their own ruler
with more courage and confidence than they could face the infidel
assailant, and such a storm of reprobation greeted the return of the
emperor and the envoys that they hastened to disavow their formal acts.
The decrees of the Council of Florence remained a dead letter. It was
fortunate for John that he had no occasion to rely either upon western
aid or upon the loyalty of his subjects. His very weakness and pliancy
disarmed hostility and avoided all occasions of rupture. His reign was a
period of almost complete peace. Thessalonica, which had repudiated the
rule of Constantinople and put itself under the protection of Venice,
was conquered by Amurath in 1430. But with this exception the Sultan
paid little attention to the Byzantine empire, and devoted all his
energies to war with more formidable enemies in the north and west.
In 1427 a new king came to the throne of Servia, and set himself from
the first to repudiate the vassalage to which his predecessors had been
subjected since the great battle of Kossova. The Wallachians and
Bosnians were inspired by the same sentiments, and George [Sidenote:
Amurath II.’s wars with Hungary.] of Servia purchased the aid of
Sigismund of Hungary by ceding the great border fortress of Belgrade.
Against this powerful confederacy Amurath waged a successful war for
several years. In 1438 he had advanced as far as Semendria; and Albert
of Austria, who had succeeded Sigismund on the throne of Hungary, vainly
endeavoured to compel the sultan to raise the siege. Semendria fell, but
the war was checked for a time by an outbreak of dysentery in both
armies, and Albert perished of the disease. This was followed by an
event which for a moment turned the balance in favour of the Christians.
In 1440 Hungarians offered their vacant crown to Ladislas of Poland in
order to enlist the aid of the great house of Jagellon. For four years
the combined Slavs and Magyars not only held their own against the
dreaded Janissaries, but even gained some notable successes. Under the
leadership of John Hunyadi the allies repulsed the Turks from the walls
of Hermanstadt and defeated them in the open field (1442). In the next
year Hunyadi crossed the Danube, routed a Turkish army near Nissa, and
pursued the fugitives in a brilliant march across the Balkans. These
successes extorted from Amurath the treaty of Szegedin (July 12, 1444),
by which he abandoned his suzerainty over Servia and Bosnia, and allowed
Wallachia to be annexed to Hungary. So chagrined was the sultan at this
unexpected reverse, that he resigned the government to his son,
Mohammed, and retired to seclusion at Magnesia. This news inspired the
Christian princes and prelates with the belief that the Ottoman power
was on the verge of ruin, and that another effort would suffice to bring
about its complete overthrow. The representations of Pope Eugenius IV.
and his legate persuaded Ladislas, against the advice of Hunyadi, to
repudiate the treaty of Szegedin and to renew the war. The Hungarian
army crossed the Danube into Bulgaria, marched to the coast of the Black
Sea, and captured the important town of Varna. But Amurath had been
roused from his retirement by the news of this act of Christian
treachery. Hastily collecting his troops, he advanced to Varna. In the
battle which ensued the invaders were scattered to the winds, and
Ladislas was slain (November 10, 1444). Servia and Bosnia were once more
reduced to submission; and although Hunyadi tried to renew the struggle
in 1448, he was defeated and taken prisoner in the second battle of
Kossova.
Amurath had retired for the second time to Magnesia after the victory of
Varna, but he was recalled by the outbreak of disorders which Mohammed
was unable to quell, and he continued to rule till his death in 1451.
During his last years he was busied with a rising in Albania, headed by
George Castriot, or Scanderbeg, as the Turks [Sidenote: Scanderbeg in
Albania.] called him. This famous patriot had been trained in the
Turkish service, and thoroughly understood the strength and the weakness
of their tactics. Collecting round him a band of hardy mountaineers, he
avoided all conflicts in the open ground; and, aided by the difficult
character of the country, maintained a harassing guerilla warfare for
more than twenty years. But though he caused great annoyance to his
enemies, he was not strong enough to divert them from the career of
successful aggression which has given to a prince, who had twice shown
an apparent incapacity for government, the name of Mohammed the
Conqueror.
Mohammed II. ascended the throne with the firm determination to reduce
the tributary states into complete subjection, and to begin the work
with the Greek Empire. The year 1452 was spent in open preparation
[Sidenote: Mohammed II. takes Constantinople.] for the siege of
Constantinople. A fort was built upon the Bosphorus, troops and stores
were collected from all parts of the Turkish dominions, and foreign
engineers were employed to construct larger cannon than had ever yet
been employed in warfare. Constantine, who had succeeded his brother
John in 1448, was fully aware of the danger which threatened his
capital. To remove any difficulties with the western powers he confirmed
the acts of the Council of Florence, and the union of the Churches was
formally celebrated in St. Sophia. The bigoted Greeks looked on in
sullen indignation, and resolved to do nothing for a prince who thus
paltered with heresy. And Latin Christendom was not prepared to do
anything in return for this tardy acceptance of its creed. France and
England were exhausted by their long struggle, which was just ending in
the loss of the English possessions on the mainland; Philip of Burgundy
was absorbed in the extension of his rule in the Netherlands; Germany
was hopelessly distracted; and Frederick III., the weakest of emperors,
was unable to govern even his own hereditary provinces. In the eastern
states the disputes that had gathered round the succession of Ladislas
Postumus distracted attention from vital interests in the distant Balkan
peninsula. The only peoples who could give any aid to the Greeks were
the Venetians, Genoese, and Catalans, whose trade with the Levant
impelled them to do all in their power to maintain the feeble ramparts
of Christianity against the Turks; and their forces, scanty as they were
in proportion to the work to be performed, provided the only efficient
garrison for the city of the eastern Cæsars. In the spring of 1453 the
great siege began. The first general assault was repulsed; and a Genoese
squadron, by superior weight and seamanship, forced its way through the
immense Turkish flotilla which attempted to exclude the arrival of
supplies and reinforcements by sea. But this was the last success of the
defenders, whose limited numbers had to hold five miles of
fortifications against an overwhelming attack. On the 29th of May the
last assault was ordered, and after a desperate struggle for two hours
the Janissaries forced an entrance through a great breach which the
artillery had made in the wall. The Emperor Constantine, whose heroism
did something to redeem the cowardly incapacity of his predecessors,
fell at the head of the defenders of his capital. The mass of the Greeks
did nothing to resist the advance of the victorious assailants, and
Mohammed II. made a triumphal progress to the Church of St. Sophia,
which witnessed on that day the first celebration of the worship of the
Prophet. The measures of the conqueror were marked by consummate wisdom.
To conciliate the bigotry of the natives, which had signally contributed
to his victory, and to interpose a permanent barrier between his new
subjects and western Christendom, Mohammed proclaimed himself the
protector of the Greek Church, and allowed the installation of a new
Patriarch, whose gratitude should take the form of servility to his
Mussulman patron. To remove the disastrous results of the siege,
Mohammed set himself to restore the buildings of the city, and to
encourage the immigration of settlers from all parts of his dominions.
Before the end of his reign Constantinople was more populous and more
flourishing than it had been at any time under the rule of the
Palæologi.
The European powers were aghast when the news arrived that
Constantinople had fallen; but as they had been impotent to save the
city, they were still more unable to attempt its recovery with any
prospect of success. This was fully recognised by those states which
were most immediately concerned. The Venetians and Genoese continued
their inveterate rivalry in the haste with which they made terms with
the conqueror, and purchased the retention of their trading privileges
and of their possessions in the east by the payment of tribute. The two
brothers of Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas, who had established
themselves as petty princes at Patras and Mistra in the Morea, obtained
temporary recognition upon similar terms, and even received Turkish aid
to put down a rebellion among their subjects. Leaving these self-seeking
vassals in their humiliating dependence, Mohammed turned his arms to the
subjection of the tributary states in the [Sidenote: Conquest of Servia,
Wallachia, and Bosnia.] north. In 1455 he advanced through Servia,
expelled its king, and in the next year laid siege to Belgrade. Here he
met with his first and most serious reverse. The crusading army raised
by Hunyadi and Capistrano not only relieved the fortress, but drove the
sultan and his shattered army in disorderly flight to Sofia (see p.
412). This signal triumph saved Hungary and eastern Germany from serious
danger for eighty years, but it failed to effect the liberation of the
Balkan states. The Hungarian hero died on the scene of his greatest
exploit; and the subsequent death of Ladislas Postumus, and the
difficulties attending the succession, distracted the attention of
Hungary from the eastern war. Mohammed II. returned to the attack with
renewed vigour, and in 1457 and 1458 Servia was again overrun and made a
province of the Ottoman dominions. For the next three years Mohammed was
engaged with war in Albania and in Greece, but in 1462 he again turned
northwards and completed his work by the annexation of Wallachia (1462)
and of Bosnia (1464).
The incompetence of the two surviving Palæologi, Thomas and Demetrius,
and their incessant quarrels with each other, created such anarchy in
the Morea that intervention [Sidenote: Conquest of Greece.] was almost
forced upon the Turks. At first a few garrisons were sent to the chief
cities for the enforcement of order, but in 1460 an army was despatched
to take more stringent measures. Resistance was hopeless. Demetrius was
taken prisoner and conveyed to Asia Minor, where a small territory was
assigned to him rather as a place of exile than as a principality.
Thomas fled in a Venetian galley to Corfu, and thence made his way to
Rome. By the end of the year the whole of the peninsula, with the
exception of a few harbours which were held by the Venetians, was in
Turkish occupation. At the same time, the Turks were also active to the
north of the isthmus of Corinth. The last duke of Athens was put to
death by the bowstring; and his duchy, with the other Frankish
principalities which had survived since the partition of Greece among
the Crusaders, was annexed by the Turks. In the Ægean the conquest of
the islands was undertaken by a Turkish fleet, and was completed in 1462
by the capture of Lesbos. Only Rhodes continued to make good its
resistance under the Knights of St. John.
The annexation of Greece constituted a serious danger to the Venetians,
who now held the only considerable possessions in the east which were
left under Christian rule. So far they had gained rather than lost by
the fall of Constantinople, because their treaty with Mohammed in 1454
had given them greater advantages over the Genoese than they could have
extorted from the Palæologi, who had usually favoured their rivals. But
a series of significant events convinced them that the sultan was not
likely to observe the treaty any longer than his interest impelled him.
While he was still confronted with serious problems in the north and the
south, he had good reason for desiring to pacify Venice. But his
successive conquests had removed these difficulties from his way, and
there was no longer any substantial reason for allowing the Venetian
dominions to escape the fate that had attended the other tributary
states. There had always been a party in Venice which had opposed the
[Sidenote: War with Venice.] policy expressed in the treaty of 1454; and
the obvious approach of danger, heralded by the fall of Lesbos, enabled
this party to gain the upper hand in 1463. It is needless to trace the
history of the war, which has been already alluded to in connection with
the history of Venice (see Chapter XII.). On the whole, it was
creditable to the capacity and the resolution of the great maritime
republic; and though the Venetians could not prevent the loss of
Negropont and the conquest of Albania, which had been left under their
protection on the death of Scanderbeg, they obtained better terms than
were given to any other opponent of Mohammed. By the treaty of
Constantinople in 1479 the Turks obtained Albania and the islands of
Negropont and Lemnos, but Venice was able to keep her possessions in the
Morea and some of her trading privileges in the Levant on payment of
increased tribute. The Venetian quarter in Constantinople was restored
under the administration of a bailiff appointed by the Republic.
The conquests of Mohammed II. were not confined to Greece and the Balkan
peninsula. In Asia Minor he extinguished [Sidenote: Other conquests of
Mohammed II.] the independence of the feeble empire of Trebizond (1461),
which had been allowed to remain in harmless obscurity under a branch of
the Comneni ever since their expulsion from Constantinople in 1204. He
also completed the subjection of the princes of Caramania, the most
inveterate opponents of the Ottoman ascendency. To the north of the
Black Sea he extorted tribute from the Tartars of the Crimea, and ruined
the Genoese by depriving them of their valuable establishments at Kaffa
and Azof. In 1480 he undertook an enterprise which made almost more
sensation in Europe than the siege of Constantinople. A Turkish force
landed on the coast of Apulia and took possession of Otranto. For the
moment men believed that the conqueror of the eastern empire would
complete his fatal work by the capture of Rome, the capital of the west.
But the dreadful anticipation was never realised. The death of Mohammed
in [Sidenote: Mohammed’s death, 1481.] 1481 led to the recall of the
garrison from Otranto. Under his successor Bajazet II., the only one of
the early Ottoman rulers who did not display conspicuous courage and
ability, the progress of the Turkish arms was stayed for a generation,
to be resumed again under Selim I., the conqueror of Egypt, and under
the great Suleiman, who at last overcame the obstacle offered by
Belgrade, and added to his dominions the greater part of Hungary.
CHAPTER XXII
THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Some differences between mediæval and modern history—The period of
the Renaissance is the transition between the two periods—The
Renaissance in its wider and in its narrower sense—Prominence of
Italy in the Renaissance—The revival of letters—Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio—The age of collectors—The age of criticism—The revival of
art—(1) Painting—(2) Sculpture—(3) Architecture—Humanism and the
Reformation—The impulse given to education.
The division of history into periods is always arbitrary, and always, if
too rigidly interpreted, misleading. Yet some sort of division is not
only convenient, but almost [Sidenote: Mediæval and modern history.]
necessary, and the distinction between mediæval and modern history is as
clearly marked as any distinction of the kind can be. It is, of course,
impossible to fix upon any date, and to say that here the Middle Ages
come to an end and modern times begin, just as it is impossible to say
that on a given day in the year winter ends and spring begins. The
changes in history, as in the seasons, are gradual, and not sudden.
Between the great historic epochs there is a period of transition in
which the changes which mark them off from each other are slowly
developing, sometimes advancing, sometimes apparently receding, but
ultimately, by a gradual evolutionary process, reaching completion. And
another word of caution is necessary. It must be borne in mind that the
Middle Ages—the period which follows the disruption of the Roman Empire
by the immigration of the German peoples, and ends with the formation of
the great national states which still exist—do not constitute a complete
homogeneous and stationary epoch. Social and political changes were not
perhaps quite as rapid before the fifteenth century as they have been
since the Reformation, but changes were constantly taking place. A
generalisation about the eighth century cannot be applied without
serious modifications to the eleventh or the twelfth. All attempts to
estimate the Middle Ages as a whole can only be extremely superficial
and general.
It follows that it is impossible to give any adequate account of the
differences between mediæval and modern history in a few perfunctory
sentences or paragraphs. The [Sidenote: Differences between the two
periods.] differences are real and substantial, but they must be felt
rather than expressed, and can only be properly and usefully
comprehended by a prolonged study of the past. There is, it may be said,
a difference of historical atmosphere, to which some historians, eager
above measure to find comparisons and parallels, have never become
acclimatised, in spite of great learning and research. The often-quoted
phrase that ‘history is past politics’ has been responsible for a woful
number of anachronisms. For the historical student imagination, the
power of projecting himself by a sort of instinct into the conditions
and life of the past, is almost as necessary a quality as painstaking
industry. And imagination is rather fettered than assisted by the
attempt to express what it sees, in precise and formal language. For the
immediate purpose of this chapter it will be better to abandon all
attempt at minute precision or completeness of analysis, and to be
content with pointing out three salient characteristics of the Middle
Ages, which the modern reader should grasp at the outset. These may
serve to guide him to the appreciation of other and deeper distinctions
between that period and the more familiar times that have followed it.
In the first place, the modern conception of the state as a nation was
very imperfectly grasped in the Middle Ages. The modern nations, such as
the French, English, Spaniards, and others, were in process of
formation, but they only became fully conscious of their distinct
corporate unity at the end of the period. Mediæval theorists—guided by
the traditions of the Roman Empire, as modified by the influences of
Christianity—regarded Christendom as a single state under two heads—the
Pope and the Emperor—who held ecclesiastical and secular authority as
delegates of the Deity. The best concrete illustration of this
conception of unity is offered by the Crusades, which ended in failure,
partly on account of the distance of the scene of action, but mainly
because the unity of Christendom was theoretical rather than real.
Internally western Christendom was organised under what is called the
Feudal System, a semi-agricultural and semi-military organisation, in
which the mutual rights and duties of classes to each other were
regulated by the tenure of land, while industry, the most potent of
modern forces, had no place in it. Allied with feudalism was the
fantastic body of rules and customs known as Chivalry. Chivalry was as
essentially non-national as Christianity itself. A French and a German
knight had more in common with each other than either had with a French
or German citizen or peasant.
In the second place, the social unit in the Middle Ages was not what it
is now, the individual man, but a corporation; either the feudal unit
which in England is called the manor, or the municipal commune, or
within the commune the guild. There was no scope for the activity of the
individual by himself. The only way in which an able and ambitious man
could hope to rise from obscurity to eminence was by entering the
greatest of all corporations—the Church.
Thirdly, the mediæval period was a period of ignorance. Learning and
education were for the most part monopolised by the clergy, and in their
hands were bound down by prescription and by ecclesiastical authority.
Everybody knows with what ill-will the Church regarded freedom of
inquiry and scientific research: the charge of heresy was always ready
to be brought against a Roger Bacon or a Galileo. Moreover, quite apart
from the influence of the Church, learning and literature were withheld
from the mass of the people by their expense. Printing was unknown, and
paper was only introduced at the very end of the period. Parchment was
so expensive that many of the manuscripts of ancient writers were erased
in order to make room for monkish chronicles or service-books. Moreover,
such literature as existed was in Latin, and that in itself was
sufficient to close it alike to nobles, burghers, and peasants, most of
whom were unable to read or write even their native tongue. And
ignorance was, as usual, accompanied by gross superstition. To realise
this it is only necessary to peruse the lists of marvels with which the
mediæval chroniclers fill their pages, or to study the working of the
judicial system in which the guilt or innocence of an accused person was
decided by the ordeal.
The period of the Renaissance, in its proper and most comprehensive
meaning, may be regarded as the age in which the [Sidenote: The
Renaissance.] social and political system of the Middle Ages came to an
end, in which mediæval restrictions upon liberty of thought and inquiry
were abolished. It may be said to begin in the thirteenth century, to be
in full progress during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and to
be continued in an altered form in the religious struggles of the
sixteenth century. It is, in fact, the period covered by the present
volume. To this great epoch of transition, ‘The Close of the Middle
Ages,’ belong a number of changes of the first magnitude: the decline of
the Empire and the Papacy, and of the ideas and traditions with which
they were connected; the growth and the hardening into shape of the
French, Spanish, and English nations; the rise of national literatures
and of the conception of national churches; the breaking up of feudalism
and chivalry by the growing importance of industry; the overthrow of
aristocratic and ecclesiastical predominance by the rise of the people
to political influence; the growth of strong territorial monarchies
based upon popular support, though in every country except England the
monarchy kicked away its support as soon as it was no longer needed.
With these changes must be coupled the results of the great inventions
and discoveries of the age: the employment of the compass and the
astrolabe, and the consequent development of maritime adventure, which
led to the finding of a new way to India and a new world across the
Atlantic, and so to an enormous extension of knowledge and a complete
alteration of the great trade-routes of the world; the discovery of
gunpowder, and the revolution which it effected not only in the art of
war, but also in the organisation of society, which in the Middle Ages
was inextricably bound up with the military system; the invention of
printing, followed by a vast extension and popularisation of literature
and knowledge; and, finally, the great astronomical discovery of
Copernicus, which overthrew the old belief in the stability and central
position of the earth, and dealt a fatal blow to the vast structure of
superstition which had been erected upon that belief.
All these vast changes belong to the Renaissance; they are all part of
the development which has been aptly called a new birth; no one of them
can be fully appreciated apart from the rest. Some of them have been
alluded to in the preceding pages of this volume; all of them merit the
most careful consideration; their mere enumeration is enough to show
their immense importance. But a single chapter can only serve as a sort
of sign-post, and the dictates of prudence compel a limitation of
attention to two movements with which the name of the Renaissance has
been pre-eminently and sometimes exclusively associated—the revival of
letters and the revival of art. And it is to the Renaissance in this
narrower sense that Italy rendered its most active and enduring
services.
The revival of literature and art was peculiarly the work of Italy. It
is not merely that the Italians began the work and that other nations
carried it on to completion. The recovery of ancient literature and art
and the application of the lessons to be learned from them to
contemporary needs were both begun and completed in Italy. It was only
after this completion [Sidenote: Prominence of Italy in the
Renaissance.] that the other countries came in to learn the lessons
which Italy was able and ready to teach them. It is true that the spirit
inspired by this teaching was applied by the other nations with great
results to the reform of religion, to the extension of geographical
knowledge, and to new discoveries in the realms of science. But this
must not blind us to the magnitude and completeness of the task
accomplished by Italy single-handed; nor must it be forgotten that, in
the departments of painting and sculpture at any rate, the actual
achievements of the Italians have never been surpassed by their pupils.
Nor is there anything surprising in the prominence of the part played by
Italy in the intellectual Renaissance. Although Italy, like the other
provinces of Rome, fell a victim to the barbarian invaders, yet the
tradition of supremacy which Roman victories had created was not wholly
destroyed, and it was revived with the growing authority of the Papacy
during the Middle Ages. Moreover, the geographical position of Italy was
of immense importance in an age when the Mediterranean was still the
centre of the world’s commerce. Trade and manufactures brought wealth to
the great civic communities of Italy, to Florence, Venice, and Genoa,
and wealth has rarely failed to create a sense of self-importance, a
consciousness of power and a desire for freedom, while at the same time
it supplies the leisure requisite for prolonged intellectual exertion.
But it may be thought—after what has been said before—that the Church,
having its central seat and authority in Italy, would be strong enough
to suppress independence of thought and inquiry. But to this suggestion
two answers may be made. It is an old saying that familiarity breeds
contempt. The Italians had no objection to the presence of the Papacy in
their midst. On the contrary, it flattered their pride to think that
Rome was still the head of a great spiritual empire, as it had once been
of a vast territorial power. Moreover, the tribute of other states was
poured into Italy by way of the papal coffers; and Italians had, if not
a monopoly, at any rate a preponderant share in the cardinalate and
other lucrative offices in the Church. But at the same time the Italians
by no means felt the same superstitious awe and reverence of the Church
and Papacy as prevailed in more distant countries. The ecclesiastical
thunders of excommunication and interdict were much less dreaded by
people who could see the working of the machinery which could produce
such awful sounds. The abuses of the papal court, which ultimately
produced the indignant revolt of the greater part of northern Europe,
were so familiar to the Italians that they were hardly scandalised by
them. Thus though the Italians, as a whole, showed little zeal for
religious reform, they were, at any rate the wealthier classes, usually
free from superstition and unlikely to tolerate ecclesiastical
despotism.
It is also to be noted that the popes in Italy did not always pursue a
policy of enlightened devotion to their spiritual interests. These
interests were, or were [Sidenote: The Papacy and the Renaissance.]
thought to be at a later time, opposed to freedom of thought, and
therefore to such an advance in literature and art as would favour such
freedom. But the popes were secular princes as well as heads of the
Church. The central provinces of Italy constituted a considerable
temporal principality; and it frequently happened that the interests of
this principality by no means coincided with the interests of Roman
Catholicism throughout Europe. The same motives which made so many
Italian princes the munificent patrons of literature and art appealed to
the popes also in their secular capacity. They, too, desired to have a
magnificent and learned court; they were ambitious to compete with the
Medici of Florence and with the kings of Naples; they wished to have
their palaces and their churches built and adorned by the most eminent
artists of their time; they were eager that their praises should be
handed down to posterity by men whose genius would secure immortality to
their patrons as well as to themselves. Thus individual popes, such as
Nicolas V. and Leo X., were the industrious furtherers of the
Renaissance; and they unconsciously stimulated a movement which was
destined to overthrow the magnificent structure of ecclesiastical
autocracy which had been built up by their great predecessors from
Gregory VII. to Innocent III. Such shortsightedness has many parallels
in history. It is easy to recall how the French nobles in the eighteenth
century flirted with a philosophy which preached the doctrine of popular
rights and liberties; and how the French monarchy gave practical aid to
a rebellion which secured such rights and liberties in North America,
thus encouraging the advance of that Revolution which for a time swept
the French monarchy and the French nobility from the face of the earth.
Turning now to a rapid survey of the actual achievements of Italy, we
find that the revival of literature and art was not only a stimulus to
intellectual progress and a [Sidenote: The Revival of letters.]
deathblow to ignorance and superstition; it also marks a great step in
the freedom of the individual from mediæval restrictions. In art, and
still more in literature, the individual found a career by which he
could exercise his highest talents, and in which he could attain a
personal eminence hitherto impossible. Dante, who stands on the
threshold of the Renaissance, was the first great man in the Middle Ages
who stood out by himself, unconnected with any corporate body or
institution. He used to boast exultingly that he was his own party. The
_Divine Comedy_ gave literary form to the first of the new living
languages of Europe. For Italy the work was almost too great; it has
left too weighty an impression upon his fellow-countrymen. To this day
it is the highest ambition of an Italian writer to use the language of
Dante, and he must have frequent recourse to a dictionary to make sure
that his words were really current in the thirteenth century. It is
never wholesome to have too marked a distinction between the language of
literature and that of ordinary life, and this servile habit of looking
back has checked the growth of a really great Italian literature in
later times. But Dante, with all his greatness, was not really imbued
with the modern spirit. He had not emancipated himself from the ideas of
his time, though he had raised himself above them. In his _De Monarchia_
he willingly surrendered himself to the scholastic philosophy, and made
a vigorous effort to defend the already effete and worthless theory of a
universal empire. Dante stands on the threshold of the Renaissance, but
he is rather the last giant of the Middle Ages than the herald of a new
epoch.
Dante was followed by Petrarch, whose sonnets have influenced literary
form in all countries, while his passionate devotion to the literature
and liberty of the ancients makes him the first of Italian humanists. A
contemporary of Petrarch was a man of still greater original genius,
Giovanni Boccaccio. Like Petrarch, Boccaccio was a great lover and
student of ancient literature, and he did much to introduce the study of
Greek into Italy. But it is as the author of the _Decameron_ that he is
entitled to the greatest fame. In this collection of stories he
displayed a contempt for superstition and a delight in life which were
alien to the spirit of the Middle Ages. Chaucer borrowed many plots of
the _Canterbury Tales_ from the _Decameron_; and through Chaucer and
other writers Boccaccio has influenced the whole of later English
literature.
These three great men were followed by a crowd of collectors, men who
travelled throughout Europe and even [Sidenote: The age of collection.]
beyond it in search of manuscripts of ancient authors. It is almost
impossible nowadays to appreciate the extraordinary ardour with which
the search was carried on. In some cases the greed for these new and
valuable possessions tempted men into actions which in a less worthy
cause would have merited the name of fraud. The greatest of these
collectors, who really performed an invaluable service to the world with
marvellous industry and success, were Poggio Bracciolini, Francesco
Filelfo, and Niccolo Niccoli, the founder of the library of St. Mark in
Florence. Their most bountiful patrons were Cosimo de’ Medici, the
‘father of his country,’ and Pope Nicolas V. During this period, which
is roughly the first half of the fifteenth century, the Italian language
seemed likely to fall into oblivion. The only great writers in Italy
were Poggio and Æneas Sylvius, and they both wrote solely in Latin. That
Italian did not go wholly out of fashion was due, in the first place, to
the influence of the Medici in Florence. One great object of their
ambition was to attract the most learned men of the day to their court.
But their anomalous position as despots masquerading in republican robes
compelled them to appeal to popular favour. Hence even their studies had
to some extent to be regulated so as to please the people. The
magnificent Lorenzo himself set an example by writing the famous
‘carnival songs’ to be sung at popular festivals. These songs have a
place of their own in the history of Italian literature; but they are of
special importance as showing how a great prince, in the midst of Greek
and Latin studies, could find time to cultivate the language of the
people. The finest Italian poem of the century is the _Giostra_ of
Politiano, who was not only an eminent scholar, but also a courtier and
a favourite companion of Lorenzo de’ Medici.
In classical studies the second part of the fifteenth century was not so
much an age of collection as an age of criticism. [Sidenote: The age of
criticism.] Men set themselves to read and interpret the treasures which
had been already brought together, and they were insensibly led to apply
the teaching of ancient writings to the circumstances and problems of
their own time. Prominent among the scholars who gave to the world the
fruits of their researches were Lorenzo Valla in Rome and Naples, and
Ficino and Politiano in Florence. It is impossible to over-estimate the
solvent influence of these studies upon human thought. Much of the
scholastic philosophy which had been based upon a corrupt translation of
Aristotle from the Arabic gave way at once before a study of the
philosopher’s original text. All kinds of delusions and superstitious
beliefs were overturned by the new spirit of inquiry. Lorenzo Valla
published a treatise to prove that the pretended Donation of
Constantine, upon which the popes had professed to base their claim to
temporal sovereignty, was a forgery. Valla was at this time in the
service of Alfonso the Magnanimous of Naples, who had quarrelled with
the Pope. Under his protection Valla went on to attack the whole
ecclesiastical system, and especially the moral decline of monasticism.
These may serve as illustrations of the influence exerted by the new
culture. In fact, so great was the energy displayed in the work of
destruction, that it seemed probable that all the old religious bonds
would be broken before anything had been found to take their place. If
Italy had stood alone, this might have been the case. But by this time
the new learning had begun to spread to other countries. The more sober
temperament of the Germans revolted against the extravagances of many of
the Italian scholars. Luther and Reuchlin were impelled by the critical
spirit of the age to revolt against the mediæval system, but they were
not content with mere negation, and their revolt, constructive as well
as destructive, has been called the Reformation.
If we can trace to the Italians the origin of modern literature, we may
with still greater confidence call them the creators of modern art, or
at any rate of the arts [Sidenote: The revival of art.] of painting and
sculpture. Architecture was the only form of art which did not fall into
decay during the Middle Ages, and in which the northern peoples may
claim at least equality with the people of Italy. But in painting and
sculpture the Italians can claim not only that they are entitled to all
the glories of their revival, but also that they brought these arts to
their highest perfection. This is far more than can be said of their
services to literature.
In the Middle Ages painting was so bound down by fixed [Sidenote: 1.
Painting.] and arbitrary rules that it hardly deserved the name of an
art. It was employed only for religious purposes, and it was forced to
conform to the dominant religious spirit. Custom and tradition regulated
not only the subject and its treatment, but even the very colours to be
employed. Any departure from these recognised rules, if it had been
possible, would have been regarded as impious. The altar-pieces of
mediæval churches were covered with stiff and lifeless representations
of madonnas and saints. These had a conventional value, and no artistic
standard was dreamt of. There were many pictures, but no artists. The
individual, as was so often the case in the Middle Ages, was repressed
and kept down by the society of which he was perforce a member. Anybody
can obtain a concrete illustration of the differences in painting
between the Middle Ages and modern times, who can compare a picture of
Cimabue or any other contemporary artist with a picture by Titian. The
Renaissance, which bridges over the gap between these artists, is the
steady though gradual assertion of the freedom of the individual from
the bondage of mediæval rules and traditions. The change may be traced
in the increased love of nature, in the new reverence for and study of
the human figure, and in the improvement of artistic methods. The most
important of the technical changes were the introduction of fresco for
wall-pictures, the discovery of oil-colours, which is to be credited to
the Flemings, and the employment of copper-plate and woodcuts, which
made it possible to reproduce and disseminate great works of art. But
still more important than any change in method was the change in the
very spirit of art; for the old stereotyped forms were substituted
imitations of the beautiful from Nature. The study of anatomy and
perspective became necessary for a painter. Works of art ceased to be
mechanical copies of a pattern prescribed by ecclesiastical authority;
they became an index to the mind of the free artist. The change marks a
complete alteration in the motives of religion as well as of art.
Religion ceased to be a superstitious reverence for something unearthly
and inhuman; it was brought into closer relation with the ordinary life
of men and women.
The beginning of the Renaissance in painting is usually placed in the
fourteenth century. At that time two great art cities, Florence and
Siena, were especially prominent. The first great Florentine artist
whose name has been handed down to posterity is Cimabue. His Sienese
contemporary was Duccio. In their works we see the first conception of
the beauty of the human face and figure, though they were still bound
down to the old stiffness of composition and the prescribed distribution
of colours. They were followed by a number of artists who have obtained
lasting renown. In Florence Giotto, equally great as a painter,
sculptor, and architect, founded a school which raised the whole
character of art, besides effecting a great improvement in technique.
Giotto was the first to substitute dramatic painting for the stiff and
lifeless representation of human figures which had hitherto been
universal. With him may be coupled the name of Andrea Orcagna, Ambrogio
Lorenzetti, and Fra Angelico, though the last-named belongs
chronologically to a somewhat later period. But of these men the same
observation may be made as of Dante in literature. They are rather the
greatest men of an age which is already passing away than the beginners
of a new period. Giotto especially is the Dante of art. He and his
contemporaries sum up in a pictorial form the mediæval theories and
conceptions of religion and of human life. To their representation they
contribute a vast improvement in manner and style, as did Dante in his
great poem, but what they represent is essentially mediæval. In fact, if
any one wished to see the Middle Ages before his eyes, he might be
referred to three great pictures of this period. The gloomy personal
religion, which weighed down the spirits of thoughtful men in the Middle
Ages, may be seen in Orcagna’s picture, ‘The Triumph of Death,’ in the
Campo Santo of Pisa. On the other hand, the converse side of religious
life in the Middle Ages, the grand and awe-inspiring organisation of the
Church, is represented in ‘The Church Militant and Triumphant,’the work
of Giotto’s pupils, in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella in
Florence. And the stormy political life of a mediæval commune may be
studied in the frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, entitled ‘Civil
Government,’ on the walls of the Palazzo Publico of Siena.
It is when we leave the school of Giotto and his pupils, and turn to the
next generation of painters in the fifteenth century, that we find the
artistic change associated with the Renaissance in full progress.
Florence was still the most important city in the history of art. The
first great painter in this transition period was Masaccio. His frescoes
in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of the Madonna del Carmine at
Florence may be taken as illustrating the next marked advance in
independence and artistic beauty from the days of Giotto. These works
exercised great influence upon all later artists, and especially upon
Raphael, who made them the subject of special study. Masaccio was
followed by a large number of eminent painters, among whom may be named
Filippo Lippi, in connection with whom Browning’s poem gives so vivid a
picture of the artistic struggles of the early Renaissance, Sandro
Botticelli, who was the first to introduce classical myths and
allegories as alternative subjects with the old Biblical stories,
Filippino Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Luca Signorelli. The last is
perhaps in some way the ablest, though by no means the most pleasing, of
the fifteenth century painters. In the boldness of his conceptions, in
his knowledge of anatomy, and in his contempt for arbitrary and
meaningless rules, he is not only the forerunner but the rival of
Michael Angelo. But Florence, although the most important, was by no
means the only city in which this artistic revolution was taking place.
The same sort of work was being done in Perugia by Pietro Perugino, the
tutor of Raphael, in Padua by Andrea Mantegna, one of the greatest of
fifteenth century painters, and, above all, in Venice by Giovanni and
Gentile Bellini and by Vittore Carpaccio. It was the work of these men,
in addition to that of the Florentine and many other painters, which
prepared the way for the supreme artists of the sixteenth
century—Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto,
Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto. These painters still devoted their
talents mainly to the illustration of religious subjects; but they
treated these subjects in a human and secular spirit. The religious and
devotional aspect was subordinated to the desire for artistic perfection
of form and colour, and to the exciting of natural associations in the
minds of men and women. There is nothing really irreligious in their
art, though it shows a new way of regarding both art and religion. At
the same time, it is possible to discover in these artists of the
completed Renaissance a certain relaxation of moral earnestness and
purpose as compared with their predecessors; their very mastery of
colour and of drawing seems to mislead them; there is no longer the
noble struggle to express a lofty meaning in spite of difficulties and
drawbacks. It was the perception of these differences which led many
thoughtful artists and art students, who formed what has been called the
pre-Raphaelite school, to devote themselves to the study of the earlier
and less faultless painters of the fifteenth century, and somewhat to
undervalue the more mature artists who had been the idols of previous
generations.
The Renaissance marks almost a greater epoch in the history of sculpture
than in that of painting. In some [Sidenote: 2. Sculpture.] respects the
change which took place was the same. Great artists revolted against the
prescribed forms of the Middle Ages, and produced works of greater
beauty and greater originality. But sculpture was more profoundly
influenced than painting by the revived study of antiquity. The great
painters of ancient Greece were mere names, their works had perished. It
was therefore only the classical spirit that influenced painting. Direct
imitation was impossible. With sculpture it was otherwise. Greek and
Roman statues were still in existence, and many that had been buried
were unearthed and welcomed with passionate reverence. In some of these
statues had been realised the utmost possible beauty of form and truth
to nature that were possible in sculpture. It was impossible to surpass
them, and before long the passion for antiquity led to a servile
imitation of the ancient originals. But the first enthusiasm did produce
a few great master-workers who rivalled the artists of Greece. The first
to inaugurate the new epoch in the history of sculpture was Niccolo da
Pisano. A Greek sarcophagus, still preserved, had been brought to Pisa,
and Niccolo was induced by its beauty to make a thorough study of Greek
forms and methods. From this time he set himself to reconcile, as far as
was possible, the Greek love of beauty with the traditions of Christian
art. He was followed in the next century by a number of great sculptors,
most of whom were Florentines. Among their names the most important are
those of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who carved the gates for the Baptistery in
Florence, which Michael Angelo declared worthy to be the gates of
Paradise; Luca della Robbia, whose chief works are reliefs in
terra-cotta; Donatello, the sculptor of the famous figure of David; and
Andrea Verrocchio, the modeller of the grand equestrian statue of
Bartolommeo Coleone, which stands near the Scuola di San Marco in
Venice. After them came the great masters of Renaissance
sculpture—Benvenuto Cellini and Michael Angelo. The Memoirs of the
former may be commended to any one who wishes to study the purely
artistic temperament, uninfluenced by considerations of religion or
morality, which was produced in the later stages of the Renaissance.
Sculpture, it must be remembered, was more essentially non-religious and
pagan than painting. The beauty of the face was necessarily subordinate
to beauty of figure. Thus the new religious impulse of the sixteenth
century, which led to the Reformation in northern Europe and to the
counter-Reformation in the south, was in many ways alien or hostile to
sculpture, and from this time the art tended to decline.
In architecture the Renaissance exerted an overwhelming and permanent
influence, and here again Italy led the way, but it may be questioned
whether the influence resulted in unmixed gain. Architecture had never
been a lost art, as painting and sculpture had been. Nor was classical
influence a new thing, for the Romanesque style of the early Middle Ages
had been based upon ancient models. Beyond the Alps the early Romanesque
buildings had been followed by the great Gothic churches and cathedrals
which remain the great monument of the religious zeal of the Germanic
peoples in the later Middle Ages. Gothic architecture had been
introduced into Italy by German builders in the later part of the
thirteenth century. But Italian Gothic was a different style of
architecture from that which prevailed in the northern countries. From
the first it had been modified by national usages and by considerations
of climate. The great Gothic churches of Italy are the cathedrals of
Orvieto and Siena, and they are very different from the Gothic
cathedrals of Germany, France, and England. The excessive height in
proportion to the width and length, the enormous arches, and the flying
buttresses are absent in Italy. Italy never departed altogether from the
classical models.
The Renaissance in architecture, as in sculpture, was the result of the
revival of classical studies; and its formal changes [Sidenote: 3.
Architecture.] are to be seen in the return, first to the round arch of
the Romanesque period, and later, in the use of the flat top or lintel
of the Greeks and Romans. The great building of the early or
transitional Renaissance is the Cathedral of Florence, with its
magnificent dome, the work of Filippo Brunellesco, and the progress of
the movement, may be traced in St. Peter’s in Rome, designed by
Bramante, but modified and completed after his death, and finally in the
palaces built by Palladio in Vicenza and Verona. Thus only the beginning
of the architectural Renaissance belongs properly to the period covered
in this volume, whereas much more progress had been made in painting and
sculpture by the end of the fifteenth century. And its ultimate results
were in many ways alien to the true spirit of the real Renaissance.
Gothic architecture, whatever its defects, had given great scope for
originality. After the main design had been agreed upon, the completion
of details had been left in great measure to the ability and imagination
of the individual workmen. But the architecture of the later Renaissance
laid supreme stress upon symmetry and uniformity. Thus the workmen could
no longer be allowed to be original. Every detail, as well as the
central design, had to be fixed from the outset. The result was
magnificent and imposing, but it was purchased at the sacrifice of
originality and imagination. When the first vigour of the intellectual
revival was spent, there was a marked decline in architecture as in
sculpture, because in both the imitative faculty was cultivated rather
than the power of independent creation.
The Renaissance, like all great historic movements, contained good and
evil intermingled together. Its two prominent [Sidenote: Humanism and
the Reformation.] directions, especially in its earlier period, were the
revival of classical influences in literature and art, and the
vindication of originality of thought and of individual freedom. Both
had their special dangers, and they only went together for a limited
distance. The first tended to degenerate into the slavish and mechanical
imitation of ancient models; the second led in many cases to atheism, to
licence, to the chaos of pure negation. Nor were these the only evils.
The Renaissance spirit of free inquiry, when applied to religion, gave
rise to the Reformation, and the religious Reformation hastened to turn
against the spirit that had given it birth. Extreme Protestantism or
Puritanism was in many ways diametrically opposed to humanism.
Savonarola, who may be said to represent the Puritan spirit upon Italian
soil, urged his followers to make bonfires of their pictures, their
personal ornaments, and even of their books. The English Puritans
denounced the love of beauty in art as a carnal and misleading pleasure.
The Protestants, who owed their origin to the assertion of freedom of
thought and worship, soon came to erect a rigid system of dogma and
church government, which was fully as repressive and intolerant as that
against which they had revolted. The persecution which they resisted
with such heroism impelled them, unfortunately, not to practise
toleration, but to become persecutors in their turn.
That the good results of the Renaissance were not entirely destroyed or
overwhelmed either by the evils of the movement [Sidenote: Spread of
education.] itself or by the reaction provoked by those evils, is due to
the impulse which the Renaissance and the Reformation both gave to
education. In every country the introduction of the new learning and the
reformed religion was followed by the creation of new schools and
universities, and by the improvement of educational methods in the
institutions which already existed. To the spread of education we owe
the greatest and most permanent result of the Renaissance, the union,
instead of the antagonism, of morality and culture. And this union has
resulted in a higher morality than that inspired by compulsory beliefs
and compulsory observances—the morality of the free mind and conscience
of the individual.
APPENDIX
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
[Illustration: A. The Succession in Bohemia. (See p. 15.)]
[Illustration: B. The Succession in Tyrol. (See pp. 107 and 120.)]
[Illustration: C. The House of Hapsburg.]
NOTE.—The Hapsburg territories were divided between Albert III. and his
brother Leopold, the former taking Austria, and the latter all the rest.
Of the sons of Leopold, Ernest succeeded to Styria and Carinthia,
Frederick to Tyrol and the lands in Swabia. The Albertine line became
extinct with the death of Ladislas Postumus, when Austria passed to
Frederick III., and the latter’s son, Maximilian I., reunited all the
territories of the house.
[Illustration: D. The House of Wittelsbach.]
[Illustration: E. The House of Luxemburg.]
NOTE.—Luxemburg was transferred by Elizabeth, daughter of John of
Görlitz, to her husband’s nephew, Philip the Good of Burgundy, to the
exclusion of her own nearest surviving relative, Ladislas Postumus.
[Illustration: F. The Later Capets in France.]
[Illustration: G. The House of Valois.]
[Illustration: H. The Duchy and County of Burgundy.]
NOTES.—The duchy and county were united by the marriage of Eudes IV.
with Jeanne, daughter of Philip V. of France (see p. 64). On the death
of Philip de Rouvre the duchy fell to the crown, and was granted by John
to his fourth son, Philip the Bold. The County, with Artois, passed to
Margaret, widow of Lewis II. of Flanders: and her grand-daughter,
another Margaret, brought these provinces, together with Flanders,
Nevers, and Rethel, to the Valois dukes of Burgundy.
[Illustration: I. The First House of Anjou in Naples and Hungary.]
NOTES.—Charles I., called in by the popes, acquired both Naples and
Sicily, but lost the latter in the Sicilian Vespers, 1282 (see p. 25).
Joanna I., in order to disinherit her nephew, afterwards Charles III.,
adopted as her heir Louis of Anjou, who could claim a distant descent
from Charles II. Louis obtained possession of Provence, but he and his
descendants carried on a long and unsuccessful struggle for the crown of
Naples.
[Illustration: K. The Second House of Anjou in Naples.]
NOTE.—Several members of the family made strenuous efforts to gain the
crown of Naples, but without any substantial success. Réné le Bon, who
spent a long life in Provence, disinherited his grandson, Réné of
Lorraine, and left his possessions to his nephew, Charles of Maine, with
remainder to the French crown. This enabled Louis XI. to annex Provence
in 1481, and also gave rise to the claim upon Naples which was put
forward by Charles VIII. in 1494.
[Illustration: L. The House of Aragon in Sicily and Naples.]
[Illustration: M. The Houses of Visconti and Sforza in Milan.]
[Illustration: N. The Medici in Florence.]
[Illustration: O. The Union of Kalmar.]
[Illustration: P. The Palæologi.]
[Illustration: Q. Castile.]
[Illustration: R. Aragon.]
[Illustration: S. Navarre.]
NOTE.—Spanish Navarre was annexed to Spain by Ferdinand the Catholic in
1512. French Navarre was permanently united to France by an edict of
Henry IV. in 1607.
[Illustration: T. Some European Connections of the House of Portugal.]
INDEX
Abul Hakam, 471.
Acciaiuoli, Angelo, 299, 301, 302.
Acre, siege of, 452;
fall of (1291), 55, 168, 456.
Adolf of Nassau, King of the Romans, 11, 52;
relations with France, 12;
confirms the Swiss league, 129;
death, 13.
—— Count of Holstein, 444;
Duke of Schleswig, 445;
offered Danish crown, 446;
death, 447.
Adrianople, captured by the Turks, 502.
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, 524;
at the Council of Basel, 234, 235, 239;
reconciles Frederick III. with the Papacy, 239-241, 272, 405;
elected Pope as Pius II., 276.
Agincourt, battle of, 329.
Aiguillon, siege of, 75, 77.
Ailly, Pierre d’, 194.
Aladdin III., last Sultan of Iconium, 499.
Albania, 501, 508, 511, 513.
Albert I. of Hapsburg, 11, 12;
chosen King of the Romans, 13;
policy of, 14, 15;
action in Swabia, 129;
murdered, 16.
—— II. of Austria, 111, 133, 134, 136.
—— III. of Austria, 136;
shares Hapsburg territories with his brother Leopold, 137, 398.
—— IV. of Austria, 398.
—— V. of Austria (II. as King of the Romans), 397, 398, 239;
King of Hungary and Bohemia, 399;
elected in Germany, 400;
death, 401, 507.
—— Achilles of Brandenburg, 406.
—— the Bear, 3, 453.
—— of Hohenzollern, last Grand-master of the Teutonic Order, 466.
—— Duke of Mecklenburg, 436, 437, 441.
Albert, son of above, King of Sweden, 436, 437, 442;
abdicates, 443.
—— II. of Saxony, 3.
—— III. of Saxony, 226.
Alberti, Benedetto, 165, 166.
Albizzi, the, 163, 164.
—— Maso degli, 166, 289.
—— Piero degli, 289.
—— Rinaldo degli, 289, 292, 293, 294.
Albornoz, Cardinal, 160, 161, 176, 177.
Albret, house of, in Navarre, 487.
Alexander V., 200, 201.
—— VI., 281, 287;
bull of, 493.
Alfonso III. of Aragon, 480, 481.
—— V., 239;
King of Aragon and Alfonso I. of Naples, 269, 271, 272, 484, 525;
death of, 297, 484.
—— II. of Naples, 257, 285, 287.
—— X. of Castile, 6, 8, 48, 470.
—— XI. of Castile, 470;
war with the Moors, 471.
—— son of John II. of Castile, 476, 477.
—— V. of Portugal, 477, 492.
—— of Poitiers, 47.
Algeciras, 471.
Aljubarrota, battle of, 474, 491.
Alsace, acquired by Charles the Bold, 377, 408;
recovered by Sigismund of Tyrol, 379, 380, 409.
Altenburg, battle near, 16.
Alvaro de Luna, Constable of Castile, 475, 476.
_Ammonizio_ in Florence, 163.
Amurath I., 502;
killed, 503.
—— II., 506;
his wars with Hungary, 507, 508.
Anagni, outrage at, 29, 54;
papal election at, 186.
Andrea del Sarto, 529.
Andrew of Hungary, marries Joanna I. of Naples, 152;
murdered, 152, 153.
Andronicus II., 497;
deposed, 498.
—— III., 498, 499;
death of, 500.
—— son of John V., 171, 503, 504.
Angelico, Fra, 527.
Angora, battle of, 505.
Anjou, first house of, acquires Provence, 9, 24;
acquires Naples and Sicily, 24;
loses Sicily, 25, 48, 50, 479, 480;
acquires Hungary, 15, 16, 26, 123;
becomes extinct, 155, 271.
—— second house of, acquires Provence, 154;
claims Naples, 154, 155, 260, 266, 269, 271, 275, 277, 278, 286;
its possessions and claims pass to French crown, 258, 279, 389.
Anne of Beaujeu, 390, 391, 392.
—— of Bohemia, 208.
—— of Brittany, 391, 392.
—— of Burgundy, marries Duke of Bedford, 336;
death of, 346.
Antony, Duke of Brabant, 321, 322, 337;
killed at Agincourt, 329.
Aquitaine, Duchy of, 45, 95.
Aragon, constitution of, 478;
acquires Sicily, 25, 479;
loses Sicily, 26, 480;
acquires Sardinia, 480;
annexes the Balearic islands, 481;
recovers Sicily, 482;
falls to house of Trastamara, 483;
acquires and loses Naples, 484;
relations with Navarre, 484-487;
united with Castile, 477, 487.
Architecture, influence of the Renaissance on, 531, 532.
Arezzo, annexed to Florence, 167.
Arles, kingdom of, 12, 56, 78, 116, 184.
Armagnac, Bernard of, 322, 330, 331, 351.
Armagnacs, the, 323, 326-332.
‘Armagnacs,’ the, in Switzerland, 408.
Army, standing, in France, 352, 353, 354, 355.
Arras, treaty of (1414), 327;
(1435), 347, 349, 359, 361;
(1482), 388, 416.
Artevelde, Jacob van, 71, 72;
murder of, 74.
—— Philip van, 317, 318.
Artois, succession in, 67;
passes to Margaret of Flanders, 90;
acquired by house of Burgundy, 320;
ceded to Louis XI., 388;
surrendered by Charles VIII., 393, 417.
Ascania, house of, 3, 10;
extinction in Brandenburg, 107, 110, 458;
extinction in Saxony, 226.
Athens, duchy of, 498, 512.
Auberoche, battle of, 74.
Austria, under Ottokar, 3;
transferred to the Hapsburgs, 10, 127;
separated from the other Hapsburg territories, 137, 398;
succession of Ladislas Postumus, 409;
falls to Frederick III., 414;
reunion of territories, 409.
Avesnes, house of, 14.
Avignon, papal residence in, 4, 17, 30, 140, 155, 185, 458;
sold to Clement VI., 153;
quitted by the Popes, 122, 185;
Clement VII. returns to, 122, 186.
Avila, Henry IV. deposed at, 477.
Aybar, battle of, 485.
Azof, Genoese in, 495, 513.
Azores, the, 491, 493.
Baden in Aargau, 138.
Bagnolo, treaty of, 257, 284, 311.
Bajazet I., 503, 504;
defeat at Angora and death, 505.
—— II., 513.
Baldwin, Archbishop of Trier, 17, 98.
Balearic Islands, conquered by James I. of Aragon, 479;
annexed to Aragon, 481.
Balliol, Edward, claims crown of Scotland, 68.
—— John, King of Scotland, 51.
Baltic, Danish preponderance in, 420, 428;
decline of, 431;
attempted restoration by Waldemar III., 433, 435, 437;
overthrown by Hanseatic League, 438, 439, 444;
trade in, 449;
diminished importance of, 450.
Barbiano, Alberigo da, 151.
Barcelona, treaty of, 392.
Barnet, battle of, 373.
Baroncelli, 160.
Basel, Council of, 229-242, 270, 272, 273.
Baugé, battle of, 333.
Bayonne, 96;
surrendered to France, 357.
Beatific Vision, heresy of the, 101.
Beaufort, Edmund, 357.
—— Henry, Bishop of Winchester and Cardinal, 326, 342, 345, 346, 347,
355, 356;
at council of Constance, 220;
heads crusade against the Hussites, 227, 228.
Beaujeu, Anne of, 390, 391, 392.
Bedford, John, Duke of, 334, 336-346;
quarrel with Burgundy, 346, 347;
death of, 348.
Belgrade, 507, 514;
relief of, in 1456, 406, 412, 511.
Bella, Giano della, 32.
Bellini, Gentile, 529.
—— Giovanni, 529.
Beltran de la Cueva, 477.
Benedict XI., 29, 54.
—— XII., 99, 102, 106.
—— XIII., 187, 217, 218, 221, 266.
Bentivoglio, Giovanni, 180, 181.
Bergamo, 144;
subject to Milan, 147;
acquired by Venice, 249, 251, 253.
Bergen, German ‘factory’ in, 426.
Berri, Charles, Duke of. _See_ Charles of Berri.
Béthune, Robert of, 54.
_Bianchi_, the, 22.
Black Death, 79, 110, 153, 471.
—— Prince, the, 69, 79, 80, 90;
gains battle of Poitiers, 81;
supports Peter the Cruel, 93, 473;
illness and ill-success, 94;
quits France, 95;
death, 96.
Blanche of Bourbon, wife of Peter the Cruel, 472.
—— of Navarre, 485.
—— daughter of John II. of Aragon, 487.
Blanchetaque, ford over the Somme, 76, 328.
Blois, Charles of, 73;
death of, 92.
Boccaccio, 523.
Boccanegra, Simone, 169.
Boguslav of Pomerania, 445.
Bohemia, succession in, 15, 16;
acquired by John of Luxemburg, 18;
under Charles IV., 113;
disturbances under Wenzel, 192, 193;
Hussite movement in, 207-210, 223;
crusades against, 224, 225, 227;
conclusion of compacts, 231;
accession of Sigismund, 232;
accession of Albert of Austria, 399, 401;
election of Ladislas Postumus, 410, 413;
election of George Podiebrad, 414;
war with Hungary, 415;
falls to house of Jagellon, 416, 417.
Bologna, seized by Giovanni Visconti, 160, 175.
—— recovered by Albornoz, 161.
—— under Giovanni Bentivoglio, 180.
—— subjected to Milan, 181.
Bona of Savoy, 261, 262, 305.
Boniface VIII., 13, 15, 22, 28;
quarrel with Philip IV. of France, 29, 54.
—— IX., 187, 195, 244, 245, 265, 266.
Bordeaux, trade of, 70;
rising in 1452, 357.
Borgia, Alfonso, 274.
_See_ Calixtus III.
—— Cæsar, 259.
—— Rodrigo, 275, 287 (Alexander VI.).
Bosnia, 502;
wars with the Turks, 503;
annexed by Mohammed II., 511.
Botticelli, Sandro, 528.
Boucicault, Marshal, 244.
Bourges, Pragmatic Sanction of, 237, 277, 363, 367.
Brabant, duchy of, 119, 123, 321, 337, 339;
acquired by Philip the Good, 344.
Braccio da Montone, 151, 267, 268;
death of, 269.
Bramante, designs St. Peter’s, 531.
Brandenburg, 3;
acquired by house of Wittelsbach, 107;
transferred to house of Luxemburg, 120, 123, 191, 201;
given to Frederick of Hohenzollern, 203, 216.
Bremen, 422, 451;
expelled from Hanseatic League, 429;
restored, 432.
Brescia, calls in John of Bohemia, 144, 146;
seized by Milan, 147;
battle of (1401), 151, 181, 196, 225;
acquired by Venice, 249, 251.
Brienne, Walter de, 147, 148.
Brittany, duchy of, 45;
Succession war in, 73, 92, 97;
united with French crown, 391, 392.
Bruce, Robert, King of Scotland, 68.
Bruges, centre of mediæval trade, 69, 422, 426.
Brun, Rudolf, 131;
practically despot in Zürich, 132, 136;
death, 138.
Brunellesco, Filippo, 531.
Brünn, treaty of, 417.
Brusa, in Asia Minor, 499.
Buchan, Constable of France, 336, 337.
Buonconvento, death of Henry VII. at, 42.
Bureau, Gaspar, 352, 355.
—— Jean, 352, 355.
Burgundian party in France, 323, 324, 326, 348.
Burgundy, county of, 12, 56.
_See_ Franche-Comté.
—— duchy of, 45;
given to Philip the Bold, 90, 320;
annexed by Louis XI., 386, 388.
—— old kingdom of, 12.
Bussolari, Jacopo, 177.
Cabochiens, the, 327.
Cade, Jack, rising of, 357.
Cagliari, naval battle off, 170.
Calais, taken by Edward III., 77;
besieged by Philip the Good, 351.
Calixtus III., 274, 275.
Cambray, League of, 259.
Campobasso, Count of, 385.
Canale, Niccolo, 256.
Canaries, the, 491.
Cane, Facino, 179, 244.
Cangrande della Scala, 141, 143.
Cantacuzenos, John, 498-502.
—— Matthew, 502.
Cape of Good Hope, 259, 492.
—— Verde, 491.
Capet, house of, 43, 44, 63, 65.
Capistrano, Fra, 412.
Caramania, princes of, 505, 512.
Caravaggio, battle of, 252.
Carinthia, 9;
united with Tyrol, 10;
acquired by Hapsburgs, 107.
Carmagnola, Francesco, 247, 249, 291;
executed, 250.
Carobert, King of Hungary, 15, 16, 26, 152.
Carpaccio, Vittore, 529.
Carrara, Francesco, 171, 174, 179, 180.
—— —— the younger, 179, 183, 245.
Casimir the Great of Poland, 458, 459.
—— IV. of Poland, 415, 464, 465.
Cassel, battle of (1328), 70.
Castile, constitution of, 469;
disorders in, 470;
under Peter the Cruel, 93, 472-474;
united with Aragon, 477, 487;
share in discovery, 492, 493.
Castillon, battle of, 358.
Castracani, Castruccio, Lord of Lucca, 31, 33, 105, 142, 143, 292.
Castriot, George (Scanderbeg), 255, 256, 508, 513.
Catalans, Grand Company of the, 497.
Catalonia, 478;
rebels against John II., 486.
_Catasto_, the, 291, 295, 296.
Catharine, daughter of John of Gaunt, marries Henry III. of Castile,
475.
—— of Navarre, marries Jean d’Albret, 487.
Cauchon, Pierre, Bishop of Beauvais, 342, 344, 345.
Celestine V., 28.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 530.
Cerda, Ferdinand de, 48.
—— Infantes de, 48, 470.
Cerdagne, ceded to France, 389, 486;
restored to Aragon, 392, 487.
Cesarini, Cardinal, 228, 229, 230, 236.
Cesena, Michael of, 100.
_Chambre des Comptes_, 58.
Champagne, acquired by France, 48, 65, 66;
offered by Bedford to Philip the Good, 343;
promised by Louis XI. to his brother Charles, 371.
Chandos, John, 90, 92;
death, 94.
Charles IV., King of Bohemia and Emperor, 108;
reign of, 109-123;
character, 112;
government of Bohemia, 113;
policy in Italy, 114;
issues the Golden Bull, 117;
his motives, 118;
his territorial acquisitions, 119, 120;
importance of his rule in Germany, 184;
relations with Rienzi, 159;
visit to Lübeck, 187, 441;
death, 123.
Charles IV., King of France, 65.
—— V., King of France, regent for his father, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88;
accession to the throne, 90;
government, 90, 91, 92;
renews the English war, 94, 473;
successes, 95, 96, 474;
death, 97, 315.
—— VI. of France, 194;
reign of, 315-333.
—— VII., King of France, 260, 330, 332;
accession, 334;
reign, 334-361;
reforms of, 352-355;
death, 361.
—— VIII., King of France, 264, 287, 313;
minority, 390, 391;
marries Anne of Brittany, 392;
sets out for Naples, 393.
Charles the Bold of Burgundy, 364-367;
wars with Liége, 368, 369;
quarrels with Louis XI., 370-376;
changed policy of, 377;
acquisitions in Germany, 377;
seeks a crown, 378;
war with the Swiss, 379, 380, 384;
death of, 385.
—— I. of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily and Count of Provence, 9, 24,
25, 479.
—— II., King of Naples, 9, 15, 25, 26.
—— III., King of Naples, 154, 190;
assassinated in Hungary, 155, 191.
—— of Calabria, son of Robert of Naples, 142, 143.
—— of Durazzo, 152, 153.
—— (I.) of Maine, 279, 354, 356.
—— (II.) of Maine, 279, 389.
—— I. (the Bad) of Navarre, 79, 80, 93, 96, 484;
relations with Marcel, 85, 87, 88.
—— II. of Navarre, 484, 485.
—— of Berri, brother of Louis XI., 361;
joins League of Public Weal, 365;
acquires Normandy, 367;
loses it, 369;
receives Guienne, 371;
death of, 376.
—— of Valois, brother of Philip IV., 17, 25, 26, 49, 50, 53, 62.
—— of Viana, 485, 486, 487.
Chatillon, Jacques de, 53.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 459, 523.
Chiana, val di, 308.
Chioggia, war of, 172, 173.
Christian of Oliva, 454, 455.
—— of Oldenburg, succeeds in Denmark and Norway, 446;
acquires Sweden, Schleswig and Holstein, 447;
loses Sweden, 448;
death, 448.
—— II. of Denmark, 449.
Christopher II., King of Denmark, 431, 432, 433.
—— of Bavaria, 445;
King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, 446;
death, 446.
Cibo, Franchescetto, 285.
Cilly, Count of, 411;
death, 412.
Cimabue, 526, 527.
Cinque ports, the sailors of the, 51.
_Ciompi_, the, 32;
rising of, 164.
Clarence, Thomas, Duke of, 326, 333.
Clarence, George, Duke of, 372, 373.
Clement V., 30, 55, 457.
—— VI., 99, 107, 110, 158, 159, 160.
—— VII., schismatic pope at Avignon, 162, 186.
—— VII., 285.
Clementia of Hapsburg, 9, 15.
—— of Hungary, second wife of Louis X., 63, 64.
_Clericis laicos_, papal bull, 29, 52.
Clisson, Olivier de, 97, 319.
Coleone, Bartolommeo, 300, 301;
statue of, 530.
Cologne, importance in German trade, 422;
rivalry with Lübeck and Hamburg, 427;
position in Hanseatic League, 432;
Hanse meeting at, 437, 439.
Colonna, the family of, 28.
—— Oddo, 220, 269.
_See_ Martin V.
—— Stefano, 157.
Columbus, Christopher, 492.
Commines, Philippe de, 23, 49, 308, 361, 362, 377, 403.
Comminges, Count of, 377.
_Compactata_, the, 231, 232, 410.
_Condottieri_, foreign, 150;
native, 151.
Conflans, treaty of, 367, 369.
Conradin, 496;
execution of, 24.
_Conseil du roi_, the, 58.
Constance, Council of, 205, 206, 211-220, 267.
—— daughter of Manfred, marries Peter III. of Aragon, 24, 479.
—— daughter of Peter IV. of Aragon, 481.
—— of Castile, marries John of Gaunt, 474, 475.
Constantine Palæologus, last of the Byzantine emperors, 509;
his heroic death, 510.
Constantinople, recovered from the Latins by Michael Palæologus, 494;
first siege by the Turks, 505;
second siege, 506;
final siege and capture, 273, 509, 510;
treaty of, 256, 283, 308, 513.
Copenhagen, captured by Hanse forces, 438.
Cordova, 468.
Cornaro, Catarina, 257, 258.
Corsica, seized by the Genoese, 168.
Cortes of Castile, 60, 469, 488;
of Aragon, 60, 478, 479.
Cortona, annexed to Florence, 167, 289.
Cossa, Baldassare, 201, 266, 267.
_See_ John XXIII.
_Cour du roi_, the, 44, 57, 58.
Courland, duchy of, 466.
Courtrai, battle of, 53.
Cracow, University of, 209.
Crecy, battle of, 76.
Crema, 252.
Cremona, 251, 259.
Crevant, battle of, 337.
Crimea, the, 168, 495, 513.
Crusades, the, 55.
Cyprus, 168;
acquired by Venice, 257.
Dalmatia, 202, 204, 246.
Dante, 22, 41, 42, 139, 522, 523, 527.
Danzig, 458, 462, 465.
Dauphiné, 12;
acquired by France, 78;
Louis XI. in, 354, 357, 359.
David II., King of Scotland, 68, 77.
Denmark, relations with Germany, 410;
war with the Hanseatic League, 433-438;
united with Sweden and Norway, 443;
with Schleswig and Holstein, 447;
separated from Sweden, 448, 449.
Diaz, Bartholomew, 259, 492.
Diesbach, Nicolas von, 380.
Dinant, 368;
taken by Charles the Bold, 369.
Discoveries at end of fifteenth century, 259, 491-3.
Ditmarsh, peasants of, 448.
Döffingen, battle of, 189.
Donatello, 530.
Doria, Luciano, 172.
—— Paganino, 170.
—— Pietro, 172.
Douglas, Earl of, and Count of Touraine, 336, 337.
Duccio, Sienese painter, 527.
Dunois, bastard son of Louis of Orleans, 342, 352, 354, 365.
Dupplin Moor, battle of, 68.
Durazzo, house of, 152, 153, 191, 195.
Dushan, Stephen, King of Servia, 501.
Easterlings or Osterlings, 428.
_Écorcheurs_, the, 351.
Education, stimulated by the Renaissance, 533.
Edward I., King of England, 29, 60;
wars with France, 51, 52.
—— II., King of England, 52;
marries Isabella of France, 53;
deposed, 65.
—— III., King of England, 65, 66, 67, 69, 111;
war in Scotland, 68;
allied with the Flemings, 71;
relations with Lewis the Bavarian, 72, 75;
claims the French crown, 71;
war in France, 71-78, 80, 81, 88, 89, 94, 95;
death, 96.
—— IV., King of England, 365, 370, 372, 373, 375, 386;
invades France, 381, 382;
death of, 388.
Eger, peace of, 190, 192.
Eleanor, daughter of Peter IV. of Aragon, 483.
—— of Navarre, marries Gaston de Foix, 487.
Electors, the seven, 7, 98, 108;
as regulated by the Golden Bull, 116, 117.
Elizabeth, widow of Lewis the Great, 190, 191.
Elna, fortress of, 49.
Elsa, val d’, 308.
Epila, battle of, 482.
Ercole d’Este, 283, 301, 308.
Eric Glipping, King of Denmark, 446.
—— Menved, King of Denmark, 430, 431, 446.
—— of Pomerania, 443;
succeeds to the Scandinavian kingdoms, 444;
deposed, 445.
Ernest of Styria, 398.
Ertogrul, Turkish leader, 499.
Esthonia, 453, 458, 465, 466.
Étaples, treaty of, 392.
Eudes IV., Duke of Burgundy, 63, 64, 65;
death of, 79.
Eugenius IV., 229, 270-272, 508;
quarrel with Council of Basel, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236;
deposed, 238;
triumphs over the Council, 239-241.
Evreux, Louis, Count of, 49.
—— Philip, Count of, marries Jeanne of Navarre, 66.
_Execrabilis_, papal bull, 277, 407.
Falier, Marin, 169, 171.
Falköping, battle of, 443.
Fastolf, Sir John, 340.
Felix V., anti-Pope, 238, 239, 242.
Ferdinand I. of Aragon, 475, 483.
—— II. (the Catholic) of Aragon, 477, 485, 487, 488, 489.
—— IV. of Castile, 470.
—— de Cerda, 48, 470.
Ferrante I., King of Naples, 260, 282, 283, 285-287, 307, 309.
Ferrara, war with Venice, 257, 283, 311;
Council of, 236, 272.
Ficino, Marsilio, 525.
Filelfo, Francesco, 523.
_Filioque_ controversy, 236, 503.
Flanders, county of, 45, 90;
at war with Philip IV., 53, 54, 62;
commerce of, 69, 320;
allied with Edward III., 71;
Philip van Artevelde and war with France, 317, 318;
acquired by Dukes of Burgundy, 320;
relations with Louis XI., 387.
Flor, Roger de, 497.
Florence, 141, 150;
constitution of, 31-35, 148, 149, 165, 166, 296, 297, 303, 310;
offers lordship to Charles of Calabria, 142;
fails to get Lucca, 146, 147;
Walter de Brienne in, 148;
parties in, 163, 164;
oligarchical government from 1382 to 1435, 166, 167, 288-293;
wars with Milan, 179, 180, 181, 248, 249, 291, 292;
under Medicean rule, 293-314;
Council of, 236;
cathedral of, 531;
importance in history of art, 527, 528, 530.
Foix, house of, in Navarre, 487.
Forli, 282, 309.
Foscari, Francesco, 248, 249, 252;
deposition and death, 254.
—— Jacopo, 253.
Fougères, attack upon, 357.
Franche-Comté, 12, 56, 64, 79, 90;
acquired by Valois Dukes of Burgundy, 320;
attacked by the Swiss, 380;
annexed by Louis XI., 387, 388;
surrendered by Charles VIII., 393, 417.
Francis I. of Brittany, 357.
—— II. of Brittany, 363, 366, 369;
death, 391.
Franciscans, their quarrel with John XXII., 101, 103.
Frankfort, Diet of, 187.
Fraticelli, the, 101, 159.
Frederick III., Burggraf of Nuremberg, 8, 10, 16.
—— I. of Brandenburg, 216, 395.
_See_ Hohenzollern, Frederick of.
—— II. of Brandenburg, 465.
—— (the Handsome) of Hapsburg, elected King of the Romans, 98;
captured by his rival, 99;
death, 105.
—— of Tyrol, 395, 398;
opposes Sigismund at Constance, 212, 213, 215, 216, 219.
—— III., Emperor, 239, 402, 404-411, 464;
relations with the Papacy and Council of Basel, 240, 241;
joint ruler in Styria, 398;
character, 403;
acquires Austria, 414;
relations with Charles the Bold, 378, 380, 416;
last years, 417;
death, 418.
—— I. of Sicily, 26, 482, 497.
—— II. of Sicily, 482.
Friuli, 246.
Froissart, 49, 69.
Gabelle, the, 61;
upon salt, 82, 91.
Galata, 168, 495.
Gallipoli, seized by the Turks, 502.
Gama, Vasco da, 259, 492.
Gaston de Foix, 487.
Gavre, battle of, 359.
Genappe, 359, 361.
Genoa, 35;
rivalry with Venice, 167-173, 255, 502;
factions in, 169;
relations with France, 180, 247, 260, 263;
relations with Milan, 175, 176, 247, 260, 262, 263;
relations with Greek empire, 495, 502, 509;
loss of Kaffa and Azof, 513.
Gerhard, Count of Holstein, 444.
Gerona, siege of, 49, 486.
Gerson, Jean, 194, 218, 323.
Ghent, 69, 70, 71.
Ghiara d’Adda, 252, 259.
Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 530.
Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 528.
Giac, Pierre de, 338.
Giano della Bella, 32.
Gibraltar, 471.
Giorgione, 529.
Giotto, 527, 528.
Girona, fortress of, 49.
Glarus, 133;
leagued with the Swiss, 134, 135, 136, 138.
Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 337, 338.
Golden Bull, the, 116-118, 187.
Göllheim, battle of, 13.
Gonfalonier of justice, 33.
Görlitz, John of, 123, 193.
Gothland, island of, 425, 433.
Granada, kingdom of, 468, 471;
conquest of, 490.
Grand Company of the Catalans, 497.
Grandella, battle of, 24.
Granson, 380, 385;
battle of, 261, 384.
Gregory IX., grants Prussia to Teutonic knights, 455.
——X., 9, 24, 27, 48.
——XI., 122, 162, 182, 185.
——XII., 187;
negotiations with Benedict XIII., 197, 198;
deposed at Pisa, 200;
relations with Ladislas of Naples, 204, 266, 267.
Guelfs and Ghibellines in Italy, 22, 31, 39, 40, 139, 140, 141, 143,
144, 145.
Guesclin, Bertrand du, 90, 92, 93, 94, 473;
death, 97.
Guienne, lost by the English, 357;
ceded to Charles of Berri, 372;
recovered by French crown, 376.
Guinea Coast, 491.
Guinigi, Paolo, 180, 244.
Gunther of Schwartzburg, 111.
Guy, Count of Flanders, 53, 54.
Guzman, Eleanor de, 471, 472.
Hagenbach, Peter of, 377, 379, 380.
Hainault, united with Holland and Zealand, 14;
acquired by house of Wittelsbach, 75, 108, 320;
acquired by house of Burgundy, 321, 337, 339.
Hakon, King of Norway, 434, 438;
marries Margaret of Denmark, 435, 436, 442;
death, 442.
Halidon Hill, battle of, 68.
Hallam, Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, 220.
Hamburg, 422, 451;
allied with Lübeck, 427, 428;
supports Holstein against Denmark, 444.
Hans, or John, King of Denmark and Norway, 447, 448.
_Hansa_, meaning of word, 423, 424;
_Hansa Alamanniæ_, 428.
Hanseatic League, 5, 19, 183, 420;
origin of, 429;
war with Denmark, 121, 433-438;
zenith of its power, 439;
decline of, 449-451.
Hapsburg, house of, 4, 16, 19, 98, 119;
in Swabia, 126;
acquires Austria, 10, 127;
acquires Carinthia, 107;
acquires Tyrol, 120;
partition of territories, 137, 398;
acquires Hungary and Bohemia, 399, 401, 410;
hold on imperial crown, 400;
loses Hungary and Bohemia, 413,414;
acquires the Netherlands, 388, 389, 416;
reunion of territories, 404, 409, 417.
Hawkwood, John, 151, 167, 179;
death of, 180.
Hedwig, Queen of Poland, marries Jagello of Lithuania, 190, 191, 459.
Helsingborg, siege of, 434, 438.
Henry VII., Emperor, 17, 18, 129, 457;
in Italy, 39-42;
death, 42, 98.
—— of Trastamara (Henry II.), 472;
claims crown of Castile, 93, 473;
gains it, 94, 474.
—— III. of Castile, 475.
—— IV. (the Impotent) of Castile, 476, 477.
—— IV., King of England, 323, 324, 26, 459.
—— V., King of England, 218, 327-333.
—— VI. of England, 334.
—— VII., King of England, 391, 392.
—— Duke of Lower Bavaria, 3.
—— Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, 15;
King of Bohemia, 16;
deposed, 18;
death, 106.
—— Count of Holstein, 444, 445.
—— of Mecklenburg, marries Ingeborg of Denmark, 436, 442.
—— the Navigator, 491, 492.
—— of Wettin, Margrave of Meissen, 3.
_Hermandad_, in Castile, 470, 471.
Hermann von Salza, 454.
Hermanstadt, 507.
Herrings, battle of the, 340.
Hesse, Lewis of, 402.
Hohenstaufen, house of, 2, 400.
Hohenzollern, Frederick of, 202, 203, 213, 214, 222, 395, 399, 400,
402;
receives Brandenburg (1415), 215;
attempted reforms in Germany, 226, 227, 228;
death, 403.
—— house of, 4, 400;
acquires Brandenburg, 215.
Holland, 14;
acquired by house of Wittelsbach, 75, 108, 320;
acquired by dukes of Burgundy, 321, 337, 339.
Holstein, relations with Denmark, 430, 434, 435, 438;
united with Schleswig, 442, 444, 445;
acquired by Christian of Oldenburg and made a duchy, 447.
Honorius IV., 28.
Humanism, 524, 532.
Humbert, the last Dauphin of Vienne, 78.
Hungary, succession in, 15;
passes to house of Anjou, 15, 26;
acquired by Sigismund, 191;
accession of Albert of Austria, 399;
accession of Ladislas of Poland, 409, 507;
accession of Ladislas Postumus, 410;
election of Mathias Corvinus, 414;
falls to house of Jagellon, 417, 465.
Hunyadi, John, 410, 411, 507, 508;
relieves Belgrade, 412, 511;
death, 412, 511.
—— Ladislas, 412, 413.
Hus, John, 207, 209, 210;
goes to Constance, 211;
imprisoned, 214;
trial, 216;
executed, 217.
Husinec, Nicolas of, 223, 225.
Iconium, Turkish sultans of, 495, 498, 499.
India, trade with, 491.
Indies, the West, 492.
Ingeborg, daughter of Waldemar III., 442, 443.
Innocent VI., 117, 160, 161.
—— VII., 187.
Interregnum, the Great, 6.
Isabel of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI. of France, 321, 330, 332.
Isabella of Castile, 476, 477, 487, 488, 489.
—— of France, wife of Edward II., 53, 65.
—— of Portugal, wife of John II. of Castile, 476.
Italy, 20;
causes of disunion in, 21-23.
Jacqueline of Hainault, 337, 339.
Jacques Cœur, 352;
fall of, 358.
Jacquetta of Luxemburg, 346.
Jagello, 191, 192, 459.
_See_ Ladislas V. of Poland.
Jagellon house in Poland, 183, 191, 208, 225, 410, 459, 466;
acquires Bohemia, 415, 416, 465;
acquires Hungary, 417, 466.
James I. (the Conqueror) of Aragon, 479.
—— II. of Aragon, 25, 26, 480.
—— III. of Aragon, 480.
Janissaries, formation of the, 500.
Janow, Mathias of, 207.
Jeanne, heiress of Champagne and Navarre, wife of Philip IV. of France,
48, 49, 53.
—— daughter of Louis X., 63;
excluded from the succession in France, 64;
Queen of Navarre, 66;
death, 79.
—— Countess of Blois, 73, 77.
—— Darc, 334, 340-345.
Jerome of Prag, 208, 217.
Jews, expelled from Spain, 489.
Joanna I., Queen of Naples, 152, 153, 154, 186.
—— II., Queen of Naples, 155, 267.
—— of Portugal, wife of Henry IV. of Castile, 477.
—— ‘la Beltraneja,’ 477, 492.
—— Henriquez, second wife of John II. of Aragon, 485, 486.
Jobst of Moravia, 123;
receives Brandenburg from Sigismund, 191, 193;
candidate for empire, 201, 202;
death, 203.
John XXII., 99, 145;
his heresy, 101;
death, 102.
—— XXIII., elected Pope, 201;
quarrel with Naples, 204, 211, 267, 268;
summons Council of Constance, 205;
conduct at Constance, 213-215;
deposed, 216, 217;
death, 221.
—— I. of Aragon, 482, 483.
—— II. of Aragon, 484, 485, 486, 487.
—— King of Bohemia, 18, 75, 98, 107, 112;
his expedition to Italy, 144, 145, 146;
crusade in Prussia, 459;
death of, 76, 108.
—— III., Duke of Brittany, death of, 73.
—— the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, 321-332;
murder of, 332, 338.
—— of Calabria, 260, 299, 486;
joins League of the Public Weal, 365, 367.
John I. of Castile, 474, 475.
—— II. of Castile, 475, 476.
—— or Hans, King of Denmark and Norway, 447, 448.
—— I., posthumous son of Louis X., 64.
—— II., King of France, 79-90;
captured at Poitiers, 81;
death of, 89.
—— of Gaunt, 95;
relations with Castile, 474.
—— V., Greek Emperor, 171, 234, 236, 500, 501, 502, 503;
death of, 504.
—— VI., Greek Emperor, 236, 506, 509.
—— Cantacuzenos, 498, 499, 500;
crowned Emperor, 501;
abdicates, 502.
—— Palæologus, nephew and colleague of Manuel II., 504, 505.
—— of Hapsburg assassinates his uncle, Albert I., 16.
—— I. of Portugal, 474, 491.
—— II. of Portugal, 492.
—— of Procida, 24.
John Henry, Margrave of Moravia, 107.
Joinville, 49.
Julius II., 281, 287.
Justiciar of Aragon, the, 478, 479.
Kaffa, in the Crimea, 168, 170, 495, 513.
Kalisch, treaty of, 458.
Kalmar, union of, 183, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447, 449, 460.
Karl Knudson, 445;
King in Sweden, 446;
deposed, 447, 448.
Katharine of France marries Henry V., 332.
Ketteler, Gotthard, 466.
Kniprode, Winzig von, 458, 459.
Königsberg, 456, 462, 464.
Korybut, 225.
Kossova, battle of, 503;
second battle of, 508.
Kremsier, Milecz of, 207.
Kroja, 256.
Kulm, 454, 455.
Kulmerland, 454, 455.
Ladislas, King of Naples, 155, 195, 196, 197, 199, 204, 211, 245, 246,
266, 289;
death of, 205, 267.
—— Postumus, 360, 409;
succeeds in Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, 410;
released from guardianship, 411;
death, 413.
Ladislas V. of Poland (_see_ Jagello), 191, 225, 459, 460.
—— VI. of Poland, King of Hungary, 409, 507;
killed at Varna, 410, 508.
—— King of Bohemia and Hungary, 465.
—— King of Bohemia, 416;
King of Hungary, 407.
Lahnstein, imperial election at, 195.
Lampugnani, Andrea, 261.
Lancaster, Henry of, 74, 77.
Lausanne, interview at, 9.
Lecoq, Robert, Bishop of Laon, 83.
Leghorn. _See_ Livorno.
Leipzig, University of, 210.
Leo X., 285;
furthers the Renaissance, 522.
Leopold of Hapsburg, son of Albert I., 129.
—— —— son of Albert II., 136, 213;
shares the Hapsburg territories with Albert III., 137, 398;
killed at Sempach, 138, 189, 398.
Lesbos, taken by the Turks, 512.
Levant, trade in, 167, 168, 256, 492.
Lewis the Bavarian, 98;
quarrel with the Papacy, 90-103;
causes of failure, 103;
his visit to Italy, 104, 105;
his policy of territorial aggrandisement, 75, 106, 107;
confirms the Swiss League, 130;
death, 108, 110.
—— of Brandenburg, son of Lewis the Bavarian, 107, 108;
death, 120.
—— the Roman, brother and successor of above, 120.
—— the Great, King of Hungary and Poland, 121, 123, 459;
expedition to Naples, 152, 153;
war with Venice, 171;
death, 190, 459.
—— II., Count of Flanders, 70, 76, 77.
—— de Mâle, Count of Flanders, 77, 78;
death of, 320.
—— II., Count Palatine and Duke of Upper Bavaria, 3, 8, 10.
—— Elector Palatine, 213.
—— of Taranto, 152, 153.
Liége, attacked by Charles the Bold, 368, 369, 370, 371.
Limoges, massacre at, 95.
Lipan, battle of, 232.
Lippi, Filippo, 528.
—— Filippino, 528.
Lithuania, 421, 453, 458;
united with Poland, 191, 459, 460.
Livonia, 421, 453;
Order of the Sword in, 454, 465, 466.
Livorno, annexed to Florence, 167, 289.
Lodi, treaty of, 253, 298.
London, German _hansa_ in, 426, 427.
Loredano, Antonio, 256.
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 527, 528.
Loria, Roger di, 49.
Lorraine, succession in, 345;
seized by Charles the Bold, 383, 385.
Louis IX. of France, death of, 46.
—— X. of France, 44, 62;
death of, 63.
—— XI., King of France, 261;
as Dauphin, 354, 358, 359, 360;
accession, 361;
character and policy, 362;
reign, 361-390.
—— XII., King of France, 258, 259, 264, 391.
—— I. of Anjou, Count of Provence and titular King of Naples, 154, 190,
317.
—— II. of Anjou, 155, 195, 198, 266, 269, 326, 330.
—— III. of Anjou, 269, 335;
claim to Aragon, 483;
death, 271.
—— de Mâle, Count of Flanders, 316, 318, 320.
_See_ Lewis de Mâle.
—— Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., 319, 321;
assassination of, 198, 218, 322.
Lübeck, 6, 183, 422, 423;
alliance with Hamburg, 427, 428;
leadership in Hanseatic League, 439;
visit of Charles IV. to, 187, 441;
retains independence, 451.
Lucca, under Castruccio Castracani, 142, 143;
under John of Bohemia, 145;
disputed between Florence and Verona, 146, 147;
seized by the Pisans, 147.
Luna, Peter de (Benedict XIII.), 187, 194, 197.
Luther, Martin, 525.
Luxemburg, duchy of, 17, 123;
acquired by Philip the Good, 339, 359, 538.
—— house of, 4, 16, 17, 19, 112, 119, 123, 184, 185, 192, 195, 201;
gains Bohemia, 18;
gains Brandenburg, 120;
gains Hungary, 190-192;
extinction of male line, 397;
extinction of, 414.
Luxemburg, John of, captor of Jeanne Darc, 344.
Luzern joins the Swiss Confederation, 130, 131.
Lyons, 12;
seized by Philip IV. of France, 18, 56.
Macalo, battle of, 249, 250.
Madeira, 491.
Magnus, King of Sweden, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435;
deposed, 436.
_Maillotins_, the, 317, 318.
Mainz, Pragmatic Sanction of, 237.
Majorca, kingdom of, 481, 482.
Malatesta, Carlo, 249.
—— Pandolfo, 291.
Mantegna, Andrea, 528.
Mantua, Congress of, 277.
Manuel II., Greek Emperor, 504, 505, 506.
Marcel, Etienne, 82-88.
Marchfeld, battle of the, 10.
Margaret of Anjou, 278;
marries Henry VI. of England, 356;
reconciled with Warwick, 372;
defeated at Tewkesbury, 373.
—— of Artois, daughter of Philip V., 67, 90.
—— of Burgundy, first wife of Louis X., 63.
—— heiress of Flanders, Artois, and Franche-Comté, 320, 541.
—— daughter of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, betrothed to Dauphin,
388;
repudiated by Charles VIII., 392, 417.
—— Maultasch, 106;
Countess of Tyrol, 107;
death of her son, 119.
—— daughter of Waldemar III., marries Hakon of Norway, 435, 436, 442;
arranges Union of Kalmar, 443;
war with Holstein and death, 444.
—— daughter of Christian I., marries James III. of Scotland, 448.
—— of York, marries Charles the Bold, 370.
Maria of Hungary, marries Sigismund, 190, 191, 192.
Marienburg, 457, 461, 464.
Marienwerder, 455.
Marigny, Enguerrand de, 62.
Marin Falier, 169.
_Marmousets_, the, 318, 321.
Marsiglio of Padua, 100;
death, 105.
Marsilio Carrara, 143, 147.
Martin IV., 28.
—— V., election of, 220;
returns to Rome, 221, 267-269;
publishes crusade against the Hussites, 224;
summons Council of Siena, 228;
death, 229, 270.
—— I. of Aragon, 482, 483.
—— the Younger of Aragon, 482, 483.
Mary of Aragon, wife of John II. of Castile, 476.
—— of Burgundy, 386, 387;
marries Maximilian, 388;
death, 388.
—— of Sicily, marries Martin the Younger of Aragon, 482.
Masaccio, 528.
Masovia, Konrad of, 454, 455.
Mastino della Scala, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 169.
Mathias Corvinus, 277, 279;
elected King of Hungary, 414;
relations with Bohemia, 415;
war with Austria, 416;
death, 417.
Matthew Cantacuzenos, 502.
Maximilian I., 466;
marries Mary of Burgundy, 388, 416;
elected King of the Romans, 417.
Medici, Cosimo de’, 290, 292;
exiled, 293;
recalled, 294;
rule in Florence, 295-299;
patronage of literature, 524.
—— Giovanni de’, 290, 291, 292.
—— Lorenzo de’, the Magnificent, 282;
rule in Florence, 302-312;
relations with Innocent VIII., 285;
his poems, 524;
death, 263, 286, 312.
—— Maddalena de’, 285.
—— Piero (I.) de’, 299-302.
—— —— (II.) de’, 263, 313;
flight from Florence, 314.
—— Salvestro de’, 164, 165, 290.
—— Vieri de’, 166, 290.
Meinhard, Count of Tyrol and Duke of Carinthia, 10.
—— son of Margaret Maultasch, 119;
death, 120.
Meloria, battle of, 31, 168.
Mercenary troops in Italy, 149-151;
in France, 94, 333, 351, 352.
Michael VIII. (Palæologus), 494, 496.
—— Angelo, 528, 529, 530.
—— of Cesena, 100.
Mocenigo, Tommaso, 248, 249.
Mohammed I., 505, 506.
—— II., 255, 256, 273, 279, 406, 411, 412, 508, 509;
takes Constantinople, 510;
conquers the Balkan provinces, 511;
conquers Greece, 511-513;
death, 283, 513.
Molai, Jacques de, 56.
Moldau, the, 113.
Mons-en-Puelle, battle of, 54.
Montefeltro, Federigo da, 307.
Montereau, 332, 338.
Montesecco, 305, 307.
Montfort, John de, claims Brittany, 73, 74.
—— —— son of above, John IV. of Brittany, 74, 92, 96.
Montiel, battle of, 94, 474.
Mont-lhéri, battle of, 366.
Morat, 380, 384;
battle of, 385.
Moravia, 107, 123;
annexed to Bohemia, 204.
Morea, 495, 511;
conquered by the Turks, 256, 512;
Venetian possessions in, 495, 512, 513.
Moreale, Fra, 151.
Morgarten, battle of, 130.
Mühldorf, battle of, 99.
Murad. _See_ Amurath.
Murcia, annexed to Castile, 468, 469, 470, 479.
Näfels, battle of, 138.
Najara, battle of, 93, 94, 473.
Namur, acquired by Philip the Good, 339.
Naples, 23;
acquired by first house of Anjou, 24;
under Joanna I., 152-154;
claimed by second house of Anjou, 154, 155, 266, 267, 269, 271, 275,
277, 278, 542;
acquired by Alfonso V. of Aragon, 271;
passes to Ferrante, 275;
rising against Ferrante, 285, 286, 312;
claimed by Charles VIII., 279, 287, 313, 392.
Narbonne, conference at, 218.
Nassau, John of, Archbishop of Mainz, 212, 213, 215.
Navarre, united with France, 48, 65, 484;
severed from France on accession of Valois line, 66, 484;
united with Aragon, 485;
independent after death of John II., 487;
split into Spanish and French Navarre, 487, 550.
Navarrette, battle of, 93, 473.
Negropont, 168;
taken by the Turks, 256, 513.
_Neri_, the, 22.
Neroni, Diotisalvi, 299, 301, 302.
Netherlands, the, acquired by Valois, Dukes of Burgundy, 320, 321, 339,
359.
Neumark, the, 465.
Neuss, besieged by Charles the Bold, 379, 381, 416.
Nevill’s Cross, battle of, 77.
Neville, Anne, marries Prince of Wales, 372.
—— Isabel, marries Duke of Clarence, 372.
Nicæa, 494, 498;
taken by the Turks, 499.
Niccolo da Pisano, 530.
Nicolas, son of John of Calabria, 278;
death, 378.
—— III., 24, 27.
—— IV., 28.
—— V., 272, 273, 274, 522, 524.
Nicopolis, battle of, 193, 202, 322, 403, 504.
Nissa, 507.
Northampton, treaty of, 68.
Novgorod, German ‘factory’ at, 425, 429.
Novigrad, 191.
Ockham, William of, 100.
Olaf, King of Denmark and Norway, 442;
death, 443.
Oleggio, Giovanni d’, 177.
Olgiati, Girolamo, 261, 262.
Oliva, Christian of, 454, 455.
Orcagna, Andrea, 527.
Orchan, 499;
his government, 500;
death, 502.
Ordinances of Justice in Florence, 32.
Orkneys transferred from Denmark to Scotland, 448.
Orleans, siege of, 340, 341;
states-general of, 352.
—— Charles, Duke of, 326, 329, 335;
release of, 346.
—— Louis, Duke of, 321, 322;
assassination of, 198, 218, 322.
—— —— Duke of, afterwards Louis XII., 258, 259, 264, 390, 391.
Orsini, the house of, 28, 156, 270, 313.
—— Clarice, 302, 313.
Orvieto, cathedral of, 531.
Osterlings or Easterlings, 428.
Othman, 499.
Otranto, occupied by the Turks, 283, 285, 310, 513.
Otto of Brandenburg, cedes the electorate to Charles IV., 120.
—— IV., Count of Burgundy, 56.
Ottokar, King of Bohemia, 3, 8;
crusade in Prussia, 456;
war with Rudolf I., 9, 10;
death, 10.
Ottoman Turks, origin of, 499;
their conquests in Europe, 502, 503, 504, 507, 508;
they capture Constantinople, 510;
further conquests, 511, 512, 513, 514.
Padilla, Maria de, 472, 473.
Padua, subjected to Milan, 179;
revolt of, 180;
seized by Venice, 245.
Palermo, rising at, 25.
Palladio, architect, 531.
Papal States, 26, 27.
Paris, University of, 194, 197, 201, 209.
Parliament, the model (1295), 60.
—— of Paris, the, 59.
—— the Florentine, 33.
Patay, battle of, 341.
Paul II., 280, 415.
Pavia, Council at, 228.
Pazzi, conspiracy of the, 262, 282, 305-307.
—— Francesco, 305, 306.
—— Jacopo, 305, 306.
Pecquigni, treaty of, 382.
Pelekanon, battle of, 499.
Peniscola, 221.
Pera, suburb of Constantinople, 168, 178, 495.
Péronne, interview at, 370;
treaty of, 371.
Perpignan, 198;
death of Philip III. at, 49.
Perugino, Pietro, 528.
Peter III., King of Aragon and Sicily, 24, 25, 48, 479, 480, 481.
—— IV., King of Aragon, 481, 482.
—— I. (the Cruel) of Castile, 93, 94, 472-474.
Petit, Jean, 218, 323.
Petrarch, 114, 523.
_Pfahlbürger_, 18, 117, 188.
Philadelphia, 499, 504.
Philip de Rouvre, Duke and Count of Burgundy, 79, 320;
death of, 89.
—— I. (the Bold) of Burgundy, 81, 90, 315, 317, 319, 320, 321, 324;
death of, 322.
—— II. (the Good) of Burgundy, 332, 333, 336, 349, 359, 361, 364, 405;
quarrel with Gloucester, 337;
acquisitions in the Netherlands, 339, 360;
hands over Jeanne Darc, 344;
rupture with Bedford, 346;
makes treaty of Arras, 347-348;
death of, 369.
—— III., King of France, 46-49;
acquires marquisate of Provence, 47;
Champagne and Navarre, 48;
wars in Spain, 48, 49.
—— IV., King of France, 14, 16, 19;
reign, 49-62;
quarrel with Boniface VIII., 29, 54;
wars with England, 53-55;
war in Flanders, 53, 54;
suppresses the Templars, 55;
administrative reforms, 56-61;
annexes Lyons, 18, 56;
death, 62.
—— V., King of France, marries heiress of Franche-Comté, 56;
accession of, 64;
death, 65.
—— VI. of France, 106;
accession to the throne, 65, 66;
reign, 66-79;
war with Flanders, 70;
war with England, 72-77;
annexes Dauphiné, 78.
Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, 474, 475.
Platina, 280.
Plauen, Henry of, 463.
Piccinino, Jacopo, 278, 285, 309.
—— Niccolo, 249, 251, 292.
Piccolomini, Æneas Sylvius, 234, 235, 239-241, 272, 276, 405, 524.
_See_ Pius II.
Pisa, decline of, 31;
supports Ghibellines, 141;
loses her maritime importance, 168;
Council of, 198, 199, 200, 210, 211;
subjected to Milan, 180;
subjected to Florence, 167, 244.
Pisani, Niccolo, 170, 171.
—— Vettor, 172.
Pistoia, annexed to Florence, 167.
Pitti, Luca, 297, 299, 301.
Pius II., 255, 276-280, 415.
_See_ Piccolomini, Æneas Sylvius.
Podiebrad, George, 401, 410, 413;
King of Bohemia, 414;
war with Hungary, 415;
death, 416.
Poggio Bracciolini, 523, 524.
—— Imperiale, 308.
Poitiers, battle of, 81.
Poland, 183, 190, 455, 467;
united with Lithuania, 191, 192, 459;
wars with the Teutonic Knights, 458, 460, 464, 465.
Politiano, 524.
Pomerania, 209, 453, 455.
Pomerellen, 458.
Porcaro, Stefano, 273.
Portolungo, battle of, 171.
Porto Santo, 491.
Portugal, 468, 490;
its share in geographical discovery, 491, 492, 493.
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 237, 355, 363, 406.
Prague, University of, 113;
disputes between the Bohemians and the other nations, 209;
exodus of Germans from, 210;
four articles of, 223, 231;
death of Ladislas Postumus at, 413.
_Praguerie_, the, 46, 353, 354.
Premyslides, dynasty of, in Bohemia, 15
Privilege of union in Aragon, 481;
revoked, 482.
Procida, John of, 24.
Prokop, son of John Henry of Moravia, 123.
—— Hussite leader, 225, 227, 228;
attends Council of Basel, 231;
killed, 232.
Provence, 12;
marquisate of, 47, 56;
county of, 9, 47;
acquired by first house of Anjou, 24;
acquired by second house of Anjou, 154;
united with France, 279.
Prussia, 55, 209, 453, 454;
conquered by Teutonic Knights, 455, 456, 457;
divided into east and west, 465.
Prussian League, 463, 464.
Public Weal, war of the, 46, 365-367.
Puritanism, 532.
Raphael, 528, 529.
_Reichstädte_, 5.
Renaissance, the, 20, 518, 519;
prominence of Italy in, 520;
Papal patronage of, 521;
in literature, 522-525;
in art, 525-532;
its relation with the Reformation, 532;
stimulates education, 533.
Réné le Bon, 260, 271, 354, 378, 486;
claims Lorraine, 345, 346;
relations with Charles the Bold, 383, 389;
death of, 389.
—— of Lorraine, 279, 286, 312, 378, 381, 385;
claims Provence, 391.
Rense, meeting of electors at, 102, 106, 117.
Reuchlin, 525.
Reutlingen, battle of, 121.
Rheims, coronation of Charles VII. at, 341.
Rhodes, held by Knights of St. John, 55, 457, 495, 512.
Riario, Girolamo, 281, 282, 283, 304, 305.
—— Piero, 281.
—— Raffaelle, 306.
Ricci, the, 164.
Richard of Cornwall, 6;
death of, 7.
—— II., King of England, 208, 323, 325.
Richemont, Arthur of, 329, 336;
Constable of France, 338, 339, 346, 347, 350, 352.
Rienzi, Cola di, 156-161.
Riga, Bishop of, 454.
_Ritterschaft_, in Germany, 5.
Robbia, Luca della, 530.
Robert, Count of Artois, 53.
—— of Artois, grandson of above, 67.
—— King of Naples, 26, 42, 99, 140, 141, 153.
—— I., King of Scotland, 68.
Rocca Secca, battle of, 204, 266.
Roosebek, battle of, 318.
Rosenberg, Ulrich von, 410.
Roussillon, ceded to France, 389, 486;
restored to Aragon, 392, 487.
Rovere, Giovanni della, 281.
—— Giuliano della, 281 (Pope Julius II.).
—— Lionardo della, 281.
Rovigo, 257;
polesina of, 311.
Rudolf III. of Hapsburg, chosen King of the Romans (Rudolf I.), 8;
relations with Papacy, 9, 24, 26;
war with Ottokar, 9, 10;
action in Swabia, 126, 127;
death, 11.
—— IV. of Hapsburg, 120, 136;
activity in Swabia and death, 137.
Rupert III., Elector Palatine and King of the Romans, 151, 181, 195,
196;
death, 201.
Russia, 467.
Sachsenhausen, imperial election at, 98.
St. Jacob, battle of, 408.
St. John, Knights of, 55, 56, 453;
occupy Rhodes, 457, 495, 512.
St. Pol, Count of, Constable of France, 365, 367, 373, 374, 375;
capture and death, 382, 383.
St. Maur des Fossés, treaty of, 367.
St. Tron, battle of, 369.
Salado, battle of the, 471.
Salic Law, the so-called, 64, 73.
Salviati, Francesco, 305, 306, 307.
Salza, Hermann von, 454.
Sancho IV. of Castile, 48, 470.
_Santa Hermandad_, 488.
Sapienza, battle of, 171.
Sardinia, 168, 170;
acquired by King of Aragon, 480.
Sarto, Andrea del, 529.
Sarzana, 309, 312.
Savelli, the family of, 28.
Savonarola, attitude towards art, 532.
Savoy, 12;
relations with Charles the Bold, 380, 384, 385.
Scali, Giorgio, 165.
Scaligers, their rule in Verona, 141, 143, 147.
Scanderbeg, 255, 256, 508, 513.
Scarampo, 272.
Schaffhausen, 215.
Schauenburg, house of, in Holstein, 444, 445, 446.
Schleswig, united with Holstein, 442, 444, 445;
acquired by Christian I. of Denmark, 447.
Schwartzburg, Gunther of, 111.
Schwiz, canton of Swiss League, 126, 127, 407.
Scutari in Albania, 256, 308.
Selim I. conquers Egypt, 514.
Semendria, siege of, 401, 507.
Sempach, battle of, 138, 189.
Senlis, treaty of, 393.
Servia, under Stephen Dushan, 501;
attacked by the Turks, 503, 507, 508;
made a Turkish province, 511.
Seville, 468.
Sforza, Ascanio, 287.
—— Attendolo, 151, 267, 268;
death of, 269.
—— Caterina, 282.
—— Francesco, 249, 250, 251, 292;
Duke of Milan, 252, 253, 259, 298;
relations with France, 260, 365;
death of, 261, 300.
—— Galeazzo Maria, 261, 282, 300, 305;
relations with Burgundy, 380, 384.
—— Gian Galeazzo, 262, 263, 264.
—— Ippolita, 260.
—— Ludovico, il Moro, 262, 263, 264, 286, 392.
Shetland Islands, transferred to Scotland, 448.
Sicilian Vespers, 25, 48, 140, 479, 496.
Sicily, 23;
acquired by Charles I. of Anjou, 24;
transferred to house of Aragon, 25, 26, 48, 50, 140, 479, 480;
united with Aragonese crown, 26, 482, 484.
Siena, 18, 31, 244;
Council at, 228;
cathedral of, 531.
Sigismund, second son of Charles IV., 121;
inherits Brandenburg, 123;
acquires Hungary, 190-192, 201;
pawns Brandenburg to Jobst, 193;
fights at Nicopolis, 193, 504;
elected King of the Romans, 202, 203, 204;
forces Pope to summon Council of Constance, 205;
gives safe-conduct to Hus, 211;
action at the Council, 212-220;
succeeds in Bohemia, 224, 232;
death, 239.
—— of Tyrol, 398, 408;
relations with Charles the Bold, 377, 378, 379, 409.
Signorelli, Luca, 528.
Silesia, 209.
Simonetta, Francesco, 261, 262.
Sirk, Jacob von, Archbishop of Trier, 240, 241, 405.
Sixtus IV., 257, 281-284;
quarrel with Florence, 304-310;
establishes Inquisition in Spain, 489.
Skaania, province of, 433, 438;
fishing stations in, 428, 450.
Slavs in Northern Germany, 288, 420;
subjected to German rule, 421, 453, 456;
revolt against German influences, 208, 209, 210, 225, 228, 460, 465.
Sluys, naval battle off, 72.
Soderini, Niccolo, 299, 300, 301, 302.
—— Tommaso, 302, 304.
Somme Towns, the, ceded to Burgundy, 348;
recovered by Louis XI., 364;
restored, 367;
again recovered, 386, 388.
Soncino, battle of, 250.
Sorel, Agnes, 347, 354, 358.
Sound, channel of the, 428, 437, 438, 439.
States-General, origin of the, 59, 60;
meeting at Orleans (1439), 352;
meeting at Tours (1484), 390, 391.
Stephen, duke of Bavaria, 109, 120.
Stephen Dushan, King of Servia, 501.
Stralsund, treaty of, 121, 438, 439, 441.
Strozzi, Tommaso, 165.
Sture, Sten, 448.
—— Sten the Younger, 449.
—— Svante, 448.
Suffolk, William, Duke of, 356.
Suleiman, son of Orchan, 502.
Swabia, duchy of, 2, 8, 125, 126;
Hapsburg possessions in, 137, 213, 377, 379, 398, 407, 409.
Swabian League, 137, 138, 184, 187, 188, 189.
Swiss Confederation, 19, 183, 189;
rise of, 124-138;
at war with Frederick III., 408;
at war with Charles the Bold, 379, 380, 384, 385, 409.
Sword, Order of the, 454;
united with Teutonic Order, 453;
recovers independence, 465;
dissolved, 466.
Szegedin, treaty of, 507, 508.
Taborites, extreme Hussites, 224;
their defeat at Lipan, 232.
Tagliacozzo, battle of, 24.
_Taille_, the, made a royal tax, 353.
Tannegui du Châtel, 331, 332, 338.
Tannenberg, battle of, 396, 460.
Tarifa, 471.
Tauss, battle of, 228.
Templars, the, 452;
suppression of, 50, 55, 56, 456.
Teutonic Order, 19, 55, 183, 191, 208;
foundation of, 452;
conquers Prussia, 455, 456;
transferred to Prussia, 457;
at the zenith of its power, 458;
war with Poland, 460;
decline of, 461-466.
Tewkesbury, battle of, 373.
Thessalonica, 503, 505;
conquered by the Turks, 507.
Thorn, 455, 462;
first peace of (1411), 461;
second peace of (1466), 465.
Tiepolo, Bajamonte, 39.
Timour, the Tartar leader, 193, 505.
Tintoretto, 529.
Titian, 526, 529.
Tordesillas, treaty of, 493.
Torquemada, 489.
Torre, Guido della, 36, 40, 41.
—— Martino della, 35.
Tours, States-General at, 390.
Trastamara, Henry of, 93, 94, 472, 473.
—— House of, acquires crown of Castile, 474;
acquires crown of Aragon, 483.
Trebizond, Empire of, 495, 513.
Tremouille, George de la, 339, 340, 346, 347.
Treviso, 143, 245;
subjected to Venice, 147, 171;
lost by Venice, 174;
recovered, 179.
Trivulzio, Gian Jacopo, 308.
Troyes, treaty of, 332, 333.
Turin, peace of, 174.
Tyler, Wat, 316.
Tyrol, county of, 10, 15;
passes to Margaret Maultasch, 107, 108;
acquired by Hapsburgs, 120.
Unterwalden, 126, 127.
Urban V., 122, 161, 162, 185, 503.
—— VI., election of, 122, 162, 185, 186.
Urgel, house of, 481, 482, 483.
Uri, 126;
united with Schwiz and Unterwalden, 127.
Uzzano, Niccolo da, 289, 290, 292.
Valencia, 478;
annexed to Aragon, 480.
Valla, Lorenzo, 524, 525.
Valois, house of, 45;
accession in France, 65, 66;
dukes of Burgundy, 90, 184, 320, 321.
Varna, battle of, 410, 508.
Vaudemont, Antony of, 345.
—— Frederick of, 346.
—— Réné of, 378.
Venaissin, the, 30, 47.
Venice, constitution of, 36-39;
policy of, 140, 247, 248;
rivalry with Genoa, 168-173, 255;
relations with Greek Empire, 255, 495, 502, 509;
acquisitions on the mainland, 245, 249, 258, 259;
war with the Turks, 255, 256, 512, 513;
war with Ferrara, 251, 283, 284, 311;
decline of, 259.
Verdun, treaty of, 43.
Verme, Jacopo del, 167, 179, 181.
Verneuil, battle of, 337.
Verona, 20, 143, 147;
annexed to Milan, 179;
acquired by Venice, 245.
Verrocchio, Andrea, 530.
Viana, Charles of, 485, 486, 487.
Vicenza, 143, 179;
acquired by Venice, 245.
Vienne, Dauphins of, 78.
—— Jean de, 77.
Vinci, Leonardo da, 529.
Visconti, Azzo, 143, 145, 174, 175.
—— Bernabo, 161, 175, 176, 177.
—— Carlo, 261.
—— Caterina, 243, 245.
—— Filippo Maria, 243, 271;
character, 246;
restores duchy of Milan, 247;
quarrel with Eugenius IV., 231, 239;
war with Florence, 249;
war with Venice, 249, 270;
death, 251.
—— Galeazzo, 142, 143.
—— Gian Galeazzo, 167, 174, 176;
obtains sole rule in Milan, 177;
his aggressions, 178, 179, 180;
made Duke of Milan, 194;
death, 181, 196, 287.
—— Gian Maria, 243;
death, 244.
—— Giovanni, Archbishop and Lord of Milan, 170, 174, 175.
—— Lucchino, 175.
—— Matteo, 36, 40, 140;
imperial vicar in Milan, 41.
—— Matteo II., 175.
—— Otto, Archbishop of Milan, 36.
—— Stefano, 174, 175.
—— Valentina, marries Louis of Orleans, 178, 252, 321, 325.
—— Virida, 176, 252.
Vistula, valley of the, 453, 455, 465.
_Vitalien-Bruder_, 443.
Vitelleschi, Cardinal, 272.
Waldemar of Brandenburg, death of, 107;
the false, 110, 111.
Waldemar III., King of Denmark, 121, 420, 433;
wars with the Hanse towns, 183, 434-438;
death, 442.
Waldhäuser, Konrad, 207.
Wallachia, 507;
annexed by the Turks, 511.
Warwick, Earl of, the King-maker, 365, 372, 373.
Welf, house of, 3.
Wendish towns, 426, 431, 432, 435.
Wenzel II., King of Bohemia, 9, 10;
death, 15.
—— III. of Bohemia, 15.
—— brother of Charles IV., 123;
marries Duchess of Brabant and Limburg, 119.
—— eldest son of Charles IV., 112, 137, 187, 188;
elected King of the Romans, 121;
King of Bohemia, 123;
opposition in Germany, 192;
troubles in Bohemia, 192-193;
visit to France, 194;
declared deposed, 195;
death of, 224.
Wettin, house of, 3;
obtains Saxony, 226.
—— Frederick of, 16.
Wisby, 425, 427, 429, 432;
captured by Waldemar III., 433.
Wittelsbach, house of, 3, 118;
divided into two branches, 115;
acquisitions of, under Lewis the Bavarian, 75, 107, 108;
opposition to Wenzel, 192.
Woodville, Elizabeth, 365, 374.
Wordingborg, treaty of, 436.
Würtemberg, 187.
—— Eberhard of, 189.
Wyclif, John, 207, 208.
Yolande of Aragon, wife of Louis II. of Anjou and mother-in-law of
Charles VII. of France, 335, 336, 338, 341, 483.
—— daughter of Réné le Bon, 278, 346.
—— sister of Louis XI., 380, 384.
York, Richard, Duke of, 357.
Zagonara, battle of, 291.
Zeno, Carlo, 172, 173.
Ziska, John, 223, 225, 460.
Zug, a Swiss canton, 134, 135, 136, 138, 189.
Zürich, 131, 134, 136, 138;
joins the Swiss League, 132;
war with the other cantons, 407, 408.
[Illustration: France.]
[Illustration: Burgundy.]
[Illustration: Italy.]
[Illustration: Swiss Confederation.]
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Text that was in bold face is enclosed by equals signs (=bold=).
○ Notes printed in the margin of the book have been moved into the
paragraphs near where they appear, contained in square brackets,
and begun with the word "Sidenote".
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494, 3rd Ed." ***
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