Columbia ^nibergitp in tlje Citp of i^eto ^orfe LIBRARY GIVEN BY John Bates Clark MODERN EUROPE. I. MODERN EUROPE, FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE, A.D. 1453— 1871. BY THOMAS HENRY DYER, LED. {SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND CONTINUED.) IN FIVE VOLUMES. Vol. I. FROM 1453 TO 1530. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. [All rights resen!ed.\ From Lio. or J oh a, 3 At 33 OiariL "! ^0 , ^' wl ^c>g/ V k CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. PREFACE THE design of the following work is to give a general view of European history during the last four centuries. A plan so extensive can only resemble one of those skeleton maps which indicate the position of provinces and chief towns, leaving minuter details to be sought in particular and more elaborate maps. To facilitate the reader's further researches, references have been constantly given to the works most proper to be con- sulted, These have, of course, been used by the author himself; and in the choice of them he must acknowledge his obligations, among other competent authorities, to Dr. Von Sybel and Dr. Wuttke, Professors of History at the time this book was begun, at Munich and Leipsic. It is, therefore, as may hardly be necessary to say, a compilation ; yet with regard to facts of paramount importance, the author has, when possible, consulted original authorities ; and with regard to opinions, he has never servilely, and without due consideration, adopted those of any writer whatsoever. The work, of course, is of a political nature ; its main object being to show the origin and nature of the European concert. To have entered into any descriptions of manners and literature, besides being foreign to its subject, would have swollen the book to an inconvenient size. Such topics are more appropriate to the particular histories of different countries, or to separate works specially devoted to them. It has, however, been sometimes necessary to enter into literary history when it has produced social or political revolutions, as in the case of the Protestant Peformation and the French Revolution. But here, as in the rest of the work, the main outlines only could be indicated, and the reader must complete the sketch from his own researches. It was a difficult question to determine to what extent it might be proper to enter into the domestic history of the different European countries. With regard to Continental States, their action in the European concert could hardly have been understood VI PREFACE. without a general idea of their internal condition, of their inte- rests, and the motives of their policy. But as the English reader of this book may be presumed •to have acquired a general know- ledge of the history of his own country, the domestic affairs of England have not been described. On the other hand, particular attention has been paid to the policy of England as a member of the European commonwealth. This second and revised edition will be found to contain the same principles on which the first was written. They are those of rational liberty, both civil and religious, as established and fostered by the Protestant Reformation, and by the more liberal and enlightened views to which it gave birth. And though com- pliance with certain retrograde notions might perhaps have in- creased the circulation of the book, the Author was unwilling to sacrifice to such a consideration what he considers to be the interests of truth and progress. Bath, Sept. drd, 1877, CHKONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. INTRODUCTION. View of the state of Ev/rope at the tahing of Constantinople hij the TurJcs (pp. 1—77). UNITY of Europe .... 1 Oi-igin of the European Sys- tem 2 — 4 Fall of Constantinople 5 OTTOMAN TURKS. Osman and Orclian 6 Institutions of Alaeddin .... — Turkish Army 7 Civil Institutions 11 The Sultan — The Grand Vizier 12 Tlie Sublime Porte — Viziers of the Cupola 13 The Divan — Provincial Administration .... 14 Law and Religion 15 Cadiaskers, Mollas, &c — The Mufti — Mahomet I. (1413— 1421) . ... 16 Peloponnesus — Venetian and Genoese Settlements . — Amurath II. (1421—1451) ... 17 John of Hunyad 18 Pope Eugenius IV 19 Expedition of Wladislaus .... — Peace of Szegedin (1444) .... 20 Battle of Varna — Campaign of Hunyad (1448) ... 21 Albania, Scanderbeg ■ — Mahomet II. (1451— 1481) ... 22 GERMANY. Holy Roman Empire 22 King of the Romans 24 Sovereiirn Houses 25 Page House of Hohenzollern in Branden- bui'g 25 Wettin in Saxony ... — Wittelsbach in Bavaria and Rhenish Palatinate 26 Duchy of Wiirtemberg 27 The Seven Electors — The Golden Bull . 28 Vicars of the Empire — German Knighthood — Private Wars - — The Landfriede — The Secret Tribunal 29 Hanseatic League — • Free Imperial Cities — The Diet 30 House of Habsburg 31 Rodolph of Habsburg — Austrian hereditaiy lands .... — Albert I. and II — Frederick III 32 Crowned Emperor at Rome — THE SWISS LEAGUE. The Four Forest Cantons .... 33 The " Old League " 34 Swiss Mercenaries 35 HUNGARY AND BOHEMIA. Albert II 35 The Hussites 36 John Liska — Compactata of Prague — Albert in Hungary 37 The Hunaarian Palatine .... — VIU CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS POLAND. Papc- Its Constitution 37 House of Jagc'Uon 38 Wlaclislaus in Hiuifjary Ladislaus Postumus 39 Geo. Podiebrad in Bohemia ... — John Hunyad in Hungary .... — Accession of Ladislaus (1453) . . 40 ITALY. The Pope 40 Pa})al Dominions — claims 41 The Roman Curia — College of Cardinals — The Consistory 42 Papal (Jffieers — The Eoia Jlomana, &c 43 Papal Re\ enues — The Conclave 44 VENICE. Her Dominions 45 Queen of the A(h"iatic — Venetian Government 46 Ambassadors — The Doge — Venetian Commerce — GENOA. Colonies and Commerce 47 Government — FLORENCE. Florentine Constitution 48 The Arii, or Guilds — The Albizzi 49 The Medici 50 MILAN. Made a Duchy 51 The Visconti — Guelfs and Ghibelins — Francesco Sforza 52 Various claims to Milan .... 53 An Imiierial Fief — A Republic 54 Francesco Sforza, Duke 55 Ti-eaty of Lodi, 1454 ..... — Ferrara, Mantua, Savoy .... — NAPLES. First House of Anjou 55 Second House of Anjou 56 House of Aragon 57 Alfonsn V , . . . _ Louis III. of Anjou — Queen Joanna makes Rene of Anjou her heir — Alfonso established 58 Attempt of John of Anjou . ... 59 SPAIN. Page Its Kingdoms 59 CASTILE. Ferdinand 59 John II 60 Alvaro de Luna — Henry IV 61 ARAGON. The Catalans 61 Catalonia united to Aragon ... — Further additions 62 Constitution of Castile — of Aragon 63 of Catalonia and Valencia . . — Spanish Military Orders .... 64 Private Wars — Privilege of Union — Moorish Kingdom of Granada . . 65 PORTUGAL. Early Kings 65 Battle of Aljubarota — Maritime Enterprise — Alfonso V — FRANCE. Lunacy of Charles VI 66 Bourguignons and Ai-'nuignacs ... — Treaty of Troyes 67 Henry V. at Paris — Bedford, Regent — Charles VII — Henry VI. crowned at Paris ... 68 BURGUNDIAN LANDS. Capetian Line 68 Line of Valois — Philip the Good 69 His dominions — Connection with England .... — Treaty of Ari'as — The Burgundian Court 70 Painting, Architecture, &c. ... 71 Death of Bedford 71 The English e\ acuato Paris ... — expelled from France . ^ . 72 State of that country — Contrasted with Burgundy .... 73 Ministry of Charles VIL . • . . . 74 Standing Army — Progress of Despotism 75 Tlie Pragucrie 76 The Great Fiefs — Beginning of Centralization ... 77 ENGLAND. Houses of York and Lancaster united 77 OF THE FIEST VOLUME. IX CHAPTER I. Establishment of the Turlcs in Europe, their Wars lolth the Hmujarlans, Venetians, Sj'C, till the Death of Mahomet II. -^Affairs of Italy down to the TurTcish Invasion in 1481 (pp. 79 — 116). A.D. Page 1453. Capture of Constantinople . . 79 Mahomet consolidates his Em- pir 1 454. 1460 1454, 1455, 1456 1457, 1458. 1459, 1463, The Greek Patriarchate State of Peloponnesus . Kevolt of the Albanians . Mahomet II. reduces the Morea Fate of the despots Thomas and Demetrius Duchy of Athens Annexed with Thebes to the Turkish Empire .... Reduction of Greek Towns and Islands Nature of the Turkish Govern- ment Greece sinks into Barbarism . Alarm in Europe .ZEneas Sylvius Piccolomiui Bull of Pope Nicholas \. . . Venice and Genoa make peace with the Turks .... Mahomet enters Pera . Genoa pledges her Colonies Helpless State of Europe . Disturbances in Austria and Hungary Weakness of the Emperor Frederick III Revolts of Count Cilly and Eyzinger Mahomet invades Servia The Turks defeated by Hunyad Death of Pope Nicholas V. Friar Giovanni da Capestrano. Zeal of Pope Calixtus III. . Mahomet besieges Belgrade . Repulsed by liumad and Ca- pestrano Death of Hunyad and Capes- trano Plots of Count Cilly .... He is slain by Hunyad's sons . Who are seized by King Ladis- laus, and the elder executed Death of Ladislaus Posthumus Competitors for the Crown of Hungary Election of Matthias Corvinus . George Podiebrad chosen King of Bohemia Frederick III. crowned King of Hungary Resigns the Crown to Matthias Insurrection in Austria . . 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 92 A.D. 1458. Mahomet II. annexes Servia . 1462. reduces Wallachia 1469. The Turks overrun the Herze- govina 1464. Mahomet II. conquers Bosnia. 1459. Pope Pius II. calls the Council of Mantua Project of a Crusade . . 1461. The Pope's Letter to Mahomet 1463. Venetian and Turkish War . Alliance between Venice, Hun- gary, and the Pope . . Exertions of Pius II. ... War in the Morea .... 1464. Death of Pope Pius II. . . . Election of Paul II His Cliai-acter 1465. Scanderbeg allied with Venice 1467. His Death 1470. The Turks conquer Negro- pont Their Progress in the North . 1475. Defeated by Matthias Corvinus 1477. The Turks penetrate into the * Venetian Territory . 1479. Treaty between Venice and the Porte Ruin of the Genoese Commerce Defeat of the Turks by Paul Kinis Mahomet conquers three of the Ionian Islands Retrnspective view of Italy 1458. Death and Character of Al- fonso of Naples .... Character of Pope Calixtus III. He opposes the accession of Ferdinand, illegitimate son of Alfonso Pius II. recognizes Ferdinand Revolt of the Neapolitan Barons John of Anjou invades jNaples 1460. Defeats Ferdinand .... Great qualities of Ferdinand's Consort Isabella .... 14G1. Ferdinand assisted by Scan- derbeg 1462. John of Anjou defeated at Troia 1464. retii-es from Ital^^ . . . Death of Cosmo de' Medici . His Character Conspiracy against Peter de' Medici 1467. Battle of La Molinella . . . 1468. Pope Paul II. publishes a Peace Page 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 X CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS A.n. Page 1-iG'J. Death of Peter de' Medici . . 108 jVccessionofLorenzo and Julian — 147L Death ot Tope Paul n. . . .108 Election and Nepotism of Six- tiisIV 109 Profligacy and Tyranny of Ga- leazzo Maria, Duke of Milan — 1476. Conspiracy against him . Kegency of his widow, Bona Leagues of North and South Italy Enmity of Sixtus IV. towards the Medici .... 1478. C'ons]>iracy of tlie Pazzi . . — Sixtus IV. attacks tlie Floren- tines 113 Excites an insurrection at Genoa — Page 110 111 113 114 Sixtus IV. instigates the Swiss League against Milan 1479. Lodovico il JMoro obtains pos- session of Milan .... 1480. Lorenzo de' Medici proceeds to Naples, and forms a League witli Ferdinand 115 The Venetians incite Mahomet II. to invade Naples ... — The Pope absolves the Floren- tines — The Turks take Otranto . . — The Pope forms a League against them 110 1481. The Turks repulsed by the Duke of Calabria .... — Death of Sultan Mahomet II. . — His Character — CHAPTER II. Affairs of France and Burgundy doivn to the Truce of 1472 ; ivltli a hruf Vieio of English Affairs under Edward IV. (pp. 117 — 145). 1456. The Dauphin Louis in banish- ment 117 He flies into Brabant ... — Character of Louis . . . .118 — of the Heir of Bur- g'""ly • • • — Daupliine united to the French Crown 119 1458. Charles VII. acquires the tem- ])orary Sovereientv of Genoa — 1461. Death of Char les^ViL . . . 120 Sacre of Louis XI — Splendour of the Duke of Bur- g»niiy — Singular Tournament . . .121 Cynicism of Louis — He creates the Parliament of Bordeaux and University of Bourges — His proceedings against the Clergy 122 And against the great Vassals of the Crown — Duchy of Brittany .... — of Normandy .... — 1402. Louis acquires Rousillon . .123 Allies himself with the Swiss and the Duke of Milan . . — 1403. Recovers the Towns on the Somme — Truce of Hesdin with Edw. IV. — Louis threatens Brittany . . 124 Attempts to seize its Vice- Chancellor at Gorcum . . — Rupture with Burgundy . .125 1404. Lhpie dn Bun Public ... — Its principal Leaders . . . 120 1464. Preparations of Louis . . . 126 He establishes Posts .... — 1465. Civil War in France .... 127 Battle of Montlhery .... — ■ Louis incites a Revolt in Bel- gium 128 Treaties of Conflans and St. Maur — Importance of the latter to the French ]\Ionarchy . . . .129 Contrast of the French and English Nobles .... — 1406. Normandy reannexed to the French Crown 130 Cruel Treatment of the Bur- gundian Rebels .... — ■ 1407. Death of Philip the Good . . 131 Accession and Character of Charles the Bold . . . . — Insurrections at Ghent and Li^ge 132 1408. Marriage between Charles and Margaret of York .... — States-General in France . .132 Treaty of Ancenis with the Duke of Brittany . . . . 133 Louis entrapped by Charles . — Treaty of Peronne . . . .134 Louis serves under the Duke of Burgundy — Punishment of Lie'ge . . . .135 Ambitious views of Charles . — Character of Louis's Minis- ters 136 Cardinal Balue — Connection between Louis XI. and the Elarl of Warwick . 137 OF THE FIRST VOLUME. XI A.D. Page 14C8. Part i)laye(l by Warwick in England 137 His ambiguous conduct . . . 138 1470. ^A'arwick sheltered by Louis XI 139 Reconciliation of Warwick and Queen Margaret .... — Edward IV. tiies into the Ne- therlands 140 Treaty of Peronne declared void . . ■ — The Duke of Burgundy sum- moned by Parliament of Paris 141 1471. Edward IV. relands in England — A.D. Psige 1471. Defeats Warwick at Barnet and Margaret at Tewkesbury . 141 Charles invades France ... — Louis enters into a Truce . . — His popular Arts 142 Disaffection of his brother, the Duke of Guienne .... — 1472. League against Louis . . .143 Death of the Duke of Guienne — Guienne annexed to the Crown — Charles invades France ... — A Truce 144 Louis's privilege to La Ro- chelle — His attention to Commerce . . 145 CHAPTER III. Affairs of France and Burgundy continued down to the Year 1493 (pp. 146—177.) 1472. Ambition of Charles the Bold . He acquires Gelderland and Zutphen Plan of a Burgundian King- dom 1473. Projected Marriage between Mary, daughter of Charles, and Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick III. . Interview between Charles and Frederick at Treves . . . Frederick gives Charles the slip 1474. Charles besieges Neuss . . 1475. The Swiss invade Burgundy . Neuss relieved by the Impe- rialists League between Charles and Edward IV Edward invades France . Peace of Peqiiigny .... Claims to the Duchy of Lor- raine It is overrun by Charles the Bold Execution of the Constable St. Pol Perpetual Alliance between France and Switzerland . 1476. Charles the Bold attacks the Swiss Defeated at Granson . . . And again at Morat .... Duke Rene II. recovers Nanci Despondency of Charles . . 1477. Rene recovers Lorraine . . . Killed in attacking Nanci . . Indecent joy of Louis XI. . . He seizes Burgundy .... Embarrassment of Charles's daughter Mary .... 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 154 155 156 1477 1478 1480, 1481. 1482, 1483. 1484, 1485, She grants the " Grand Privi- lege " to the Dutch . . .157 Louis's machinations against her — Execution of Hugonet and Humbercourt 158 The French enter Flanders . — ]\Iar3''s Suitors — She marries Maximilian . .159 Truce with Louis — Peace between the Flemish Sovereigns and the Swiss , 160 War renewed with France . . — The French defeated at Guine- gate Another Truce 161 Provence annexed to the French Crown — Death of Mary of Burgundy . — Opposition of the Flemings to Maximilian — Declining Days of Louis XI. . 162 His Diversions — His Intrigues with the Flemings 1 63 Peace of Arras — Death of Louis XI — His Policy and Government . — Anne, sister of Charles VIII., rules for him 164 Opposed by the Duke of Or- leans — Anne's popular Measures . .165 Disturbances in Brittany . . — Revolt of the Duke of Orleans — Earl of Richmond in Bi-ittany 166 Richard III. 's Plots against him — Battle of Bosworth . . . .167 Richmond obtains the English Crown as Henry VII. . . ^ Xll CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS A.D. Page 1485. Effect of this Kevolution in Brittany 167 Termination of Z« Guerre folic — 1486. Attempts of Anne to procui'e Brittany for her brother . — Maximilian's proceedings in the Netherlands 168 Elected King of the Romans . — 1487. Kenews the war with Franco . — 1488. Maximilian imprisoned at Bruges 169 Fresh Revolt of the French Princes — Battle of St. Aubin, and cap- ture of the Duke of Orleans and Prince of Orange . . — Death of the Duke of Brittany 170 1489. Henry VII. engages to protect Anne of Brittany .... — 1490. Anne marries Maximilian . . 171 1489. Treaty between Charles VIH. and Maximilian . . . .172 1489. jNIaximilian chastises the Flem ings 1490. The French Council declares the Marriage of Anne and Maximilian null .... 1491. Insurrection in the Nether- lands Charles VIII. begins to reign He reduces Anne of Brittany to capitulate Is married to her .... His Person and Character . Rage of Maximilian .... 1492. Henry VII. 's iiretended Inva- sion of France Treaty of Staples .... 1493. Treaty of Bare^elona between France and Spain .... Peace of Senlis between Charles and Maximilian Fate of Maximilian's daughter Margaret Page 172 17;5 174 175 176 177 CHAPTER IV. Affairs of Italy. — Spa^iish History down to the Conquest of Granada. — Affairs of HvMyary, t J be House of Austria, Sfc, till 1492 (pp. 178—207). 1482. Nepotism of Pope Sixtus IV. . 178 1483. League against Venice . . . • — The Venetians excommuni- cated 179 1484. Peace of Bagnolo — Death of Sixtus IV. and Elec- tion of Innocent V^III. . . War between Naples and Rome 1486. Ferdinand I. of Naples chas- tises his rebellious Nobles . 1 486. John de' Medici made Cardinal Go\ernment of Lorenzo de' Medici 1492. His Death Succeeded by his son Peter Death of Innocent VHI. . . Election of Pope Alexander VI Tyranny of Lodovico il Moro at Milan 1493. He invites Charles VIII. into Italy 1455. Retrospect of Spanish History . Reign of Henry IV. of Castile He is deposed by his Nobles . 1468. Alfonso, anti-King, dies . . Isabella refuses the Crown . . Henry names her his successor 1469. She marries Ferdinand of Aragon Their Characters 1452. Birth of Ferdinand .... Reisrn of his father, Jolm II. . — 1467 — 1470 1472 180 1473 1475 — 1474 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 1452 1461 1475 1476 1479 1480 1481 1491 Persecutes his son Carlos . . 187 Beaumonts and Agramonts . — Death and Character of Carlos 188 , John II. makes Ferdinand his Heir — Tlie Catalans revolt .... 189 , Proclaim John of Anjou King — His Death — John II. recovers Barcelona . — Kousillon and Cerdagne rise against the French . . . 190 Are reduced by Louis XI. . . — Death of Heni-y IV, of Castile — Accession of Isabella . . .191 Alfonso V. of Portugal sup- ports the claim of Henry IV. 's daughter Joanna, Avhom he marries .... — Alfonso invades Castile . . — , Alfonso defeated by Ferdinand 192 Establishment of Isabella's claim — Ferdinand succeeds John II. in Aragon — The Santa Hcrmandad ... — The Inquisition established in Castile 193 Its Political Character . . .194 Moorish Kingdom of Granada — Origin of the War between the Moors and Spaniards , . .195 Its Progress — ■ Conijuest of Granada . . . 196 OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Xlll A.D. Pnge 1491. Consoliflation of the Spanish Moiuirchy 197 1492. The Jews expelled from Spain — 1493. Columbus at Barcelona . . . 198 Retrospect of Austrian and Hungarian History ... — 1465. Pope Paul II. deposes George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia — Matthias Corvinus prepares to seize the Crown .... — 146S. Podiebrad invades Austria . 199 Matthias invades Bohemia . — Crowned by the Legate . . 200 Frederick III. visits Rome . . — 1470. Matthias at Vienna .... — ■ 1471. Death of Podiebrad . . . .201 The Bohemians elect Wladis- laus of Poland — 1473. Duplicity of Frederiuk III. to- wards Matthias . . . . -^ 1474. Matthias invades Bohemia, Austria, and Poland . . . 202 1476. Hostilities between Matthias and Frederick III. ... — A.D. 1477. 1479. 1485, 1489. 1490. 1491. 1492. 1493. Peace of Korncuburg , . . Peace of Olmiitz between Mat- thias and the Kings of Bo- hemia and Poland War renewed between Mattliias and Frederick Vienna captured Office of the Hungarian Pala- tine Negotiations for a Peace . . Death of Matthias Corvinus . Competitors for the Hungarian Throne Election of Wladislaus . . . Maximilian recovers Austria . Treaty of Presburg .... Death of Casimir of Poland Death of the Emperor Frede- rick III His Character Account of the Suabian League Accession of Maximilian I. Page 202 203 204 205 206 207 CHAPTER V. Wars of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. in Italy. — Pontificate of Alex- ander VI. — Interventio7i of Ferdinand the Catholic in Italy (pp. 208 — 252). 1494. Projects of Charles Vin. . .! Death of Ferdinand of Naples and Accession of Alfonso II. His Alliance with Pope Alex- ander VI ; Charles VIII., supported by Lodovico il Moro, invades Italy Lodovico, on the Death of his Nephew Giam Galeazzo, seizes Milan Treaty of Pietro de' Medici with Charles VIIL ... The Medici expelled .... Savonarola at Florence . . . : Charles enters that City . . His march to Rome .... Trepidation of Alexander VI. : Alliance between the Pope and the Sultan Story of Zizim I 1495. Treaty between the Pope and the French King .... Death of Zizim Ferdinand of Aragon protests against the Invasion of Naples Alfonso of Naples abdicates in favour of his son Ferdi- nand II Charles VIII. enters Naples . 208 1495. His impolitic Conduct . . . 218 League against France . . . 219 — Charles quits Naples . . . His Retreat and interview with 220 209 Savonarola Successes of the Duke of Or- 222 leans in Lombardy . . . — — Battle of Fornova 224 Treaty of Vercelli .... — Charles returns to France . . — 210 Ferdinand II. re-enters Naples 1496. The French evacuate the Nea- 225 210 politan Territory .... 226 — Death of Ferdinand II., and 211 Accession of Frederick II. . — 212 Failure of King Maximilian at 213 Leghorn — 214 Marriages of Don John and Margaret, and of tlie Arch- — duke Philip and Joanna . . — 215 Marriage of Catharine of Aragon and Prince Arthur . 227 216 1497. Mam-iage of the Infanta Isa- bella with Emanuel of Por- tugal — 217 She stipulates the Banishment of the Jews from Portugal . 228 Pope Alexander forbids Savo- narola the Pulpit .... — 218 Florentine Factions .... — XIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS A.I). Page 1497. Ci'imes of Pope Alexander VI. and tlie Boryia Family . . 228 1498. Savonai'ola rliullenged by a FrancisL-an Friar .... 230 The Ordeal 231 Savonarola burnt 233 Death of Charles VIII. . . .235 Accession of Louis XII. . . — (House of Orleans.) Governed by Cardinal d'Am- boise — Louis's liberal domestic Policy 236 Pi'ocures a Divorce from his wife Joanna — CfEsar Borgia made Duke of Valentinois 237 Louis marries Anne of Brittany 238 1499. Allies himself with Venice . . — The French invade Italy . . 239 1 jodovico Sforza flies from Milan — Louis XII. enters that city . 240 1500. Trivulzio evacuates it at the approach of Sforza ... — Sforza betrayed by the Swiss at Novara 241 Imprisoned in Finance . . . 242 The French assist the Borgias . — Ambition and Crimes of Caesar Borgia 243 He reduces Romagna ... — 1501. Marriage of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso d'Este ... — A.D. Page 1501. France and Spain agree to divide Naples 244 Duplicity of Ferdinand the Catholic — French Expedition to Naples . 245 Pope Alexander sanctions its Partition — Frederick II. retu'es into France 246 Gonsalvo de Cordova captures his son Don Ferrante . . — Louis's negotiations with Maxi- milian . 247 Louis and Ferdinand quarrel about the partition of Naples — The French expel the Span- iards — 1502. Journey of Philip and Joanna to Toledo — 1503. Treaty between Philip and Louis XII. respecting Naples 248 Ferdinand instructs Gonsalvo not to observe it ... . — Gonsalvo drives the French from Naples 249 Louis attacks Spain .... — Progress of Cjesar Borgia . . — Death of Pope Alexander VI. 250 Election and Death of Pius III. 251 Election of Pope Julius II. . 252 Disappointment of D'Amboise — CHAPTER VI. Affairs of Italy, Spain, and the 'Empire, doion to the League of Camliray, in 1508 (pp. 253—278). of 1503. Position of Csesar Borgia . Projects of Pope Julius II. . Last Adventures and Death Csesar Borgia .... Rout of the French on the Ga rigliano Death of Pietro de' Medici . Peace bet ween France and Spaii Ferdinand obtains Naples . Retrospect of Turkish History Reign of Bajazet II. . Venetian and Turkish War (1498—1502) . . 1504. Triple Treaty of Blois . . 1505. Louis XII. invested with th( Duchy of Milan . . . Death of Isabella of Castile Ximenes de Cisneros . . . The Archduke Philip and Kinc Ferdinand dispute the Re gency of Castile . . . Ferdinand courts the friend ship of Louis XII. . . . 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 1505. Ferdinand marries Germain of Foix 261 1506. The Concord of Salamanca . 262 Philip and Joanna in England. • — ■ The Mains Intircursus ... — Interview between Philip and Ferdinand in Spain . . .263 Philip and Joanna Sovereigns of Castile 264 Death of Philip — Melanchol}' of Joanna . . . 265 Ferdinand's Voyage to Naples — 1507. Ferdinand and Louis XII. at Savona 266 Louis reduces Genoa . . . .267 Ferdinand resumes his autho- rity in Spain — His ingratitude to Gonsalvo de Cordova 268 Margaret, Governess of the Netherlands — Reforms in the Empire . . . 269 Circles of the Empire . . .270 OF THE FIRST VOLUME. XV A.D. Page 1507. Council of Regency .... 270 Diet of Constance — Systems of Taxation . . . . 271 1508. Maximilian's Expedition into Italy 272 He assumes the Title of Roman Emperor Elect . . 273 He outlaws the V^enetians . . — But is compelled to mtike Peace with them — A.D. Page 1508. Insolent Triumph of the Vene- tians 274 Conquests of Pope Julius II. , — Machinations against Venice . 275 League of Cambray .... — Hypocritical Pretences of the Allied Sovereigns . . . .277 1509. Pisa sold to the Florentines . 278 CHAPTER VII. From the League of Camhray, in 1508, to the Death of F ope Julius II., in 1513 (pp. 279—311). 1509. Pope Julius II. excommuni- cates the Venetians . . . 279 Battle of Agnadello .... — Successes of Louis XII. . . . 280 The Papal Army reduces Ko- magna — Lukewarmness of the German Diet — Distress of the Venetians . .281 They release their Italian Sub- jects — Maximilian besieges Padua . 282 The Venetians I'ecover several Places 283 1510. They are reconciled with the Pope — Project of Julius II. to clear Italy of Foreigners . . . 284 He courts King Henry VIII. . — And forms an alliance with the Swiss 285 Death of Cardinal d'Amboise . — Julius connects himself with King Ferdinand .... 286 Quarrels with the Duke of Fer- rara — Campaign in North Italy . .287 Diet of Augsburg — Cruelties at Vicenza .... 288 Allbnso of Ferrara excommu- nicated — Louis XII. assembles a Council at Tours 289 Treaty of Blois 290 Julius II. beleaguered by the French at Bologna ... — 1 5 1 1 . He captures Mirandola . . .291 Congress at Bologna .... 293 The French drive the Papal Forces from Bologna . . . 294 Juhus cited before the Council of Pisa 295 He summons the General Coun- cil of St. John Lateran . . — 299 300 302 303 1511. Retrospect of Spanish History 295 Expedition to Africa . . . 296 Ximenes founds a University at Alcala — Hypocritical Policy of Ferdi- nand 297 The Holt/ League — Treaty between Spain and England 298 Council of Pisa adjourned to Milan — Maximilian assumes the title of Pontifex Maximus . . . Campaign in Italy .... 1512. Exploits of Gaston of Foix Louis XII. instructs him to depose the Pope .... Battle of Ravenna .... Death of Gaston 304 His Victory fatal to the French — Council of the. Lateran opened — Julius II. seizes Parma and Piacenza 305 The Members of the Holy League combine against Florence 300 State of that City 307 The Medici restored, and a Ransom extorted .... — Character of the new Govern- ment — Ferdinand's Designs on Na- varre 308 Claims of his Wife, Germaine of Ft)ix, to that Kingdom . — He uses the English Forces for his purpose 309 He overruns Navarre . . .310 1 5 1 3. Effects a Truce with Louis XII. — Navarre incorporated with Castile 311 Death of Pope Julius II. . . — His Character — XVI CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII. The Commencement of Ocean Navigation and Discovery of the New World. — Origin nf Embassies. — Progress of the Art of War (pp. 812 — 331). Invention of the IVIariner's Compass . Maritime Discoveries of the Spaniards and Portuguese .... Claims to Undiscovered Lands Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope Vasfo de Gama sails to CaHcut Theories concei'niiii); tlie Earth Geography of the Church . . Circumnavigation of Africa Early Voyages to America Christopher Columbus . . . Origin of his Theory in Search of a Patron Bargain with Queen Isa- bella Discovers the West Indies Pope Alexander VI. divides the Papo 312 .313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 World 322 Treaty of Tordesillas Second Voyage of Columbus . . . Amerigo Vespucci Columbus sent Home in Chains . His Last Voyage and Death . . . Further Discoveries of the Spaniards I'ortuguese Con<(uests in the East . Voyage of Sebastian Cabot . . . Page 322 323 324 .325 32G Origin of Embassies — FlorentineandVenetian Ambassadors 327 Papal Legates and Nuncios . . . 328 Systems of Modern Warfare . . . 329 Introduction of Gunnery .... 330 Swiss Infantry and German Lance- Knights — Cavalry Forces of Eastern Europe . — Introduction of Standing Armies . 331 CHAPTER IX. From the Election of Fope Leo X. to the Election of Charles V. as Emperor, and the Diet of Worms, 1513 — 1521 (pp. 332 — 373). 335 336 337 1513. Education and Character of Leo X 332 His Nepotism and Policy . . 333 Alliance of Louis XII. and the Venetians — Treaty of Mechlin .... 334 The French overrun the Mila- nese — But are speedily expelled . Battle of Flodden . . . Henry VIII. invades France Maximilian serves under him Battle of the Spurs . . Capture of Tournay .... — The Swiss invade Burgundy . — Louis XII. reconciles himself with the Pope 338 A general Truce — Pise of Wolsey 340 1514. Marriage of Louis XII. and Mary of England .... — 1515. Death of Louis XII 341 Accession of Francis I. . . . 342 His Characteristics .... — He abandons the Government to his Mother Louise ... — Charles of Bourbon made Con- stable 343 1515. Francis prepares for an Italian Campaign Enters into a Treaty with the Archduke Charles And with Henry VHI. . . . Appoints his Mother Louise Pegent The French cross the Alps Surjirise Prospero Colonna at Villa Franca Treachery of the Swiss . . . Battle of Marignano .... Sforza abdicatesMilan in favour of Francis I Francis allies himself with Leo Their interview at Bologna Conspiracy against Leo . . French Concordat .... Francis's Treaty with the Swiss League against France . 1516. Death of Ferdinand the Catholic His Character Austrian and Hungarian Mar- riages Maximilian's bootless Expedi- tion against Milan . . . Education of Charles V. Will of Ferdinand the Catholic 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 .353 354 355 OF THE FIEST VOLUME. XVU A.n. Page 1516. Ximones and Adrian Boyens Eef^cnts in Spain .... 356 Harsh treatment of NavaiTe by Ximcnes — Treaty of Noyon between Charles and Francis . . . 357 Henrj' of Nassau marries the Heiress of Orange .... 358 Peace of Brussels .... — Decline of Venice .... — 1517. Charles proceeds to Spain . . 359 Dismissal and Death of Ximenos — Character of his Go vei-nment . 300 Unpopular Measures of Charles — Eapacity of his Netherlaud Courtiers — Retrospect of Turkish and Hungarian History . . . 361 1512. Selim dethrones his father, Bajazet — Conquestsof Selim I. in the East 3G2 1516. Death of Wladislaus VI. of Hungary — Distracted state of that Country — Minorityof Louis II. . . .363 John Zapolya, Voyvode of Transylvania — A.D. Page 1517. Pretended Ci'usadc of Leo X. . 364 152n. Death of Sultan Selim . . . 365 1518. Treaty between Francis I. and Henry VIII 366 1519. Death of the Emperor Maxi- milian I — His Character 367 Candidates for the Imperial Crown 368 The Elector Frederick refuses it 369 Election of Charles V. . . . — Electoral Union of the Rhine . — Discontent of Charles's Spanish Subjects 370 Insurrection in Castile ... — 1520. Charles visits England . . .371 Interview between Henry VIII. and Francis I — Charles crowned at Aix-la- Chapelle ;j72 1521. Diet of Worms — Affair of Wiirtemberg . . . 373 Ciiarles cedes the Austrian Dominions to his Brother Ferdinand — CHAPTER X. The Historij of the Heformation doionto the Edict of Worms, in 1521, and Luther's Concealment at the Wartburg. — General A fairs of Europe to Death of Pope Leo X., 1521 (pp. 874—407). Rise and Progress of the Papal Power 374 Reaction against Rome . . . 375 The Papal Schism .... — Councils of Pisa and Constance — Wickliffitcs and Hussites . . 376 French Reformers . . . .377 English and. German griev- ances 378 Council of Basle — Felix V. (Anti-Pope) and the Hermits of Ripaiile ... — The Galilean Church . . .379 German Concordats .... 380 Relation of England and Spain to Rome — , Triumph of the Roman See . 381 Vices of the Clergy . . . . — Atheism of the Italian Priest- hood 382 Classic liberality of Rome . . 383 Learning of the Middle Ages . — Revival of Classical Learning . 384 Precursors of the Reformation 385 Restorers of Hebrew Literature — E'pistoloi ohscuroruni viroruni . 386 1483. Rise of Martin Luther . . .386 1483. Doctrine of Indulgences . . 387 Traffic in Indulgences . . . 388 Albert of Brandenburg and John Tetzel 389 1517. Tetzel comes in contact with Luther 391 Luther's Theses — Luther supported by the Elec- tor of Saxony — Indifference of Leo X. . . . 392 Luther's controversy with Eck — 1518. Luther before Cajetanus . . 393 He escapes from Augsburg . 394 Pope Leo's Bull respecting In- dulgences 395 Negotiations of Miltitz ... — 1519. Luther writes to the Pope . . 396 Disputation at Leipsic ... — 152.0. Circumstances favourable to Luther 397 His popularity 398 Leo's Bull Exuro-e Domine . . 399 Its impotence — 1520. Luther's second Letter to the Pope 400 Erasmus supports Luther . . — Luther burns the Pope's Bull . 401 XVm CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1521. Luther is excommunicated . Is summoned before tiie Em peror at Worms . . . His a]i].(!arance at the Diet . Ho is riismissed .... Edict of Worms .... 402 403 405 A.D. Page 1521. Luther conveyed to the Wart- burg 405 Ulrich Zwlngli • — Eeformation in Switzerland . 406 Contrast between Zwingli and Luther 407 CHAPTER XI. From the Spanish Insurrection, 1520, to the Battle of Favia and Capture of Francis I. (pp. 408 — 453). . Charles persecutes the Moors . 42it Adrian arrives in Rome. . . 430 His Unpopularity — Retrospect of Turkish His- tory 431 . Accession of Solyman I. . . — His Warlike Projects . . . 432 . He takes Belgrade .... 433 . Coniiuors Rhotles 434 Fate of the Knights .... 435 . League of Rome 436 Tlie Constable Charles of Bour- bon 437 Ill-treatment by the French Court 438 He leagues himself with Charles V. and Henry VIII. . . . 43!» Who invade France .... 440 Flight of Bourbon . . . .441 The Invasion fails . . . .442 Bourbon declared a Traitor . 443 The French enter Italy ... — Death of Pope Adrian VI. . 444 Election of Clement VII. . . — His Character 445 . Campaign in Italy .... — Defeat of the French . . . .446 Death of Bayard — Boiu-bon swears fealty to Henry VIII 447 His fruitless invasion of France — Francis I. invades the Mila- nese 448 Clement VII. treats with Francis 449 . Albany detached to Naples . 450 Battle of Pavia 451 Defeat and Capture of Francis 452 His celebi-ated Letter . . . 453 1520. Disturbances in Spain . . . 408 1521 The Santa Junta — Civil War 409 1521. Capture and Execution of Pa- dilla 410 The Hermandad in Valencia . 1520 Ri^•alry of the French King and the Emperor .... 411 1521 The French invade Navarre . 412 1522 Repulsed by the Spaniards . . — The Duke of Bouillon defies 1523 the Emperor 413 Rapacious Policy of Leo X. . 414 His Ti-eaty with Chai-les V. . 415 His Proceedings against the French 416 Conference at Calais .... 417 Machinations of Wolsej' . . — Treaty of Bruges 418 The Pope excommunicates Francis I — Commencement of the Rivalry between France and Austria 419 Cabals of the French Court 420 The French lose Milan . . . 421 Illness and Death of Leo X. . 422 1524 His Character 423 His Unpopularity at Rome . . — Confusion upon Leo X.'s death 424 Election of Pope Adrian VI. . — The French defeated in Lom- bardy 425 Genoa taken by the Imperial- ists 426 Charles V. visits England . ." — The English invade France 427 1525. Charles arrives in Spain . . 428 Gains the affections of his Spanish subjects, but curtails their liberties — OF THE FIRST VOLUME. XIX CHAPTER XII. From the Battle of I'avia to the Peace of Cambray and Marriage of Francis I. and Eleanor (pp. 454 — 502). A.D. Piige 1523. Moderation of Charles V. . . 454 Alarm in France 4.55 Henry VIII.'s Change of Pohcy 456* Wolsey's secret Negotiations . 457 Negotiations between Henry and Charles 458 Quarrel between Charles and Wolsey 459 Treaty between England and France 460 Charles's Proposals to Francis. 461 Abject Conduct of Francis . . — His Concessions 462 He is carried Prisoner to Ma- drid 463 His sister Margaret visits him . 464 Francis abdicates, but retracts 465 1526. Treaty of Madrid 466 Francis's Protest against it . . 467 lleriections on his and the Em- peror's Conduct — Liberation of Francis . . . 468 His arrival in France . . . 469 He refuses to ratify the Treaty of Madrid — Vacillating Policy of Clement Vn 470 Conspiracy of Morone . . . 47 1 League of Cognac 473 Lukewaminess of Francis . . 474 Marriage of Charles V. . . . — Du])licity of Wolsey's Policy . 475 iNJargaret. of Valois declines the suit of Henry Vni. . .476 Marries the King of NavaiTe . — Wolsey's abject Hypocrisy . . 477 Bourbon takes possession of Milan — The Pope captured by Cardinal Colonna 478 Clement's Vengeance . . . 479 Necessitous Condition of Bour- bon — A.D. Page 1526. Frunsberg undertakes an Ex- pedition into Italy . . . .479 1527. He forms a junction with Bourbon 480 Bourbon's March to Rome . . 48 1 A Mutiny, and Death of Fruns- berg 482 Trepidation of Clement VII. . 48.'5 Capture of Rome and Death of Bourbon 484 S.ack of Rome 485 Capitulation of Clement VII. . 486 Revolt at Florence .... 487 Conduct and Policy of Charles V 488 Treatment of the Pope ... — The Emperor's Apology . . 489 His Treaty with Clement . . 490 Alliance between Henry VIII. and Francis 1 491 Wolsey's Embassy to Francis . — Treaty of Amiens 492 Projected Marriage of Henry and Ren^e 493 The French take Genoa and Pavia — 1528. The French repulsed at Naples 494 Question of Henry VIII.'s Divorce 495 1529. Treaty of Barcelona . . . .496 Death and Character of Wolsey 497 Last Revolution of Genoa . . 498 The Emperor challenges Francis 499 French Campaigns in Italy . 500 Peace of Cambray .... 501 Disgraceful Conduct and Pro- test of Francis — Termination of the French Wars in Italy 502 1530. The French Princes dismissed from Spain — Francis marries Eleanor, the Emperor's sister .... — HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE. IXTRODUCTION. THE greater part of Europe was first united by the conquests of the Romans, who imparted to it the germs of that charac- teristic civilization which distinguishes it from the other quarters of the globe, and which the Romans themselves had for the most part derived from the Greeks. They also transmitted to a great portion of Europe their language and their laws. Latin was long the common language of the learned in Europe, when it sub- sisted, as a spoken tongue, only in the corruptions of the Italian, French, Spanish, and other dialects ; and Roman laws still form the basis of the codes of several European countries. Before the close of the fifth century of our era, the Roman Empire of the West had fallen before the arms of the northern Barbarians ; and though a shadow of Rome^s ancient power and name still survived at Constantinople, Europe had lost its former political unity, and was become again divided into a number of separate States. These were never again united under one dominion, and after experiencing among themselves a variety of political changes during the thousand years which elapsed from the fall of Rome till about the middle of the fifteenth century, a period commonly called the Middle Ages, had at that epoch for the most part formed themselves into those great and powerful nations which constitute modern Europe. The last great event in this process of transformation was the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, by which the small remains of the Roman Empire of the East were annihilated, and a new Power was introduced into the European system. But during the Middle Ages an influence arose which by means of religion again gave, at least to Western Europe, a certain sort I. B 2 GROWTH AND POWER OF THE CHURCH. [Introd. of unity. It is one of the most singular facts in the history of mankind that a religion whose chief characteristic is the renounc- ing of this world, should have been the means of elevating its ministers, and especially its high priest and director, to a vast height of temporal wealth and power. The irruption of the bar- barous nations pretty nearly destroyed the last remains of learn- ing and culture in Europe, and steeped it in the grossest igno- rance. Of such a state, superstition is the natural concomitant, and as the clergy were almost the only persons who had any degree of education, they soon discovered what a powerful instrument they possessed for acquiring worldly as well as spiritual power, by working on the superstitious fears of the people. Whether in such a state of society their influence was beneficial or otherwise we shall not inquire. It suffices for his- torical purposes to state the notorious fact that in .every European country some of the finest lands became the property of eccle- siastics ; and they further increased their revenues by the institu- tion of tithes, by the donations and bequests of the faithful, and by numerous other devices for obtaining money. These means of wealth were partly acquired under the earlier Christian Em- perors ; but they were vastly increased after the invasion of the Barbarians, through the crasser state of ignorance and suiDerstition which ensued. But the wealth and influence of the clergy would not have sufficed to give them any political power out of their respective countries. In order to obtain a European influence, a supreme head of the Church was required, who should wield the sum of ecclesiastical power by directing and controlling his clerical sub- ordinates in the various countries of Europe. Some degree of this power had been acquired in very early times of Christianity by the Bishops of Rome ; partly from the authority which they claimed as the reputed successors of St. Peter^ partly from the prestige which naturally belonged to the name of Imperial Rome. This power was vastly increased by the talents and audacious pretensions of several ambitious Pontifls, and especially Popes Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII., so that at last the See of Rome even asserted its pretensions to depose monarchs and excommunicate nations. This new moral force was more than co-extensive with, though not so absolute and immediate as, the physical power of Imperial Rome, and Europe, in another manner, again became united as Christendom. This union was strikingly displayed by the iNTKOi..] EFFECTS OF MODERN INVENTIONS. 3 Crusades — the wars of the European Christians against the Infidels of Asia. The Imperial and the Papal dominion of Rome were respec- tively acquired by means of two powers which form the sum of human capability and govern the world — physical and intellectual force. But everything necessarily falls through the same means by which it was erected. The Roman Empire^ founded by arms, fell before the arms of the Barbarians ; the Papal dominion, esta- blished by the subjugation of the mind, has been already in great part overthrown by an intellectual revolution, and in spite of some symptoms of recovery it can hardly be doubted that in process of time its fall will be complete. Before the termination of the dark ages, two inventions had been made which were destined to have important effects on modern Europe — gunpowder and the printing press. Of these, one revolutionized the methods of physical force or warfare, whilst the other gave new vigour to the operations of the intel- lect. Had gunpowder been known during the existence of the Roman Empire, it would hardly have been subdued by the Barbarians ; had the press been invented, it may be doubted whether the Popes would have succeeded in establishing their power. The employment of gunpowder gave a first and fatal blow to feudalism, by rendering useless the armour and the castles of the nobles. It made warfare more extensive and more scientific, and, combined with the establishment of a professional soldiery and standing armies, introduced those new methods of fighting which were necessary to decide the quarrels between nations which had grown numerous and powerful. In like manner in the intellectual world, the introduction of printing, and the consequent diffusion of knowledge, prepared the minds of men for that resistance to the Papal doctrines and pretensions which had already partially manifested itself among the higher and more enlightened classes. Its efiects produced the Reforma- tion, — one of the first great revolutions which we shall have to contemplate in the history of modern Europe, The practical application of another great invention, the mariner's compass, and its effects on navigation and commerce, belong to a rather later period, and will be considered further on. By the Protestant Reformation the religious bond of European unity was in a great degree broken, though not altogether de- stroyed. But a new bond was springing up from the very dis- sensions of Europe; we mean a system of international policy and 4 ORIGIN OF MODERN EUROREAN SYSTE:\r.' [Ixtrod. laWj to which the various nations submitted themselves and which was maintained through negotiations, embassies, treaties, and finally by the theory of the balance of power. During the darker ages the aggressions committed by one State upon another were viewed with indifference by the rest ; and thus, for instance, the con- quests of the English in France were utterly disregarded. But when, by the consolidation of the great monarchies, and the esta- blishment of standing armies, the various European States were able to enter upon long and distant wars with one another, the aggressive ambition of one became the common concern of all. Leagues and alliances were made to check and repress the attempts of grasping sovereigns, and to preserve an equilibrium of power. Europe thus began to form one large Republic of nations, acknowledging the same system of international law, and becoming amenable to the voice of public opinion. Thus the history of modern Europe jDresents, in fact, as much unity as that of Greece in early times. Composed of a cluster of independent States, of which one, now Sparta, now Athens, now Thebes, aspired to the hegemony, her only rallying cry was against the Barbarians, as that of Christendom once was against the Infidels ; whilst her chief bond of union was also a religious one, manifested in the Amphictyonic Council and the games at Olympia and other places, which bear some analogy to the General Councils, and the festivals, and jubilees of the Roman Church. It is, then, the change from a unity cemented by religion to a political unity which chiefly distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of the Middle Ages. The beginning of this change dates from the invasion of Italy by the French towards the close of the fifteenth century. But as the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and the destruction of the last vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire, have commonly been regarded, and we think with reason, as the true epoch of modern history, it has been adopted in the present work. The real importance of that event, however, and what renders it truly an epoch, lies more in the final and complete establishment in Europe of the Ottoman power than in the fall of the Byzantine Empire, which had long been efiete, and must at no distant period have either perished of natural decay or been swallowed up by some of its more powerful Christian neighbours. And for a considerable period after the fall of Constantinople, the chief intei'est of European his- tory centres in the progress of the Turks, and the efforts made to oppose them. Introd.] EISE of the OTTOMAN POWER. 5 At the epoch we have chosen, Constantine Palgeologus, the last feeble heir of Grecian culture and Roman magnificence, still enjoyed at Constantinople the title of Emperor. His Empire, however, was in the last stage of decay; though the walls and suburbs of his capital comprised a great part of his dominions, he had been compelled to share even those narrow precincts with the Republics of Genoa and Venice, and, what was still worse, Constantinople existed only by sufferance of the Turks. Sultan Bajazet I., surnamed Ilderim, or the Thunder- bolt (1389 — 1403), had compelled the Greek Emperor to pay him tribute, to admit a Turkish colony at ConstantinoiDle, having four mosques and the independent jurisdiction of a cadi, and even to permit coins with the Sultan's superscription to be minted there. From year to year all Europe looked forward with unavailing anxiety and compassion to the certain fall of the city in which the Christian faith had been established as the religion of the Empire ; and at length, in May, 1453, Con- stantinople yielded to the arms of Sultan Mahomet II. With its capture the curtain falls on the nations of antiquity; and the final establishment of the Turks in Europe, the latest settlers among the various races which composed its population, forms the first great episode of modern history. The lingering vestiges of antiquity then vanished altogether ; the Caesars were no longer represented, except by an unreal shadow in Germany; and the language of the Greek classical authors, which till then the scholars of Italy could acquire in Greece in tolerable purity as a living tongue, rapidly degenerated into the barbarous dialect now spoken in Greece. The decline and fall of the Eastern Empire, as well as the rise and progress of the Ottoman Turks, who during some centuries filled Europe with the dread of their power, and now by their weakness excite either its cupidity or its solicitude, have been described by Gibbon;^ but as neither that historian nor Mr. Hallam, in his brief account of the Ottomans,^ has entered into any detailed description of their institutions and government, we shall here supply a few particulars that may serve to illustrate some parts of the following narrative.^ * See particularly the Decline and Fall, tacuzenus, LJucas, &c. ; Seadeddin, the ch. Ixiii. — Ixviii. celebrated Turkish historian, the tutor * Middle Ages, ch. vi, and general of Mahomet III. (translated ^ The principal authorities for the fall by Brattuti, Cronica dell' Origine e Pro- of the Greek Empire and the establishment gressidella Casa Ottomana) ; Anncdes Sid- of the Turks in Europe are tlie Byzan- tanorum Othmanidariim,eA.. Leunclavius; tine historians, ChalcoeondyleSjPhrantzes, Mouradjea d'Ohsson, Tableau Ghiiml do Pachymei'es, Xicephorus Gregoras, Can- V Empire Othoman (Paris, 1820, 7 vols.); 6 INSTITUTIONS OF ORCIIAN AND ALAEDDIN. [Istroi>. It was Osman, or Othman^ (1299 — 1326), who, by the extent of his conquests and the virtual independence of the Iconium Sultans which he acquired, became the recognized founder and eponymous hero of the Ottoman Empire. To the territories which Othman had won by arms a permanent organization was given under his son and successor Orchan (1326 — 1360). This, however, was the work of Orchan's brother, Alaeddin, who acted as his Vizier. Renouncing all share in his father's inheritance, Alaeddin retired to a village near Prusa, now through Orchan's conquests the capital of the Ottoman dominions, and being a man of talent, and well skilled both in civil and military affairs, he applied himself to model, with his brother's approbation, the institutions of the State. Three subjects chiefly engaged his attention : the coinage, the people's dress, and the organization of the army. Among the rights of Islam sovereignty, those of the Prince to coin money and to have his name mentioned in the public prayers on Friday occupy the first place. The sovereignty of Orchan was marked by gold and silver coins being struck with his superscription in 1328. His name was also inserted in the public prayers ; but for a considerable period the Ottoman Princes were prayed for only as temporal sovereigns, and it was not till after the conquest of Egypt by Selim I. in 1517 that they became the spiritual heads of Islam. The last remnants of the Abassid Caliphate were then transferred to the race of Othman; Mohammed Ab'ul Berekeath, Sheikh of Mecca, sent to the conqueror of the Mamelukes, by his son Abu Noumi, the keys of the Caaba upon a silver platter, and raised him to be the pro- tector of the holy cities, Mecca and Medina. The Sultan, thus become, by a most singular revolution, the representative of the Prophet, the High Priest and Imaum of all the Faithful, added to his temporal titles that of ZiWullali, the shadow or image of God upon earth. He was now prayed for as Imaum and Caliph, and his name was joined with those of the Prophet himself, his pos- terity, and the first Caliphs. The regulations of Alaeddin with regard to dress were princi- pally intended to distinguish the different classes of the people ; Von Hammer, Gcsch. dcs osmanischcn ' Osman is the true name of tliis prince, Beichcs ; Zinke'isen, Gesch. dcs osmcmisch, whence the Turks still call themselves Ecickcs in Europa ; Fallmeraycr, Gesch. Osmanlis. But the corruj^ted form Oth- der Halbinsel Morea ; Finlay, Medieval man, and the epithet Ottoman derived from Greece, and Greece under Ottoman and it, are become so established by custom, Venetian Bomination ; Creasy, Hist, of the that we shall continue to retain them ; and Ottoman Turks. But the early history of the same practice will be observed with the Turks rests on uncertain traditions. regard to other Turkish names. Introd.] TUKKISH army. SAIM AND TIMAELI. 7 and a white turban was assigned, as the most honourable colour, to the Court of the Sultan and to the soldiery. But of all the measures then adopted, those respecting the army were by far the most important. As the Turkish forces had hitherto principally consisted of light cavalry, which were of course wholly ineffective against towns, Alaeddin applied himself to the creation of an infantry on the Byzantine model, and under his care, and that of Kara Chalil Tchendereli, another Minister of Orchan^s, arose the celebrated corps of the Janissaries.^ We shall not, however", here trace in detail the origin and progress of the Ottoman army and other institutions, but shall view them as wholes, and when they had attained, at a later period, to their full organization and development. The Turkish army may be divided into two grand classes : those who served by obligation of their land tenm-e, and those who received pay. All conquered lands were divided among the Spahis (horsemen), on conditions which, like the feudal tenures of Christian Europe, obliged the holders to serve in the field. Here, however, ends the likeness between the Turkish Timar and the European fief. The T'nnarli were not, like the Christian knighthood, a proud and hereditary aristocracy, almost inde- pendent of the Sovereign, and having a voice in his councils, but the mere creatures of the Sultanas breath. The Ottoman consti- tution recognized no order of nobility, and was essentially a democratic despotism. The military tenures were modified by Amurath I., who divided them into large and smaller [siamet and timar), the holders of which were called Saim and Tiruarli. Every cavalier, or Spahi, who had helped to conquer by his bravery, was rewarded with a fief, which, whether large or small, was called a Kllidsch (sword). The symbols of his investment were a sword and banner {Kilidsch and Sandjah) . • The smaller fiefs were of the yearly value of 20,000 aspers^ and under ; the larger were all that exceeded that estimate. The holder of a fief valued at 3,000 aspers was obliged to furnish one man fully armed and equipped, who in tenures of that low value could be no other than himself. The holders of larger fiefs were obliged to find a horseman for every 5,000 aspers of yearly value; so that ' Clialcoconrlyles (lib. i. p. 8, ed. Par.) Von Hammer, GescJdcte des osm. Belches, erroneously ascribes the institution of the Th. i. S. 93 und Anm., S. 581 : Zinkeisen, Janissaries to Othman I.; and Leunclavius B. i. S. 128 Anm. 3. {Ann. Tiircici, p. 13, and note, p. 129, ed, ^ Early in the fifteenth century an asper Frankf. 1596) and Marsigli (S^«to militetre was equal to the tenth part of a Venetian clelV Imperio Ottomano, t. i. p. 67), still ducat, or about one sliilling English, but more erroneously to Amurath I. See it afterwards greatly dwindled in value. 8 TURKISH AEMY. — SPAHIS, AKINDSHI, ETC. [Introd. a Timarli might have to furnish four men, and a Saim as many as nineteen. In general the Spahi was armed with a bow and arrows, a light slender lance, a short sword or scimitar, some- times also an iron mace, and a small round shield {rotella) . At a later period the morion and cuirass were adopted. Among the paid troops were the " Spahis of the Porte," who came next in rank to the Timarli. They were distinguished by the splendour of their accoutrements and the excellence of their horses. Down to the end of the sixteenth century the bow was their missile weapon, and it was with reluctance that they adopted the use of fire-arms. The Spahis of the Porte prided themselves on being the guard of the Sultan. They were composed of Chris- tian slaves, and were at last divided into four different corps of different degrees of honour. These, and the Spahis who served by tenure, formed the most valuable portion of the Turkish cavalry. The Muteferrika was a small corps which formed the more immediate body-guard of the Sultan, and never quitted his person. It was composed entirely of the sons of distinguished Turks, whose number, which was at first only 100, rose in the time of Selim II. to 500. Besides these may be enumerated the unpaid cavalry and the mounted auxiliaries. The former were the Akindshi (scouts or runners), who received neither pay nor maintenance: all they en- joyed was an exemption from taxation, and they were expected to provide for themselves by robbery and plunder. They were mostly composed of peasants on the Siamets and Timars. Their usual arms were a short sword, iron mace, coat of mail, and shield and lance; the bow was rare among them. They formed the vanguard of the army, which they generally preceded by a day or two. Woe to the land which they visited ! They came and went, no one knew whither, leaving desolation in their track, and carrying off the inhabitants into slavery, for which purpose they came pro- vided with chains. They were often, however, fatal to the Turks themselves, either by being driven in upon the main body and thus creating inextricable confusion, or by the want of fodder and provisions which their devastations occasioned. Their number was estimated at 200,000, but it was seldom that more than 25,000 or 30,000 appeared in the field at once ; and by degrees, under a more regular system of warfare, they were dispensed with altogether. On the whole, when the Ottoman Empire had at- tained its highest pitch, about the middle of the sixteenth century, the Turkish cavalry was estimated at 565,000 men: viz., 200,000 Introd.] TURKISH ARMY. INFANTRY, AZAB, JANISSARIES. 9 Spahis who served by tenure, 40,000 Spahis of the Porte, 200,000 Akindshi, and 125,000 auxiliaries. The Turk, naturally a horseman, was but ill adapted to foot service. Many vain attempts were made to form a standing corps of Turkish infantry, though a light-armed militia, called Azah, was occasionally raised. These amounted to some 40,000 men, but were little esteemed as soldiers. They served as food for powder, fought in the van, and at the storming of towns formed -with their bodies a bridge for the Janissaries, It was these last that were the pith of the Turkish armies, and long the most formidable troops in Europe. They at first consisted of 1,000 Christian children, who were torn from their parents, com- pelled to embrace Islam, and trained up in all the duties of a soldier. Such was the origin of the famous corps of Janissaries, literally, " new troops," from jeni, new, and tsheri, a troop : a name given to them by the holy dervish Hadji Beytash, founder of the order of the Beytashis, still dispersed over and venerated in the Ottoman Empire. Hadji Beytash consecrated the first recruits by throwing his sleeve over their felt caps, in commemo- ration of which a piece of white cloth was affixed to the back of their caps. At first their numbers were recruited yearly with drafts of 1,000 Christian youths or with renegades; for in time many Christian youths, seeing the privileges and advantages en- joyed by the Janissaries, entered their ranks either voluntarily or at the instance of their parents. Thrace, Macedonia, Albania, Servia, and Bulgaria were the chief countries whence the supply was drawn. When the Janissaries had become an established corps, a small body of soldiers, headed by a captain, proceeded every five years, or oftener if required, from place to place ; the inhabitants were ordered to assemble their sons of the age of from twelve to fourteen years, from whom the captain selected the handsomest and strongest, as well as those who gave token of peculiar talent. The youths thus chosen were instructed in the Seraglio at Constantinople in the Turkish language and religion, and carefully trained in all martial exercises : those who displayed more than ordinary abilities were destined to civil employments under the government; the rest were drafted into the Janissaries, and were condemned like monks to a life of celibacy, in order that all their enerafies mio-ht be devoted to the Sultan's service. But high pay and good living were inducements to enter the corps. Their officers took their names from the kitchen. Thus their colonel was called "first soup-maker;'' the next in command. 10 TURKISH ARMY. — JANISSARIES. [Introd. " first cook/^ &c. By this singular institution the advantages of European talent^ strength, and courage were combined with the fanatical obedience known only in the East ; and one of the chief forces of the Ottomans, drawn from the very marrow of the Chris- tians whom they had subdued, served to promote their further subjugation. The dress of the Janissaries was a long tight coat reaching to the ankles, the skirts of which, on the march or in action, were tucked up to the waist. Their arms were at first a shield, bow and arrows, scimitar, and long knife or dagger. It was not till the latter part of the sixteenth century that they began to carry arquebuses. In 1515, Selim, having quelled the insolence of the Janissaries by the execution of their commander, appointed in his stead an Aga, selected from his own household troops, and made other alterations among the officers in the chief command. The Seyhanbashi, or commander, had previously risen by seniority from the lowest rank of officers. The Aga of the Janissaries had the power of life and death over his men; he ranked higher than all other Agas, and enjoyed a seat in the Divan. Like the Prgetorian Bands of Rome, the Janissaries at length became formidable to their masters. At the accession of Maho- met II. they raised a revolt, which he found it necessary to quell by a present of money; the act was converted into a precedent, and from this time forward every Sultan at his accession was obliged to court their goodwill by a donation, the amount of which went on continually increasing. Insubordination and inso- lence were followed by degeneracy — the consequence of the breach of ancient discipline. The first innovation was the introduction of native Turks among the Janissaries ; the origin of which practice cannot be accurately ascertained, though it was certainly frequent in the middle of the sixteenth century. These Turks obtained their appointment by favour, and had not gone through the severe course of discipline to which the Christian slaves were sub- jected. A consequence of the introduction of the Turks was per- mission to marry, which first began to be partially allowed, and became general before the end of the century. Thus the bonds of discipline were insensibly retaxed ; the children of the Janis- saries next claimed to be admitted by hereditary right, and be- came a burden to the State by drawing their pay and maintenance even in their infancy; while their fathers, no longer employed in actual warfare, often degenerated into peaceable tradesmen. The custom of kidnapping Christian children for recruits seems to Introd.] civil institutions. — THE SULTAN. 11 have fallen into disuse about the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury; while that of intrusting the high offices of state to Christian slaves educated in the Seraglio had already ceased under Selim II. Another cause of the decline of the Janissaries was the great in- crease in their numbers. At first they amounted to only 5,000 or 6,000 men; in the middle of the sixteenth century thpy numbered from 10,000 to 15,000; and in the course of "the following one they gradually increased to 100,000, not a quarter of whom were employed in active service. Our own age has beheld their extinction. The preceding description of the Turkish army will serve to explain the secret of their conquests. The whole nation formed one vast camp, liable to be called into immediate service without the tedious preliminary of raising money for their maintenance ; while the Janissaries and the Spahis of the Porte constituted a standing army of the best description long before a permanent force had been organized by any modern European nation. We will now take a brief survey of the chief civil and religious institutions of the Ottoman Turks. Mahomet II., though em- phatically styled Al Fatih, or the Conqueror, was also eminently distinguished as a political administrator. It was he who first reduced the political usages of the Ottomans into a code by his Kanuname, or Book of Laws. Solyman the Magnificent excelled Mahomet in this respect only by extending his regulations, whence he obtained the name of ^Z Kanuni, or the Lawgiver. Bajazet I. was the first of the Ottoman house who assumed the title of Sultan. His predecessors had contented themselves with that of Emir. The Sultan, or Grand Signer, whose chief temporal title was Padishah, or Great King, possessed the entire legislative power. The Sultan promulgated his decrees in Finnans, or simple com- mands, and Hattisherifs , or Imperial rescripts ; the collection of which forms the canons to be observed by the diSerent branches of administration. These canons he could alter by his own arbi- trary will. The union of administrative power both in spiritual and temporal afiairs was the grand secret of the Sultan's power. But from this resulted two consequences : it made the fate of the Ottoman Empire to depend very much on the personal character of the Sovereign ; and it obliged him, from the weight of busi- ness which it involved, to delegate to another a great share of his power. The officer who thus relieved the Sultan of his cares was the 12 THE GRAND VIZIER. — THE SUBLIME PORTE. [Introd. Grand Vizier, literally " bearer of a burden/' some of which ministers became almost the virtual Sovereigns of the Empire. Alaeddin, brother of Orchan already mentioned, may be regarded as the first Grand Vizier ; but his power was very inferior to that wielded by such men as Ibrahim Pasha, Rustem, or Mahomet Sokolli. It^was Mahomet II. who, after the extension of his dominions by the conquest of Constantinople, first invested the Grand A^izier with extraordinary, and almost unlimited, authority. He conferred upon that minister an uncontrolled decision in all affairs of state, even to the power of life and death, subject only to the law and the will of the Sultan. He alone was in posses- sion of the Sultan's seal, conferred upon him as the symbol of his ofiice on the day that he entered on it, which, fastened by a golden chain in a small box of the same metal, he carried constantly in his bosom. The seal, which was also of gold, had engraved upon it the Tughra (name or character) of the reigning Sultan and that of his father, with the title of '' Sultan Khan" and the epithet '' ever victorious." The use of the seal was limited to two pur- poses : it was employed to secure the communications made by the Grand Vizier to the Sultan, and to seal up anew, after every sitting of the Divan, the chambers containing the treasure and the archives. This last duty was performed by the Cldaus Bashi, a kind of Imperial marshal, to whom the seal was entrusted for that purpose only. State papers were not sealed, but signed with a Tughra resembling that on the seal by a secretary, called Nish- anrJsclbi Bashi. The palace of the Grand Vizier became the Sub- lime Porte and proper seat of the Ottoman government, from his having the right to hold Divans there, and to receive on certain fixed days of the week the homage of the highest officers of Court and State, when they waited on him with the same ceremonial and reverence as was observed towards the Grand Signor himself. From the remotest antiquity the affairs of the Oriental nations were discussed at the gate of the King's palace. Among the Turks, the whole organization of the State was regarded as that of a house, or rather tent. There were, therefore, various Fortes. Thus the Court and Harem were called the Porte of Bliss, and the fourteen different corps of the army were called Portes. On entering office the Grand Vizier was invested with a magnificent dress and two caftans of gold-stuff". When he appeared in public he was accompanied by a splendid train of officials of different callings and capacities, according to the business that he was about. He was honoured with various titles, all significative of INTROD.] VIZIEKS OF THE CUPOLA. THE DIVAN. 13 his high authority : as Vesiri Aasam, or Greatest Vizier ; Vekili Muthlah, uncontrolled representative ; Sahibi Bevelet, lord of the empire ; Sadri Aala, highest dignitary -, Dusturi Ekrem, most honoured minister ; Sahibi Milhr, master of the seal ; or lastly, in his relation to the army, Serdari Eshem, or most renowned generalissimo.^ His vast income was augmented from indirect and extraordinary sources, such as presents from Beylerbeys, foreign ambassadors, a share of warlike spoils, &c., and went on increasing during the decline of the Empire. The Grand Vizier alone had the right of constant access to the Sultan and of speaking in his presence. Yet this mighty minister was always originally a foreigner or Christian slave ; for the extraor- dinary qualities required for the office could rarely or never have been found among the native Turks. The same reasons which induced Mahomet II. to augment the power of the Grand Vizier, also led him to appoint some assistants. These were what were called the Viziers of the Cupola, or of the bench, who had the privilege of sitting in council on the same bench, and under the same cupola as the Grand Vizier. . Though subordinate to him they were his constituted advisers in all affairs of importance, and were entitled like him to three horse-tails as ensigns of their rank. Their number was regulated by the neces- sities of business, but they were never to be more than six. Under such a man as Ibrahim they had but little influence, but they might always look forward to fill the post of Grand Vizier ; they enjoyed large incomes, and the chiefs commands in the army or fleet. For the most part they were, like the Grand Vizier, converted Christians of humble birth. But the name of Vizier came in process of time to be given to all Governors of provinces who had attained to the rank of a Pasha of three tails. The Divan, or Ottoman Council, ordinarily consisted of, besides the Viziers, 1, the two military judges (^CadiasTiers) of Roumelia and Anatolia, to whom, after the conquests of Selim I. in Africa and Asia, was added a third ; 2, the Beylerbeys of Greece and Asia Minor ; 3, the two Defterdars, or treasurers, for Europe and Asia, to whom a third was likewise added by Selim ; 4, the Aga of the Janissaries ; 5, the Beylerhey of the sea {Capudan Pasha), or high admiral ; 6, the Nishandshi, or secretary who affixed the Sultan's signature. When the debate concerned foreign affairs, the interpreter of the Porte was also admitted to the Divan. It sat regularly on four days of the week — Saturday, Sunday, Monday, 1 Zinkeisen, B. iii. S. 63. 14 PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATIOX. FIEFS. [Introd. and Tuesday, wlien, after morning prayer, the members, at- tended by their retinues of scribes, chiauses, &c., took their seats with great ceremony. Eefreshments were served during the sittings, which lasted till the evening ; when they were con- cluded with a meal in common, consisting of plain fare, with water as the only beverage. The business was conducted in a short and summary method ; the Grand Vizier gave his decision, which was without appeal. Silence and the greatest decorum prevailed during the proceedings. In matters of law — for everybody, rich or poor, had a right to appear before the Divan and state his case — those who committed themselves by disrespectful and indecent behaviour were bastinadoed on the spot. In the administration of justice, as well as in the conduct of political affairs, the singular advantage of the Turkish government was quick despatch, sub- ject of course to the faults which inevitably attend such a system. Down to the time of Bajazet II. the Sultan himself presided at the Divan, and pronounced the decision. After that period he ceased to appear ; but there was a niche, or box, over the seat of the Grand Vizier, in which, screened by a curtain, he might, if he pleased, listen to the debate. After the Divan was concluded the Sultan held a solemn audience in his apartments, in which he was made acquainted with its decisions. The different members of the Divan appeared before him in turn j the Nishandshi Baslii read the proceedings, and the Sultan gave his assent, after some- times requiring preliminary explanations. Yet even in these audiences it was chiefly the Grand Vizier who spoke. In affairs of the highest importance, and especially on the undertaking of a new war, the Sultan held a Divan on horseback ; on which occasions he appeared mounted in the Atmeidan, or ancient Hippo- drome of Constantinople, with a magnificent retinue, and asked the opinions of the Vizier and other members of the Divan, who also attended on horseback. But this kind of assembly soon degenerated into an idle ceremony, and fell at length into disuse. The Divan of the Grand Vizier (the Sublime Porte) was always the real council for the despatch of business. This was the central seat of the subordinate boards of the three chief executive officers; namely, the Kiaja Bey, the deputy, and as it were attorney-general, of the Grand Vizier ; of the Beis Effendi, or minister for foreign affairs; and of the Cliiaus Baslii, or home minister. The provincial administration of the Ottoman empire was founded on that system of fiefs, or military tenures, to which we INTROD.] THE MOLL AS. — THE MUFTI. 15 have already alluded. The Turkish dominions consisted of con- quered territory, and by the laws of Islam the conqueror was the lord and proprietor of what his sword had won. A union of several siamets and tlmars constituted a district called a sandjah (banner), under command of a SandjaJchey (lord of the sandjak), to whose banner with a horse-tail the retainers of the district re- sorted when called out. A union again of several sandjaks formed an ejalet, or government under a Beylerbey (lord of lords), who according to the extent of his province had a standard of two or three horse-tails. The highest of these Beylerbeys were the Governors -general of Roumelia and Anatolia. But the greatest of provincial governments was the Pashalic, consisting of a union of several ejalets. Although, as we have seen, the chief strength of the Ottoman army and the political government of the Empire lay in the hands of slaves who had originally been Christians, yet every- thing appertaining to the administration of justice, religion, and education was intrusted solely to the hands of native Turks. In the Ottoman polity, indeed, religion and justice were united, and the Koran formed the text-book of both. In a nation so essen- tially warlike even justice assumed a military character. The office of the two CadiasJcers, or judges of the army, was the highest judicial dignity, and, till the time of Mahomet II., con- ferred upon them a rank superior even to that of the Mufti. The jurisdiction of the Cadiashers was not, however, confined, as their name might imply, solely to the army. They were the first links in the chain of the Great Mollas, or men of the higher judicial rank ; to which belonged* besides them only the judges of the following cities : — Constantinople and its three suburbs, Mecca and Medina, Adrianople, Prusa, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Aleppo, Larissa, and Salonica. Then followed the Lesser MoUas, the judges of ten cities of the second rank. Other judi- cial officers of a lower class were the Muffetisli, or investigating officers ; the Cadis, and their deputies the Naihs. The Cadi gave his judgment alone, and without assistance, both in civil and criminal cases, according to the precepts of the Koran. He also discharged all the functions of a notary in making wills, contracts, and the like. The head both of spiritual and temporal law was the SheiJch-ul- Islam, or Mufti. The Mufti, however, pronounced no judgments. His power extended only to give advice in doubtful cases : his Fetiva, or response, had only a moral influence, no actual effect ; 16 GREECE. VENETIAN AND GENOESE SETTLEMENTS. [Introd. but this influence was so great that no judge would have presumed to give a verdict at vai'iance with his decision. The Mufti was consulted by those who were dissatisfied with the sentence of their judges. Mahomet II. placed the Mufti at the head of the order called TJlema, or men learned in the law and in religion ; the members of which in the earlier times engrossed in their families the exclusive and hereditary possession of the higher judicial offices, and thus formed the nearest approach to an aristocracy among the Ottomans.^ The Mufti was sometimes consulted in questions of State policy, and, like the oracles of old, was not un- frequently tuned to give a response agreeable to the wishes of the Sultan. Into a description of the various ministers appointed for the service of the mosques it is not necessary to enter. The history of the Ottoman Turks in Europe before the con- quest of Constantinople forms no part of our subject, and it will therefore suffice briefly to recapitulate the state at that time of their possessions in Greece and the adjacent countries. In the reign of Mahomet I. (1413 — 1421) the greater part of the Greek Empire was in the hands either of Turks or Italians. The Pelo- ponnesus, indeed, still belonged to the Greeks, and was divided into small sovereignties whose rulers bore the title of Despot. This peninsula, as well as the coast from iEtolia to the extremity of Epirus, and the regions of Macedonia and Thessaly, was thickly studded with the castles of lords or knights, who committed un- ceasing depredations on the inhabitants, and carried on with one another continual wars. The Venetians and Genoese, besides their colonies scattered over the Empire, had factories at Con- stantinople, which by their fortifications and garrisons were ren- dered quite independent of the Greeks. The Constantinopolitans themselves had no spirit of enterprise, and thus, almost all the trade of the Eastern Empire fell into the hands of Italians. The Venetians had their own quarter in the city, enclosed with walls and gates, as well as a separate anchorage in the port surrounded with palisades. This colony was governed by a hailo, or bailiff, who had much the same jurisdiction as the Doge at Venice. The Byzantine settlement of the Genoese was still more important. Michael Palgeologus, in reward for their services in assisting him to recover the Empire, assigned to them the suburb of Pera, or Galata, on the opposite side of the harbour -^ a district 4400 paces ' See Von Hammei*, Bes osm. Eeiches Pera see Billa Colon ia dei Genovesi in Staatsvcrfassung, Th. ii. S. 382. Galata, libri sei, di Lodovico Sauli. To- 2 On the settlement of the Genoese at rino, 1831. Introd.] PliOGKESS OF THE TURKS UNDER AMUUATII II. 17 in circumference, which the Genoese surrounded with a double, and ultimately with a triple wall. The houses, rising- in a suc- cession of terraces, commanded a prospect. of Constantinople and the sea. The Peratian colonists were the first Christians who entered into an alliance with the Turks, and by a treaty concluded with Amurath I. in 1387 were placed on the footing of the most favoured nations. Mahomet was constantly at war with the Vene- tians, who enjoyed a mediate jurisdiction in many of the cities and islands of Greece, through the patrician families of Venice who possessed them. They had also spread themselves along the coast of Albania, and were, with the Knights of St. John of Jeru- salem, now settled in Rhodes, the chief obstacle to the progress of the Turks. Under Sultan Amurath II. (1421 — 1451) the Emperor John Palgeologus II. had found it expedient to purchase peace by a disgraceful treaty (1425). He ceded all the towns and places which he still possessed on the Black Sea and Propontis, except Derkos and Selymbria ; renounced the sovereignty of Lysimachia and other places on the Strymon, and agreed to pay to the Otto- man Porte a yearly tribute of 300,000 aspers. The Byzantine Empire was thus reduced to the capital with a strip of territory almost overshadowed by its walls, a few useless places on the Black Sea, and the appanages of the Imperial Princes in Pelo- ponnesus ; while the greater part of the revenues of the State flowed into the Turkish treasuries at Adrianople and Prusa. Amurath respected the treaty which he had made with John Palseologus and turned his arms against the Venetians, Slavonians, Hungarians, and Albanians. In March, 1430, he wrested from Venice Thessalonica, or Salonika, which that Republic had pur- chased from the Despot Andronicus, a conquest among the most important which the Tm'ks had yet made in Europe. Amurath's next wars were with the Hungarians, and as the relations between that people and the Turks were for a long period of great import- ance in European history, it will be proper here to relate their commencement. Amurath having invaded in 1439 the dominions of the Despot of Servia, that Prince implored the protection of Albert II., of Germany, who was also King of Bohemia and Hungary.^ Albert responded to the appeal and marched to Belgrade, but with an inadequate force, which was soon dissipated ; and he was com- pelled to abandon an expedition in which he had effected nothing, ' For the affairs of these Kingdoms, see below, p. 35. I. C 18 JOHN OF IIUNYAD. [Intkod. and soon afterwards died at Neszmely, between Gran and Vienna (Oct. 27th, 1439). Just previously to that event Amurath had despatched an embassy to Wladislaus III. (or VI.), King of Poland, offering to support the pretensions of his brother Casimir to the throne of Bohemia against Albert, provided that when Casimir should have attained the object of his ambition, Wladis- laus should refrain from assisting Hungary. The negotiations were hardly concluded, and the Turkish ambassadors were still at Cracow, when a deputation arrived from Hungary to offer the Crown of that Kingdom, vacant by Albert's death, to Wladislaus, who determined to accept it, announced his resolution to the Turkish ambassadors, and expressed to them his wish to remain at constant peace with the Sultan. Such a peace, however, was not in Amurath's contemplation ; and the civil wars which ensued between Wladislaus and the party -which supported the claim of Albert^s posthumous son, the infant Ladislaus, to the Hungarian throne, promised to render that Kingdom an easy prey to the Turkish arms. In the spring of 1440 Amurath marched to attack Belgrade, the only place which, after the taking of Semendria and reduction of Servia, opposed his entrance into Hungary ; but after sitting seven months before the town he was compelled to relinquish the attempt, with a loss of 17,000 men. It was at this period that the house of Huniades, destined for many years to be the chief bulwark of Europe against the Turks, first appeared upon the scene. John Corvinus Huniades, or John of Hunyad, the founder of it, was by birth a Wallachian, and, according to some accounts, a natural son of the Emperor Sigis- mund. He derived the name of Corvinus from the village of Corvinum, in which he was born ;^ that of Huniades, from a small estate on the borders of Wallachia and Transylvania, presented to him by the Emperor Sigismund as a reward for his services in Italy. John of Hunyad had increased his possessions by mar- rying a wealthy lady of illustrious family; and the Emperor Albert II. had made him Ban, or Count, of Szoreny. He headed the powerful party which supported the call of Wladislaus, King of Poland, to the Hungarian throne ; and that Prince, in reward of his aid, made him Voyvode of Transylvania and Ban of Temes- var, and conferred on him the command in the southern provinces of Hungary. Jolm of Hunyad fixed his head-quarters at Belgrade, whence he repelled the ravages of the Turks. In these cam- ' Or according to another account, the Engcl, Gcsch. dcs imgarkchcn Eeichcs, castle of Fiatra de Corvo in Walhichia. B. iii. S. 298. Intkod.] expedition OF WLADISLAUS. 19 paigns he gained several victories, of which the most decisive was that of Vasag, in 1442, which almost annihilated the Turkish army. During these alarming wars all eyes had been turned towards Rome, as the only quarter whence help might be expected for Christendom. But the efforts of Eugenius IV., who then filled the Papal throne, proved of little avail, and Eugenius was left to complain of the poverty of the Papal treasury, the lukewarmness of Christian Princes, and the dissensions of the Qiurch, which frustrated all efficient preparations against the Turks. In 1442 his zeal was again awakened by the representations of a Franciscan monk residing at Constantinople, who painted to him in lively colours the miseries of the young Christian slaves, chiefly Hun- garians, whom he daily saw dragged through the streets of that capital to be shipped off to Asia. The call of the monk was sup- ported by embassies from the Byzantine Emperor, the King of Cyprus, and the Despots of Peloponnesus. Touched by these appeals, Eugenius addressed a circular to all the prelates of Europe, requiring them to contribute a tenth of their incomes to the Turkish war, and promised himself to dedicate to the same object a fifth of the whole revenue of the Apostolic Chamber.^ At the same time he despatched Cardinal Julian Cesarini into Hungary, to endeavour to restore peace in that distracted country and to animate the people against the Infidels, The death of Queen Elizabeth, however, the mother of the young king Ladislaus, and the recent victories of John of Hunyad, contributed more to these objects than all the exhortations of Cardinal Julian. After the demise of Elizabeth, most of the nobles who had supported her hastened to do homage to Wladislaus : and though the Emperor Frederick III., the guardian of her son, at first opposed the accession of the Polish King", yet the disturbances in his own Austrian dominions, and the imminent danger from the Turks, ultimately induced him to conclude a truce for two years. Wladislaus, being thus confirmed upon the throne of Hungary, determined on an expedition against the Infidels. The domestic troubles in which most of the European Princes were then plunged prevented their giving him any assistance ; yet con- siderable bodies of the people, chiefly French and Germans, assumed the cross and joined his forces. The van set out from Buda in July, 1443, led by John of Hunyad and Gleorge, Despot of Servia ; the main body, about 20,000 strong, under the com- mand of Wladislaus himself, followed a day later ; while Cardinal ' Raynaldus, Aim. Eccl. t. ix. p. 416 (ed. 1752). 20 BATTLE OF VAENA. [Introd. Julian was at the head of the crusaders. They penetrated to the Balkan and defeated the Ottoman force which defended the approaches; but at the pass of Slulu Derbend (Porta Trajani) were repulsed^ and being in great want of provisions^ were obliged to make a precipitate though unmolested retreat to Belgrade^ and thence to Buda. The expedition^ however, made so great an impression upon Amurath, that he entered into negotiations, and in June, 1444, a peace of ten years was con- cluded at Szegedin, by which it was agreed that the Turks should retain Bulgaria but restore Servia to the Despot George, on condition of his paying half the revenue of that country to the Porte ; that neither of the parties should cross the Danube ; and that Wallachia should be under the protection of Hungary. This peace was scarcely concluded when •'the Christians pre- pared to break it. The campaign of Wladislaus had excited great interest in Europe. Ambassadors from many European States appeared at Buda to congratulate him on his success, and to offer him succours for another expedition ; Poland alone be- sought him to refrain, and to turn his attention to the domestic evils of his Kingdom. Cardinal Julian took advantage of the general feeling to urge the renewal of the war, and persuaded the Hungarian Diet assembled at Buda to adopt his advice. Even John of Hunyad and the Despot of Servia, who had just protested against so thoughtless a breach of faith, were carried away by the warlike ardour excited by the address of Julian. But per- haps the motive which chiefly weighed in the rupture of the peace of Szegedin was the news which arrived immediately after the departure of the Turkish plenipotentiaries, that Amurath with his whole army had crossed over into Asia to quell an insurrection in Caramania ; and that the fleet assembled by the Pope, and now in the neighbourhood of the Hellespont, would suffice to cut off his return. The Pope absolved Wladislaus from his oath ; but the only pretext which the Christians could allege for their breach of faith was that the Turks had not yet evacuated some of the surrendered fortresses. The expedition terminated in the disas- trous battle of Varna (Nov. 10th, 1444), in which the Christians were completely defeated, and King Wladislaus and Cardinal Julian lost their lives. This battle is memorable in a military point of view as displaying the superiority of the Janissaries over the European cavalry, although the latter soon mastered the Turkish light horse. Very few of the defeated army succeeded in reaching their homes. Introd.] battle of cossova. 21 In 1446, John of Hunyad, who had now been appointed Regent and Captain- General of Hungary, overran Wallachia, captured the Voyvode Drakul and his son, caused them to be executed, and conferred the Principality on Dan, Voyvode of Moldavia. The wish that lay nearest the Regent^s heart was to retrieve his reputation against the Turks, so sadly damaged by the defeat at Varna ; but the war which broke out with the Emperor Frederick III., who refused to restore to the Hungarians either the person of young Ladislaus or the crown of St. Stephen, delayed till 1448 any expedition for that purpose. A peace having at length been effected, by which the guardianship of Ladislaus, till he reached eighteen years of age, was assigned to the Emperor, John of Hunyad found himself at liberty to devote all his attention to the Turkish war ; and though dissuaded from the enterprise by Pope Nicholas V., he crossed the Danube with a large army and pressed on with rapid marches till, on the 17th Octobei', 1448, he encamped within sight of the Ottoman army on the Am self eld, or plain of Cossova — the spot where more than half a century before the Turks had gained their first great victory over the Hungarians, After a struggle of three days, Hunyad was defeated by the overwhelming force of the Turks, and com- pelled to save himself by an ignominious flight ; but the loss on both sides had been enormous, and Amurath, instead of pursuing the routed foe, returned to Adrianople to celebrate his victory. Hunyad was captured in his flight by the Despot of Servia and detained a prisoner till the end of the year, when he was liberated at the intercession of the Hungarian Diet assembled at Szegedin. The hard conditions of his ransom, which comprised the restora- tion of all the places in Hungary that had ever belonged to Servia, the payment of 100,000 pieces of gold, and the delivery of his eldest son Ladislaus as a hostage, were, however, cancelled by the convenient omnipotence of Rome, and he was released from his engagements by a bull of Nicholas Y.^ Nothing further of importance happened between the Turks and Hungarians till after the fall of Constantinople, when the exploits of John of Hunyad will again claim our attention. The arms of Amurath were next employed by a revolt in Albania. That country was ruled in the beginning of the fifteenth century by a number of independent chieftains, among whom the families of Arianites and Castriot were distinguished by the extent of their dominion. The former were connected on ' Bull, prid. Id. April, 1450, in Eajnaldus, Ann. Eccl. t. ix, p. 550. 22 ALBANIA. GERMANY. [Intkod. the female side with the family of the Comneni, and Arianites Topia Comnenus reigned over southern Albania from the river Vojutza to the Ambracian Gulf, or Gulf of Arta ; while John Castriot was Prince of the northern districts from the same river to the neighbourhood of Zenta, except that the coast towns belonged to Venice. Both these Princes had been subdued by Amurath II. in 1423 ; Kroja, John Castriot's capital, was occupied by a Turkish garrison, and he himself and his four sons were carried into captivity.' After a time the father was dismissed, but the children were retained and forcibly converted to Islam, after the Turkish fashion. How George, one of these, gained the favour of the Sultan by his talents and courage, and was raised to the rank of a Prince with the title of Scanderbeg, or Prince Alex- ander, and how he revolted, recovered his capital, and returned to the Christian faith, has been related by Gibbon.^ The Vene- tians, finding great benefit from the diversion he occasioned to the Turkish arms, conferred on him the right of citizenship, enrolled him among their nobles, and made him their commander- in-chief in Albania and Illyria. In 1449 and 1450 Amurath led two immense but unsuccessful expeditions against Kroja, which were nearly the last acts of his reign, for in 1451 he died at Adrianople. Amurath was succeeded by his son Mahomet II., the conqueror of Constantinople (1451 — 1481) . To relate the fall of that City, and to record the history of the Imperial family in Peloponnesus, would be only to repeat the pages of Gibbon ; and we shall there- fore now pass on to a brief survey of the state of the other European nations at this important epoch. At the time of which we speak, the ruler of Germany was the chief temporal sovereign in Europe, and bore the title of Roman Emperor.^ That title had been revived in the West when, on Christmas Day, a.d. 800, Pope Leo III. invested Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans, with the Imperial crown and mantle in the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome, and saluted him Emperor of the Romans amid the applause ' Gibbon {Decline mid Fall, vol. viii. - Ubi supra. p. 136, Smith's edition), from inferences ^ The principal sources for the early di'awn from the work of Marinus Bar- history of Germany are, besides the great letius, places, though with hesitation, the collections of Eccard, Freher, Struvius, captivity of Castriot in 1412. The date Schardius, Mencke, Fez, Kollar, Pertz, assigned by the Tiu-kish historian Sead- and others; Sclunidt, Gesch. der Deut- eddin— viz. the year 827 of the Hegira,or scken ; Pfeffel, Hist. d'Allcynagne; Piittcr A.D. 1423 — seems in all respects more pro- (Dornford's ti-ansl.). Historical Devilop- bable. See Zinkeisen, Gesch. dcs osm. ment of the Constitution of the Girmanijc Beiches, B. i. S. 766 Anm. Empire. iNTROi).] GERMANY. 23 and acclamations of the people — an illegal act on the Pope's part ; for the Roman Empire still subsisted at Byzantium^ although at that particular moment the throne was occupied by a woman (Irene) . The real power conferred by the title was small ; but it added to the glory of the German Emperors to be regarded as the temporal heads of Christendom, the superior lords of all other sovereigns, and, in a spiritual point of view, the guardians of the Holy Sepulchre. The opinion prevailed in Germany that other European sovereigns were subjects of the Emperor ; nor were these sovereigns themselves quite certain that the claim was unfounded. When Sigismund visited England in 1416, several nobles rode into the water before he landed to inquire whether he pretended to exercise any authority in the land ; and on his replying in the negative, he was received with all due honour, ^ Even a century later, we find Cuthbert Tun- stall gravely assuring Henry VIII. that he is no subject of the Empire, but an independent king."'^ To the Western Empire thus revived was subsequently added the epithet "Holy.'" The origin of this additional title is un- known. Those inclined to magnify the Pope, ascribe it to his power of conferring the Imperial crown ; but among the various causes assigned, the most probable seems to be that which derives it from the sacredness belonging to the person of the Emperor in the later ages of Rome. However this may be, during nearly all the period embraced in this work the Empire was styled "Holy'^ {sacrosanctum Imperium) , and to omit this title in State transactions would have been a breach of diplomatic usage. Thus it became, in a secular view, the counterpart of "Holy Catholic Church " in a spiritual one ; and, in their respective functions, the authority of the Emperor and that of the Pope were co-extensive. In the earlier times, the German and other Princes who became Emperors did not assume that title till they had received the Imperial crown at the hands of the Pope ; and this circumstance served to strengthen his claim to superiority. But this claim was often contested by the Emperors, and hence the disputes between these two potentates so frequent in the Middle Ages. The accounts of the circumstances attending the coronation of Charlemagne are so obscure and discordant as to throw but little ' See the authorities cited by Lingard, puted at the University of Saragossa Hist, of England, \o\. in. T(). 2'^^, note, d, whether the Emperor was lord of the * Feb. 12, 1517. Ellis' Letters, 1st whole world. Gon. Davila, lib. ii. ; up. series, vol. i. p. 136. In 1599 it was dis- Watson, Philip III. vol. i. p. 53. 24 THE GERMANO-ROMAN EMPEROR. [Introd. light on the subject. None of the Emperors of whom we shall have to treat, except Frederick III. and Charles V., were crowned by the Pope, though all assumed the Imperial title. And we must here admonish the reader that the dignity of Eoaperor had in those days an importance which it has lost since the title has become prostituted. The bearer of it was held to be the successor of the Caesars, as shown by the German name of Kaiser ; and as the Csesars were the masters, or reputed masters, of the world, there could be no more than one Emperor. Before the GermanKing could become Emperor, it was necessary that he should previously have received two or three other crowns. Of these the chief was that of King of the Romans. This dignity was conferred by the German Electors, of whom we shall have to speak presently. By a convenient fiction, these Electors were considered to possess the rights and privileges of the Roman Senate and People ; a notion expressed in so many words at the election of Conrad IV., and repeated in the fifteenth century.^ When they proceeded to choose a King of the Romans and future Emperor, they swore to elect " a temporal head of the Christian people.^' For regularly since the time of Henry IV. the German King ceased to call himself King of the Franks and Saxons, and after his German coronation assumed the title of King of the Romans. A son, or other relative, of an Emperor was frequently made King of the Romans during the Emperor's life-time, and was crowned as such by the Archbishop of Mentz,^ Arch- Chancellor of Germany, at Aix-la-Chapelle, the old Prankish capital. After the time of Ferdinand I. (1558 — 1564) the King of the Romans succeeded at once on the Emperor's death, with the title of " Emperor Elect." Strictly, an Emperor should have received four crowns : 1, that of the Franks, or Romans, just mentioned ; 2, the iron crown of Lombardy, or Italy, received in early times at Pavia, subsequently at Monza, and occasionally at Milan ; 3, the crown of Burgundy, or of the Kingdom of Aries, a minor ceremony and seldom observed ; and 4, at Rome, the double crown of the Roman Empire [urhis et orbis) according to some, according to others, the spiritual and the secular crown. Those who affect a pedantic niceness, and especially the sticklers for Papal authority, do not call the German sovereign " Emperor " unless and until he was crowned by the Pope ; just as some ' Petrus de Audio, De Rom. Imp. ap. Kanke, Deutsche Gesch. im. Zcitalt. der Reform. B. i. S. 54. ' Germ. Mainz, Fr. Mayence. Introd.] house of HOIIENZOLLERN ; OF WETTIN. 25 writers would call the Emperor Augustus^ Octavius, till he had actually received the former title. To follow such a method in this general history would only create confusion, without any compensating advantage, and we shall therefore style all the German Sovereigns, down to the time of Francis II., Emperors.^ And indeed from the time of Maximilian they always had that title, even officially, without any Roman coronation.^ To the idea of succession to the Roman Empire must be ascribed the circumstance of the Roman code forming the basis of the law of Germany. All the leading princely houses of Germany which have re- tained their power to the present time had already established themselves in the fifteenth century. The Hohenzollern ancestors of the present royal family of Prussia had obtained the Electo- rate of Brandenburg, which the Emperor Sigismund conferred on Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgraf of Nuremberg, for pre- vious services and also as a pledge for money lent. In April, 1417, Frederick, who was also made Grand Chamberlain, was confirmed in the permanent possession of Brandenburg. To the north-east of Brandenburg, Prussia was held by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, who had conquered it from its heathen inha- bitants before the middle of the thirteenth century. The Grand Master of this Order had been made a Prince of the Empire by Frederick II. In March 1454, the Prussians, disgusted with the tyranny of the Knights, who had forced them to dissolve a league of their cities called the Convention of Marienburg, placed them- selves under the protection of King Casimir TV. of Poland, and consented to be incorporated with that kingdom on condition of retaining their own laws and form of government. A bloody war of ten years ensued, in which 350,000 men are said to have perished, and which ended unfortunately for the Teutonic Order. It was concluded by the peace of Thorn, October 19th, 1466, by which the Knights ceded great part of their dominions, and con- sented to hold the rest under the sovereignty of Poland. To the south-west of Brandenburg the house of Wettin ruled in Saxony, one of the most extensive and flourishing principalities of Germany. In 1455, the two young princes, Ernest and Albert, sons of the Elector Frederick II., were carried off from the Castle of Altenburg by the robber-knight Kunz, or Conrad of Kaufungen ' The reader will find all that he can ject; from wh'ch the precedi ig sketch is desire to know about the Holy Roman principally taken. Empire in Mr. Bi-yce's work on the sub- " See below, eh. vi. (sub fin.) 26 HOUSE OF WITTELSBACH. [Inteod. and his companion William of Schonfels ; but Kunz was arrested on the frontier of Bohemia by a collier^ and Schonfels, on learning his imprisonment, voluntarily returned. The two Princes we have mentioned became celebrated as the founders of two distinguished houses. From Ernest, the elder, is derived the Ernestine line of Saxony, from which sprir>g the present branch of Saxe- Weimar, Coburg, Gotha, Meiningen, and Alten- burg. This line possessed the Saxon Electorate till 1548, when it was transferred to the Albertine line, as there will be occasion to relate in the sequel. To the latter line belong the present royal family of Saxony. At first the brothers Ernest and Albert ruled jointly in Saxony, but in 1484 they divided their dominions by a treaty concluded at Leipsic. Ernest received the electoral Duchy of Saxe- Wittenberg : the rest of Saxony was divided into two portions, of which one, consisting of the Margravate of Meissen, or Misnia, was retained by Albert; the other, composed of the Landgravate of Thuringia, fell to the Ernestine branch. Still further west lay the dominions of the Landgrave of Hesse. This Prince, and the Houses of Saxony and Brandenburg, con- cluded an agreement of confraternity and reciprocal succession at Nuremberg in 1458, which was renewed and confirmed in 1687, and again in 1614. The two great duchies of Franconia and Suabia had become extinct in the thirteenth century, and the only other princely House which it will be here necessary to mention is that of Wittels- bach, which ruled in Bavaria and the Rhenish Palatinate, as we shall reserve an account of that of Austria till we come to speak of the House of Habsburg. Bavaria, at the time with which we are concerned, was divided into Upper and Lower. Upper Bavaria, again, was in 1392 partitioned into three duchies, those of Baiern-Ingolstadt, Baiern-Landshut, and Baiern-Munchen (Munich); and the lower formed another duchy, which in the early part of the fifteenth century was held by John of Straubing. John, who had formerly been Bishop of Liege, dying without issue in 1425, the Emperor Sigismund bestowed Lower Bavaria on his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, both in right of his mother Joanna, sister of the late Duke, and as a fief escheated to the Empire. But this arrangement being opposed by the Houses of Upper Bavaria, the collateral line, as well as by the German States, Albert sold his claims, and Lower Bavaria was equally divided among the three collateral Dukes. Subsequently all these branches became gradually extinct except that of Munich ; Lntrod.] the seven ELECTORS. 27 and Albert II., the representative of that line, united all Bavaria under his dominion after the death of George the Rich of Baiern- Landshut in 1503. To the same family of Wittelsbach belonged since 1227 the Counts Palatine of the Rhine. In the neighbour- hood of these Princes a number of small lordships had been gra- dually united into the County of Wiirtemberg, which in 1495 was erected into a Duchy in favour of Eberhard the Elder, called also the Bearded and the Pious. Of the other temporal Princes of Germany it is not here necessary to speak. That country also abounded with spiritual principalities, as Mentz, Cologne, Treves, Miinster, Bremen, Magdeburg, &c. ; which in the fifteenth cen- , tury were very generally filled by the younger sons of princely families, a practice encouraged by the Court of Rome. Of the German Princes those who had a vote in the election of the King and future Emperor were the most important. In the early days of feudalism the elective privilege was enjoyed by the body of the nobles ; but from the time of the Franconian Emperors the Dukes who held the great ofiices of the Imperial household, to- gether with the three Archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, had enjoyed a privilege called the jus prcetaxandi ; that is, of agreeing on the choice of a King before his name was submitted to the approval of the rest of the magnates. Their choice might be rejected by the Diet, but in those disturbed times attendance on that assembly was both a difficult and dangerous task, from which the members were glad to be dispensed ; and thus in pro- cess of time only the great officers appeared, who by degrees en- tirely appropriated the right of election. These officers were : 1, the Archbishop of Mentz, Arch- chancellor of Germany; 2, the Archbishop of Cologne, Arch- chancellor of Italy; 3, the Arch- bishop of Treves, Arch-chancellor of the Kingdom of Aries ; 4, the King of Bohemia, Cupbearer; 5, the Rhenish Palsgrave, Seneschal ; 6, the Duke of Saxony, Marshal ; 7, the Margrave of Brandenburg, Chamberlain. It will be perceived that these Princes enjoyed the elective privilege not merely from their power and the extent of their do- minions, in which most of them were equalled by the Dukes of Bavaria, Brunswick, and Austria, and by the Landgrave of Hesse, but also from their holding some office in the Imperial household. They formed what was called the ''Electoral CoUege;" and their privileges were confirmed, first by the Diet of Frankfort and Electoral Union at Rhense in 1338, and more particularly by the Diet of Nuremberg in 1355, and that of Metz in the following 28 THE GOLDEN BULL. BARONS AND KNIGHTS. [Introd. year, wliicli ratified tlie famous Golden Bull, so called from tlie golden seal affixed to it. This bull, which became a fundamental law of the Empire, and which is conceived in the most despotic terms, was drawn up under the direction of the Emperor Charles IV. Its principal provisions are, that the number of Electors be seven, in conformity with the seven golden candle- sticks of the Apocalypse ; that each Elector hold some high office; and that during vacancies of the Crown, or in absence of the Em- peror, the Duke of Saxony and the Rhenish Count Palatine shall exercise sovereign power as Vicars of the Empire : the vicariate of the latter embracing Franconia, Suabia, and the Rhenish lands ; that of the former, all the lands governed by Saxon law. By this bull the claim of Bavaria to the electoral suffi'age was entirely excluded. The want of union produced by the sovereign power of so many Princes was increased by a numerous immediate nobility who acknowledged no superior but God and Caesar. Along with the Princes were the Freiherrn, or Barons, who like them held their estates immediately of the Empire, and equally possessed the right of administering justice. Among these Barons were families so ancient that they boasted of holding their possessions only under God and the sun.^ The German Knight presents the image of feudalism more vividly than it can be found in any other country. In the northern parts of Germany, indeed, they had, at the period of which we treat, been brought under subjection to the civil power ; the Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg destroyed many of their castles in Thuringia in 1289 ; but in Franconia, in Suabia, and along the banks of the Rhine, they continued even in the sixteenth century to dwell in haughty solitude in their castles, defended by deep ditches and with walls twenty feet thick, whose ruins still lend a romantic interest to those districts. Romance, however, has invested them with a charm which the sober breath of history dispels. Instead of being knights-errant, ever ready to succour the distressed, the owners of these castles were nothing but lawless robbers, prepared for every deed of vio- lence. They formed a subordinate but tumultuary power in the State, and with the connivance of the Princes occasionally inter- fered in political questions. They were often at variance among themselves, and carried on their Fehden, or private wars, in spite of many attempts to check this practice, and to establish a permanent Lanclfriede, or public peace. In this disorganized ' Ranke, Deutsche Gcsck. B. i. S. 06. Introd.] the secret TRIBUNAL. 29 state of society recourse was had to those secret and self- constituted tribunals, which, like Lynch law in America, or the Santa Hermanclad of Spain, are sometimes found in imper- fectly civilized nations. Such was the Vehmgericht, or Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, whose principal seat was at Dort- mund, but whose ramifications extended into the most distant parts of Germany.^ The judges of this mysterious tribunal, who were unknown to the people, scrutinized, either by them- selves or through their emissaries, the most hidden actions, and all ranks of men trembled at their decrees, the more terrible as they admitted of no appeal ; nay, the judges carried with them the sword or the fatal cord with which they at once executed their own sentences. The Vehmgericht survived till the creation of the Imperial Chamber under the Emperor Maximilian, near the end of the fifteenth century. In the midst of all this discord and anarchy appeared one ele- ment of hope and progress. Some of the German cities, and especially those belonging to the Hanseatic League, had attained to great prosperity and civilization. Art, commerce, and manu- factures flourished ; and Germany supplied a great part of Europe, even to the interior of Russia, with its imports and products. Behind their walls the citizens were secure, and even in the field, by means of cannon, now coming into general use, were more than a match for the Knights and their followers, who either pos- sessed no guns, or had no men capable of serving them. The cities also strengthened themselves, either by alliances with one another or with various princes and nobles. On the coast of the Baltic was the main strength of the Hansa, which overshadowed the power of the Scandinavian Kings, much more, therefore, that of the neighbouring German Princes. Moreover, all over Germany, and especially in Franconia, Suabia, on the Upper Danube, and on the Rhine, had arisen a number of free Imperial cities, not included in the dominions of any of the Princes, and depending imme- diately upon the Empire. In Suabia and Franconia, these cities arose after the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the thirteenth century, which period also witnessed a vast increase of what was called the immediate nobility, or nobles subject to no superior lord but the Emperor. The liberties and privileges of the Imperial cities were fostered by the Emperors, in order that they might afford some counterpoise to the power of the prelates and nobles, whose natural enemies they were, and with whom ' See Wigand, Fehm-Gericht Wetitphalens. 30 GERMAN CITIES. — THE DIET. [Introd. tliey waged continual war. Outside their walls, but within the palisades which marked the boundaries of their territory, they afforded an asylum to the discontented and fugitive peasantry of the feudal lords, who, from being thus domiciled, were called TfaMhiirijer, or burgesses of the pale. Such a state of society as we have here described was neces- sarily incompatible with any strong political organization; in fact, almost the only institution which formed a bond of union among the various German States, and gave the Empire any con- sistency, was the Diet. Previously to the fourteenth century, the Imperial authority had been something more than a shadow, and had performed that office. But this authority had been damaged by the quarrels of the Houses of Bavaria, Luxemburg, and Austria, for the throne ; and as the power of the Emperor declined, that of the Diets, as well as of the Princes and Electors, increased. The authority of the Diets lasted down to the Thirty Years' War, after which period the various principalities assumed more distinct and separate forms ; and the general affairs of Ger- many, as an Imperial whole, became subordinate to the particular interests of its several leading States. The Diets possessed the legislative, and even in some degree the executive power ; and they enjoyed the all-important privileges of imposing taxes and deciding on peace and war. The Emperor and the electoral and other princes and nobles, appeared in the Diets in person ; and in the early part of the fourteenth century some of the chief cities of the Empire obtained the right of sending deputies. These, however, proved a troublesome element in the assemblies. The interests of the municipal towns were distinct from, and some- times opposed to, those of the other Estates ; their deputies often dissented from the conclusions of the Diet ; and during the Hus- site war in 1431, we find the cities levying their own separate army.^ Thus, by the power of the Princes on the one hand, and that of the Diets on the other, the authority of the Emperors was reduced almost to a nullity. Many of them spent their lives in a state of degrading poverty, and hid their misfortunes by absent- ing themselves from their dominions. At the time, however, when this history opens, a family was in possession of the Imperial Crown who succeeded in rendering it hereditary, and by the wonderful increase of their power excited during a long period the jealousy and alarm of the rest of Europe. This was the House of Habsburg, or of Austria, whose importance ' Ranke, Deutsche Gcsch. B. i. S. 88. introd.] house of habsburg, 31 in modern European history renders it proper to give a brief account of its origin. In the interregnum and anarchy which ensued after the elec- tion of Richard^ Earl of Cornwall, in 1257, who was no more than a nominal King of the Romans, tlie Electors, rejecting the pre- tensions of Alfonso, King of Castile, and Ottocar, King of Bohe- mia, conferred the Germanic crown on Rudolf, Count of Habs- burg in Switzerland, who had distinguished himself as a valiant knight and captain in the private wars which then desolated Germany. The zeal of Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, was mainly instrumental in effecting the election of Rudolf, his uncle ; while the slenderness of Rudolfs possessions, and the circumstance of his having three marriageable daughters, also contributed to the same end, by disarming the fears of the Electors, and offering them the prospect of forming advantageous marriages. After his accession as King of the Romans, Rudolf conquered from Ottocar the provinces of Austria, Styria, Carin- thia, Carniola, and the AVindischmark, and in 1282 bestowed them in fief on his two sons, Albert and Rudolf. Afterwards he gave Oarinthia to Count Meinhard of Tyrol, in reward for some services. Thus was founded the future greatness of the House of Habsburg, Albert alone survived his father, and, in conjunction with his nephew John, inherited all Rudolf the Creates possessions at his death in 1291. Rudolf had in vain endeavoured to procure the German crown for his son, who was, however, elected on the deposition of King Adolf of Nassau in 1298, and assumed the title of Albert I. He was assassinated in 1308 by his nephew John, from whom he had withheld some of the Habsburg posses- sions. Albert's son Frederick was elected, in 1314, as a rival to Louis Duke of Bavaria, but was overthrown at the battle of Miihldorf in 1322; and from this period till the election of Albert II. in 1438, the Habsburg Princes remained excluded from the German throne, and were chiefly occupied with the affairs of their Austrian dominions. At the beginning of the fifteenth century we find these posses- sions, which had been considerably enlarged, shared by three members of the family, of whom one, called Frederick of the Empty Pocket, held Tyrol and the ancient territories of the House in Switzerland and Suabia. This Frederick, having, in 1415, assisted the escape of Pope John XXIII. from Constance, was excommunicated by the Council then sitting- in that town, and was also placed under the ban of the Empire by Sigismund. 32 HOUSE OF AUSTRIA. — FREDERICK III. [Lntrod. Frederick's possessions were now at the mercy of those who could seize them, and in a few days 400 towns declared against him. In this general revolt, the Swiss Confederates, with the exception of the miners of Uri, were especially active : they seized the territories so liberally bestowed upon them by the Council; and it was now that Habsburg, the cradle and heredi- tary castle of the family, was laid in ruins, in which condition it has ever since remained. From the time of Albert II., who was King of the Romans, Bohemia, and Hungary, the Romano- German Crown was trans- mitted in the House of Austria almost as if it had been an here- ditary possession ; aud in the course of this history we shall see the descendants of Rudolf attaining to a power and pre-eminence which threatened to overshadow the liberties of Europe. After the death of Albert II. in 1439, the Germans elected for their King, Frederick III., elder son of Ernest surnamed the Iron, who was brother to Frederick of the Empty Pocket, and who possessed Styria, Carinthia, Istria, and other lands. Frederick III. ruled Germany, if such an expression can be applied to his weak and miserable reign, till 1493, and he consequently occupied the Imperial throne at the time when this history commences. Fre- derick was crowned King of the Romans at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1442, and in 1451 he proceeded to Rome to receive the Imperial crown from the hands of the Pope. Nicholas V., who then filled the Papal chair, received him with great magnificence ; but it was observed that Frederick, till after his coronation, yielded precedence to the Cardinals. According to the strict order of things, Frederick should have first received the iron crown of Lombardy from the Archbishop of Milan ; but Frederick having for some reason declined to enter that city, the Pope with his own hands crowned him King of Lombardy. On the same day (March 15th) Nicholas married Frederick to Eleanor, daughter of the King of Portugal, who had met him at Siena, and three days afterwards both received the Roman Imperial crown. This coro- nation is memorable as the last performed at Rome, and the last but one in which the services of the Pope were ever required. Frederick, having been appointed guardian of Sigismund of Tyrol, minor son of Frederick of the Empty Pocket, and also of the infant Ladislaus Postumus, son of Albert II., thus adminis- tered all the possessions of the Austrian family. Austria was erected into an Archduchy by letters-patent of Frederick III., January 6th, 1453, with privilege to the Archdukes to create Intkod.] « SWITZERLAND. — THE FOREST CANTONS. 33 nobles, raise taxes, &c. Duke Rudolf, who died in 1365, had indeed assumed the title of Archduke, but it had not been con- firmed by the Emperor. The history of Switzerland, originally part of the German Kingdom, is closely connected with that of the House of Austria. In 1308, when Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden' leagued together against the encroachments of the House of Habsburg, the land we now call Switzerland was divided into various small districts, with different forms of government. Among these States were four Imperial cities — namely, Zurich, Bern, Basle, and Schaff- hausen ; while the Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, although from time immemorial enjoying a democratic form of government, were nevertheless also immediately subject to the Empire. There were besides a number of small principalities, among the most important of which were those of the House of Habsburg and of the Counts of Savoy, besides many ecclesiastical domains and baronial fiefs. After the insurrection of 1308 Albert marched an army against the patriots ; but during the expedition he was assassinated by his nephew John, as already mentioned. Some years afterwards, Albert's son Leopold again attempted to reduce the three refractory Cantons, but was completely defeated by a much smaller force of the Confederates at the famous battle of Morgarten, November 16th, 1315. After this event the three Cantons entered into a perpetual union (1318), which was gradu- ally joined by various other districts. Under Albert and Otho, the two last surviving sons of Albert I., the House of Habsburg considerably extended their hereditary dominions. They obtained possession of Schaffhausen, Rhein- felden, and Breisach, as well as the town and county of Riapper- schwyl ; they were masters of Thurgau and nearly the whole of Aargau ; they were lords paramount in Zug and Lucerne, in the district to the south of the Lake of Zurich, and of the town and Canton of Glarus ; and their territories thus almost surrounded the confederated Cantons. By the death of Otho and his two sons all these possessions fell to Duke Albert II. in 1344. But the example of the three Cantons had awakened the spirit of liberty ' These cantons had confederated them- sioned by the cruelties of Albert's bailiff selves before this time, as there is a docn- Gesler, the builder of the fortress of ment extant relating to the confederacy Zwiiig Uri, near Altorf. dated in August, 1291, the year in which Besides Planta's book, Joh. von Miiller, Rudolf of Habsburg died (Planta, Hist, of Gcsch. d. Schweitzer. Eidgenosscnschaft, Helvetic Confederacy, vol. i. p. 222). But and the works of Zschokke {Schweitz. 1308 is the date of the final rising under Gesch. fur die Schweitzer), may be con- Melchthal, Stauffacher^ and Faust, occa- suited for the history of Switzerland. I. D 34 THE FRENCH ATTACK BASLE. [Ixtrod. in tlie neighbouring" districts ; Lucerne was tlie first to join them/ after which the union was called the four Waldstddte, or Forest Cantons. Zurich was next admitted into the Confederacy (1351), which before the end of the following year was strengthened by the accession of Glarus, Zug, and Bern. In 1385, fresh dissen- sions arose between the League and Duke Leopold, then head of the House of Habsburg, who endeavoured to reduce Lucerne to obedience, but was completely defeated at the battle of Sempach (1386), in which he himself fell, with 2000 of his men, nearly a third of whom were nobles or knights. A desultory warfare was, however, still kept up; and in 1388 the Austrians were again defeated at the battle of Niifels. The Dukes of Austria now concluded a seven years' truce with the Confederates, which in 1394 was prolonged for twenty years ; and from this period we may date the establishment of the eight first confederated Cantons, which enjoyed some prerogatives not shared by the five admitted soon after the wars with Burgundy. This confederacy was at first called the old League of High Germany. The names of " Swiss '' and " Switzerland " did not come into use till after the expedition of Charles VII. of France in 1444, undertaken at the request of the Emperor Frederick III., with a view to defend the town of Ziu'ich, which had claimed his protection, against the attacks of the other Cantons. The French King was not un- willing to employ in such an enterprise the lawless bands which swarmed in France after the conckision of the truce with England. The French arms were directed against Basle, which, however, made an heroic defence : the Swiss died at their posts almost to a man ; and though the siege of Ziirich was raised, the French did not venture to pursue the retreating enemy into their moun- tains. It was during this expedition that the French began openly to talk of reclaiming their rights to all the territory on the left bank of the Rhine as their natural boundary ;'^ and though it was undertaken at the Emperor's request, Charles VII. never- theless summoned the Imperial cities between the Mouse and the Vosges mountains to recognize him as their lord, alleging that they had formerly belonged to France. Verdun and a few other places complied ; but as the Germans menaced him with a war, Charles was for the present obliged to relinquish these absurd pretensions. Zurich renounced the connection which it had * In 1332, according to Planta, vol. i. bom Basiliensem tanquam regni Francire p. 297. sibi rcstitui."— iEneas Sylvius, Epist. 87. ^ " Rumor est (Delphinum) petiisse ur- LvTROD.] HUNGAKY. 35 resumed with the House of Austria, and rejoined the Swiss Confederacy by the treaty of Einsiedeln in 1450. In the course of the fifteenth century the Swiss began to adopt the singular trade of hiring themselves out to fight the battles of foreigners. Switzerland became a sort of nursery for soldiers, and the deliberations of their Diets chiefly turned upon the pro- positions for supplies of troops made to them by foreign Princes; just as, in other countries, might be debated the propriety of exporting corn, wine, or any other product. But these mercenary bands often proved fatal to their employers. If the price for which they sold their blood was not forthcoming at the stipulated time, they would often abandon their leader at the most critical juncture, and thus cause the loss of a campaign; instances of which will occur in the course of the following history. The peculiar arm of the Swiss infantry was a long lance, which they grasped in the middle ; and the firm hold thus obtained is said to have been the chief secret of their victories.^ Closely connected with the Romano-German Empire were the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, and more remotely that of Poland.^ Albert, afterwards the Emperor Albert II., was the first Duke of the House of Habsburg who enjoyed the Crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, which he owed to his father-in-law, the Emperor Sigismund, whose only daughter, Elizabeth, he had married. Elizabeth was the child of Barbara of Cilly, Sigis- mund^s second wife, whose notorious vices had procured for her the odious epithets of the " Bad " and the " German Messalina.''^ Barbara had determined to supplant her daughter, to claim the two Crowns as her dowry, and to give them, with her hand, to Wladislaus VI., the young King of Poland, who, though forty years her junior, she had marked out for her future husband."^ With this view she was courting the Hussite party in Bohemia : but Sigismund, a little before his death, caused her to be arrested; and, assembling the Hungarian and Bohemian nobles at Znaim, in Moravia, persuaded them, almost with his dying breath, to elect Duke Albert as his successor. Sigismund expired the next day (December 9th, 1437). * Tillier. Gesch. des Frcisfaaies Bern, Ka,tona,,'Prny,An7ialesvcicrumHim7ioru7}i, E. ii. S.510; a.p.'Michelet, Hist.de France, ^-c.; Jion^nii, Hisforia Pannonica ; Engel, t. vii. p. 285. Hence theii* name oi Lance Gesch. des ungarischen Belches ; Mailath, knights; Germ. Lanzknechte, Fr. Lans- Gesch. der Magyarcn ; for Poland, Dlu- qucncts. gossii, Historim Poloniccs ; Jekell, Polens ' For the history of Bohemia, see Pa- Staatsvercinderungen. lacky, Gesch. von Boh men: for Hungary, ^ "Engel, Gesch. des ungarischen Belches, besides the collections of Schwandtner and B, ii. S. 362. 36 BOHEMIA. [Iktrod. Albert was soon after recognized as King by the Hungarian Diet, and immediately released his mother-in-law Barl)ara, upon her agreeing to restore some fortresses which she held in Hungary. He did not so easily obtain possession of the Bohemian Crown. That country was divided into two great religious and political parties — the Catholics and the Hussites, or followers of the Bo- hemian reformer John Huss, who were also called " Calixtines/^^ because they demanded the cup in the sacrament of the Eucha- rist. The more violent and fanatical sects of the Hussites, as the Taborites, Orphans, &c., had been almost annihilated at the battle of Lipan in 1434, in which their two leaders, Prokop sur- named Holy, the bald, or shorn, and subsequently also called Prokop Weliky, or the Great, as well as his namesake and coad- jutor Prokop the Little, were slain ; and in June, 1436, a peace was concluded at Iglau between Sigismund and the Hussites. This peace was founded on what were called the Compactata of Prague, an arrangement made between the contending parties in 1433, and based on the "Articles of Prague,^^ promulgated in 1420 by the celebrated patriot leader John Ziska,^ These Articles, which, however, were somewhat modified in the Com- pactata, were, 1. That the Lord^s Supper should be administered in both kinds; 2. That crimes of clergy should, like those of laymen, be punished by the secular arm; 3. That any Christian whatsoever should be authorized to preach the word of God ; 4. That the spiritual oflEice should not be combined with any temporal command. But although the peace of Iglau secured considerable religious privileges to the Hussites, a strong anti- pathy still prevailed between that sect and the Catholics, of which the '' Wicked Barbara " now availed herself. Albert was elected King of Bohemia by the Catholic party in May, 1438 ; but the Hussites, incited by Barbara, in a great assembly which they held at Tabor, chose for their King the youthful Prince Casimir, brother of Wladislaus, King of Poland ; a subject to which we have already alluded in the account of the Turks.^ A civil war ensued, in which Albert's party at first gained the advantage, and shut up the Hussites in Tabor: but George Podiebrad compelled ' From calix, a cnp. For the same directed his skin to be made into a drum, reason, they were also called Utraqvists, though retailed by some grave historians, as receiving the Eucharist in loth forms. is a fable. The principal articles of the The Calixtines were that moderate section peace of Iglau will be found in Palacky, of the Hussites whose tenets had been Gesch.vonBohmen,'B.\n.?>.'22'^i.\ whose at one time adopted by the University of work, founded on many unpublished docu- Prague. ments, is the best history of Bohemia. •The popular tale of Ziska having ^ Above, p. 18. Introd.] HUNGARr. — POLAND. 37 Albert to raise the siege ; and this was the first feat of arms of a man destined to play a distinguished part in history. The short reign of Albert in Hungary was disastrous both to himself and to the country. Previously to his fatal expedition against the Turks in 1439^ to which we have already referred, the Hungarian Diet, before it would agree to settle the succession to the throne, forced him to accept a constitution which destroyed all unity and strength of government. By the Decretum Alherti Regis he reduced himself to be the mere shadow of a King; while by exalting the Palatine/ the clergy, and the nobles, he perpetuated all the evils of the feudal system. The most absurd and pernicious regulations were now adopted respecting the military system of the Kingdom, and such as rendered it almost impossible eflfectually to resist the Turks. By the twenty- second article in particular, it was ordained that the arriere ban, the main force of the Kingdom, should not be called out till the soldiers of the King and Prelates — for the Barons seem to have shirked the obligation of finding troops — could no longer resist the enemy ; the consequence of which was that a sufficient body of troops could never be assembled in time to be of any service. On the death of Albert, Wladislaus VI., King of Poland, was, as already said/ elected to the throne of Hungary. Poland had first begun to emerge into importance in the reign of Wladislaus Loktek,"* in the early part of the fourteenth century. Its boundaries were enlarged by his son and successor, Casimir III., aurnamed the Great, who having ceded Silesia to the Kings of Bohemia, compensated himself by adding Eed Russia, Podolia, Volhynia, and other lands to his dominions. Casimir, having no children, resolved to leave his Crown to his nephew Louis, son of his sister and of Charles Robert, King of Hungary, although some of the ancient Piast dynasty of Poland stiU existed in Maso- via and Silesia; and with this view he summoned a national assembly at Cracow, which approved the choice he had made. This proceeding, however, enabled the Polish nobles to interfere in the succession of the Crown, and to render it elective, like ' The Palatine was a magistrate next ^ Supra, p. 18. to the King in rank, who presided over ^ We have retained the initial con- the legal tribunals ; and in the absence of sonant in the names of the Polish Kings the King discharged his functions. The for the sake of distinguishing them from office was instituted by King Ladislaus I. the Hungarian Kings of the same name, towards the end of the eleventh century. Wladislaus Loktek was crowned at Cracow The Becrdum oi AXhevt. will be found in in 1305. Dlugoss, Hist. Poloii. lib. ix. ^nge\, Gesch. desimgar.BeicheSj'B. iii.S. 17. torn. i. p. 971. 60 HOUSE OF JAGELLON. [Introd. that of Hungaiy and Bohemia ; so that the Polish State became a sort of aristocratic Eepublic. The nobles also compelled Louis to sign an act exempting them from all taxes and impo- sitions whatsoever/ With Casimir ended the Piast dynasty (1370), "which had occupied the throne of Poland several centuries. The feudal system was entirely unknown in that country. There was no such relation as lord and liegeman ; the nobles were all equally independent, and all below them were serfs, or slaves. On the death of Louis, in 1382, his daughter Hedwig was elected Queen, whose marriage with Jagellon, Grand-Duke of Lithuania, who had previously embraced Christianity, established the House of Jagellon on the Polish throne. Jagellon, who re- ceived at his baptism the name of Wladislaus, reigned till the year 1434 ; and it was he who, in order to obtain a subsidy fi'om the nobles, first established a Polish Diet.'^ Wladislaus, or Jagellon, was succeeded in Poland by Wladislaus VI., his son. Wladislaus also aspired to the Crown of Hungary by a marriage with Elizabeth, widow of Albert, King of the Romans, Bohemia, and Hungary. Elizabeth had been left pregnant, and the Hungarians, dreading a long minority if the child should prove a male, compelled her to offer her hand to Wladislaus. After this proposal was despatched, Elizabeth was delivered of a son, who was christened Ladislaus Postumus. Hereupon she withdrew her consent to the marriage,^ and being supported by a strong party of the Hungarian nobles, retired to Stuhlweissen- burg (Alba Regalis), where the child was crowned by the Arch- bishop of Gran. But the party of the King of Poland, headed by John of Hunyad, proved the stronger. Elizabeth was com- pelled to abandon Lower Hungary and to take refuge at Vienna, carrying with her the crown of St. Stephen, which, together with her infant son, she intrusted to the care of the Emperor Frederick III. (August 3rd, 1440). Hostilities and negotiations ensued, till in November, 1442, a peace was agreed upon, the terms of which* are unknown.^ But the sudden death of Elizabeth in the following month, not with- out suspicion of poison, prevented the ratification of a treaty which * Dlugoss, Hist. Polon. lib. ix. torn. i. child should pi'ove a female ; while the p. 1102. writers of the opposite party assert that * Ibid. lib. X. p. 180. her consent was unconditional. Engel, ' According to some authorities, among Gesck. dcs tingar. Eeiches, B. iii. S. 30. whom is uEneas Sylvius, she had agreed ■• Engel, Gesch. des ungar Bcickcs, B. to the marriage only in the event that her iii. S. 55 f. Introd.] kingdoms OF BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY. 39 had never been agreeable to the great party led by John of Hunyad, whose recent victories over the Turks gave him enormous influence. The sequel of these afiairs has been already related.^ The minority of Ladislaus Postumus also occasioned distur- bances in Bohemia. In order to avoid that inconvenience, the States offered the Crown first to Albert, Duke of Bavaria, and then to Frederick III., by both of whom it was refused. The two chief Bohemian parties, the Catholics and the Calixtines, then agreed to elect the infant Ladislaus, and to appoint two Regents during his minority. Praczeck of Lippa was chosen for that office by the Calixtines, and Meyihard of Neuhaus by the Catholics. Such an arrangement naturally led to civil discord, and after a severe struggle, Praczeck and the Calixtines obtained supreme authority. On the death of Praczeck in 1444 the Catholics attempted to restore Meinhard ; but the Calixtines again prevailed, and bestowed the Regency on the celebrated George Podiebrad. In 1450, the government of Podiebrad was confirmed by the States of Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria, assembled at Vienna; and he assumed at Prague an almost regal authority. He became the idol of the Bohemians, who, in 1451, would have elected him for their King, had not yEneas Sylvius persuaded him to remain faithful to the cause of young Ladislaus. After the death of King Wladislaus at the battle of Varna {supra, p. 20), Ladislaus Postumus, now five years of age, was unanimously elected King of Hungary by a Diet assembled at Pesth, in 1445, and envoys were sent to demand him from Frederick III., together with the crown of St. Stephen. The refusal of this demand, the war which followed the appointment of John of Hunyad as Gubernator, or Regent, and his unfortu- nate campaign against the Turks in 1448, have been already mentioned. On the death of Sultan Amurath II., early in 1451, John of Hunyad, like other Christian rulers, sent ambassadors to Mahomet II., and obtained from him a truce of three years. In 1453, shortly before the taking of Constantinople, Hunyad laid down his office of Gubernator, and young Ladislaus assumed the reins of government. Such was the state of the principal nations of eastern Europe at the time when this history commences. Of Russia and the ' Supra, p. 19 sq. 40 PAPAL DOMINIONS AND CLAIMS. [Introd. Scandinavian kingdoms there is at present no occasion to speak, as they were not yet in a condition to take part in the general aflfairs of Europe ; and we therefore turn to the southern and western nations. Of these the history and constitution, down to the fall of the Eastern Empire, have been so fully described by Mr. Hallam,^ that it will only be necessary to recapitulate such particulars as are indispensable to the understanding of the following pages. Italy first claims our attention,^ as the nurse of modern ci\dlization ; and among the Italian Powers, principally the Eoman Pontiff, not only as a temporal Prince, but also by his spiritual pretensions, as a European Power of high impor- tance. The prestige of his authority had indeed been already grievously shaken by the schisms of the Church, and the decisions of General Councils ; yet he still continued to exercise a prodigious influence on the political as well as religious concerns of Europe. As temporal potentate the Pope had not yet attained to the full extent of his power ; nay, he hardly sat secure on his throne at Rome. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Stefano Porcari had revived the schemes of the tribune Rienzi, a hundred years before, and endeavoured to restore the image of a Roman Republic. In January, 1453, the plots of Porcari were for a third time discovered; his house was surrounded by the Papal myrmidons, and he himself, with nine confederates, captured and executed. This, down to our own days, was, however, the last attempt of the sort. At this time the dominions of the Pope included the district north of Rome known as the Patrimony of St. Peter, together with some portions of Umbria, and the March of Ancona; but the Holy See asserted a claim to many other parts of Italy, and especially to the Exarchate of Ravenna, as the donation of Pipin. The extent of the Exarchate has been disputed ; but its narrowest limits comprised Ferrara, Ravenna, and Bologna with their territories, together with the country included between Rimini ' In his Middle Ages, The reader may For single States : Venice, Vite de" Buchi also advantageously consult Dr. Schmitz's (in Muratori, Scripp.) ; Daru, Hist, de la Hist, of the Midd. Ages. Bepnbliqzie de Venise ; Ilazlitt, Hist, of * For Italian history the collections of Venet. Ecp. ; for Milan, Simonetta, Vita di Muratori are the great storehouse: viz. Sforza; Corio, Storia di Milano ; forFlo- his Italicctrnm Bcrum Scriptores, and his rence, Fabroni, Vita Cosmi; Capponi, Sto- Ann alt d' Italia ; also the modern collec- ria della Bep. di Firense; for Naples, tion entitled ^rc/n. in von Raumer's Hist. ^ Middle Ages, ch. vii. Taschenbitch, 1833. 42 RO:\IAN COURT. CARDINAL^. [Lntrod. Cardinal Wolsey; Paulus^ Presbyt. Tit. 8. Lcmrentii, &c.^ Ac- cording to some authorities. Cardinal Bishops were instituted in the ninth century; according to others, not till the eleventh, when seven Bishops of the dioceses nearest to Rome — Ostia, Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Prjeneste, Tibur, and Sabina — were adopted by the Pope partly as his assistants in the service of the Lateran, and partly in the general administration of the Church. Though the youngest of the Cardinals in point of time, Cardinal Bishops were the highest in rank, and enjoyed pre-eminence in the College. In process of time the appointment of Cardinal Bishops was extended not only to the rest of Italy, but also to foreign countries. Their titles were derived from their dioceses, as the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia (Ostiensis), Placentinus (of Pla- centia), Arelatensis (of Aries), Rothomagensis (of Rouen), &c. But they were also frequently called by their own names. The number of the Cardinals was indefinite and varying. The Coun- cils of Constance and Basle endeavoured to restrict it to twenty- four; but this was not carried out, and Pope Sixtus V. at length fixed the full number at seventy. An assembly of Cardinals in presence of the Pontiff, for the transaction of business, was called a Consistory. Consistories were ordinarily private, and confined to Cardinals alone ; though on ex- traordinary occasions, and for solemn purposes of state, as in the reception of ambassadors, the Consistories were public, and other prelates, and even distinguished laymen, might appear in them. Besides the Cardinals and other high prelates, the Court of Rome was also formed by a great number of Papal officers, who had each his peculiar department. Such were the officers of the Roman Chancery, of whom the Protonotary, or Primicerius, was the chief. He was also called JDatarius, from his affixing the date to acts of grace, grants of prebends, &c. ; whence the name of Bataria for that department. Under him was the Secretary of the Papal bulls {8criptor Literarum Apostolicarum) , who was also the Pope^s chamberlain. The manufacture of bulls was con- ducted by a college of seventy-two persons, of whom thirty-four clothed in violet, and more distinguished than the rest, drew up from petitions signed by the Pope the minutes of the bulls to be prepared from them in due and regular form. The rest of this ' Ecclesiastical districts, or parishes, several French cities, as Sens, Troyes, were called tituli, titles. The name of Car- Angers, Soissons, were called cures- dinal was not peculiar to the priests of cardinaux till the Revolution. Martin, Rome, but was at one time given to priests Hist de France, t. iii. p. 99. of all episcopal towns. The cures of IxTROD.] PAPAL CHANCERY. ROTA ROMANA, ETC. 43 college, who might be laymen, were called Examiners, and their office was to see that the bulls were drawn up in conformity with the minutes. The Taxator fixed the price of the bulls, which varied greatly according to their contents; the Plumhator affixed the leaden seal, or bulla, whence the instrument derived its name. There were three Courts for the administration of justice : viz. a Court of Appeal, called in early times Capella, but afterwards better known by the name of Eota Roniana ; the 8ignatura Jus- titice, and the Signatura Gratice. The Rota Romana was the highest Papal tribunal. Its members, called Auditores Rotce, were fixed by Pope Sixtus lY. at twelve, and although paid by the Pope, were not all Italians, but contained at least one French- man, Spaniard, and German. The Signatura Gratice, where the Pope presided in person, and of which only select Cardinals or eminent prelates could be members, decided cases which depended on the grace and favour of the Pope. The Signatura Justitice, besides various other legal afikirs, especially determined respect- ing the admissibility of appeals to the Pope. To compliment and refresh the Pope, his Cardinals add cour- tiers, with presents, was a very ancient custom; but the numerous gifts of money which annually flowed to Rome were only one of the means which served to fill the Papal treasury. Another abundant' source was the Papal bulls, of which a great quantity were published every year. It was not the Apostolic Chamber alone that benefited : every officer employed in preparing the bulls took his toll, from the Chief Secretary down to the Plum- bator. Among other sources of revenue, besides the regular fees derived from investitures, &c., were the sale of indulgences and dispensations, the announcement of a year of grace, and what was called the Right of Reservation, by which the Popes claimed the privilege of filling a certain number of ecclesiastical offices and vacant benefices. This means had been gradually so much ex- tended that at the time of the Papal Schism offices were publicly sold, and even the inferior -ones brought large sums of money. ^ It might be truly said with Jugurtha, Romce omnia venire — at Rome all things are venal. Never was so rich a harvest reaped from the credulity of mankind.^ ' T,e Bret, Mcigaziii zum Gebrauch der rcchts ; Binterim, DinTcwurdig'keitcn der Staats-zmd Kirche7ig(Schichte,'B, in. S. 7. chrhilic/i-katliolischen Kirche ; and the ^ See Muratori, Aniiq. Ital. Med. Mvi, Jesuit Hunold Plattenberg, Notitia Con- t. vi., and Mosheim, Instit. Hist. Eccl.; grcgatiomim et Tribunalium Curice Eo- Thomassin, Vetus et nova EcclesicB Bis- manes, 1693. ciplina; Walter, Lehrhiich des Kircken- 44 THE CONCLAVE. [Introd. It remains to say a few words respecting the mode of electing tlie successors of St. Peter. In early times, the Roman Pontiff was chosen by the people as well as by the clergy ; nor was his election valid unless confirmed by the Roman Emperor; till at length, in 1179, Pope Alexander III. succeeded in vesting the elective right solely in the Cardinals. In order to a valid election it was necessary that at least two-thirds of the college should agree ; but as this circumstance had frequently delayed their choice, Pope Gregory X., before whose elevation there had been an interregnum of no less than three years, published, in 1274, a bull to regulate the elections, which afterwards became part of the Canon Law. This bull provided that the cardinals were to assemble within nine days after the demise of a Pope ; and on the tenth they were to be closely imprisoned, each with a single domestic, in an apartment called the Conclave, their only com- munication with the outward world being a small window through which they received their food and other necessaries. If they were not agreed in three days, their provisions were diminished; after th*e eighth day they were restricted to a small allowance of bread, water, and wine ; and thus they were induced by every motive of health and convenience not unnecessarily to protract their decision. Such in outline was the Papal government. The remainder of Italy was divided by a number of independent Powers, of which it will be necessary to mention only the more considerable. These were two monarchies, the Kingdom of Naples (or Sicily) and the Duchy of Milan ; and three Republics, two of which, Venice and Genoa, were maritime and commercial; the third, Florence, inland and manufacturing. Of these Republics Venice was the foremost. Her power and pretensions both by sea and land were typified in her armorial device — a lion having two feet on the sea, a third on the plains, the fourth on the mountains.^ Her territorial dominions, were, however, the offspring of her vast commerce and of her naval supremacy ; and it is as a naval Power that she chiefly merits our attention. On the lagoon islands, formed by the alluvial deposits of the Adige, Brenta, and other rivers, Venice, by many ages of industry and enterprise, had grown so great that towards the end of the thirteenth century she claimed to be Queen of the Adriatic, and extorted toll and tribute from all vessels navigating that sea. ' See the letter of the Emperor INIaximilian I. to the Elector of Saxony, ap. Ranke, Deutsche Gesch. B. i. S. 179. Introd.] VENICE AND HER TERRITORIES. 45 Every year, on Ascension Day, the Doge repeated the ceremony of a marriage with that bride whose dowry had been wafted from every quarter, when, standing on the prow of the Bucentaur, he cast into her waters the consecrated ring, exclaiming : " Despon- samus te. Mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii/^^ Some rag of alleged right commonly cloaks the most extravagant preten- sions, and accordingly the Venetians pleaded a donation of Pope Alexander III., who had said to the Doge : — " The sea owes you submission as the wife to her husband, for you have acquired the dominion of it by victory." Some subsequent holders of the See of Peter were not, however, inclined to recognize this liberal gift of their predecessor ; and it is related that Julius II. once asked Jerome Donate, the Venetian ambassador, for the title which con- ferred on the Eepublic the dominion of the gulf. " You ■v\nll find it," replied Donate, '^endorsed on the deed by which Constantino conveyed the domain of St. Peter to Pope Silvester." We need not trace all the steps by which the Venetians gradually won the large possessions which they held in the middle of the fifteenth century, many of which had been acquired by purchase. Thus the Island of Corfu, as well as Zara in Dalmatia, was bought from Ladislaus of Hungary, King of Naples ; Lepanto and Corinth from Centurione, a Genoese, and Prince of Achaia ; Salonika from Andronicus, brother of Theodore, Despot of the Morea, which, however, was wrested from their hands by the Turks in 1430. As a naval Power, the views of Venice were chiefly directed to the acquisition of maritime towns and fortresses ; but in Italy the Venetians were also straining every nerve to extend their terri- tory, and had already made themselves masters of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Ravenna, Treviso, Feltre, Belluno, the Friuli, and part of the Cremonese. Venice presents, perhaps, the most successful instance on re- cord of an aristocratical Republic or oligarchy. We shall not here enter into the details of its government, which have been described at length by Mr. Hallam."^ However unfavourable to domestic liberty, the government of Venice was admirably adapted to pro- mote the interest of the State in its intercom-se with other nations, and from a remote period its diplomatic service was admirably * " We wed thee, O Sea, in token of and exaggerated {Hist, de Venise, liv. xvi. our true and perpetual dominion." § 20), His errors on this and other 2 Middle Ages, vol. i. ch. iii. pt. ii. subjects have been rectified by Count That writer, however, appears to have Tiepolo, in his Biscorsi sulla Storia omitted the Zonta, or Giunta, and the Veneta, ^'C, and by Romanin, Gli In- State Inquisitors. Daru's account of the quisiiori di Stato. Comp. Hazlitt, Ven. Inquisitors is now recognized as erroneous Rcji. vol. iii. p. 56 sq. 46 VENETIAN CONSTITUTION. [Introd. conducted. As early as tlie tliirteentli century its ambassadors were instructed to note down everything worthy of observation in the countries to which they were sent ; and these reports, or Relazioni, were read before the Pregadi, or Senate, and then deposited among the State archives. The practice was continued to the latest times; and there is a Relazione of the early period of the French Republic, full of striking and impartial details.^ Under the Venetian constitution, the power of the Doge was very limited, and, indeed, he was often no more than the unwilling puppet of the Council; — a fact abundantly illustrated by the tragical story of Francesco Foscari, who was Doge from 1423 to 1457, and consequently at the time when Constantinople fell. During his reign, if such it can be called, for to himself it was little else than a source of bitterness and humiliation, Venice reached her highest pitch of prosperity and glory. Continually thwarted by the ruling oligarchy, Foscari twice tendered his resignation, which was, however, refused ; and on the last occa- sion, in 1443, he was obliged to promise that he would hold the ducal office during life. A year or two afterwards he was com- pelled to pronounce sentence of banishment on his only surviving son, Jacopo, accused of receiving bribes from foreign govern- ments. Still graver charges were brought against Jacopo, who died an exile in Crete, in January, 1456. The aged Doge him- self was deposed in 1457, through the machinations of his enemy Loredano, now at the head of the Council of Ten. He retired with the sympathy of the Venetians, which, however, none ven- tured to disjDlay ; and a few days afterwards he died. With short intervals of peace, he had waged war with the Turks thirty years ; and it was during his administration that the treaty was concluded with them which we shall have to record in the sequel. Before science had enlarged the bounds of navigation and opened new channels to commercial enterprise, Venice, from its position, seemed destined by nature to connect the Eastern and the Western Worlds. During many ages, accordingly, she was the chief maritime and commercial State of Europe. At the beginning of the fifteenth century more than 3,300 Venetian merchantmen, employing crews of 25,000 sailors, traversed the Mediterranean in all directions, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, coasted the shores of Spain, Portugal, and France, as the vessels ^ Jianke, Fiirsten tmd Volker, YovreAe. of tbe principal libraries of Europe, and Copies of these papers were frequently form valuable materials for history, made, which have been preserved in some Introd.] GENOA AND HER COLONIES. 47 of Phoenicia and Carthage had done of old, and carried on a lucra- tive trade with the English and the Flemings. The Venetians en- joyed almost a monopoly of the commerce of the Levant ; but in that with Constantinople and the Black Sea they were long rivalled, and indeed surpassed, by the Genoese.' Yet in the middle of the fifteenth century the commerce and power of Genoa, the second maritime Republic of Italy, were in a declining state. As the Venetians enjoyed an almost ex- clusive trade with India and the East, through the ports of Egypt, Syria, and Greece, so the Genoese possessed the chief share of that with the northern and eastern parts of Europe. The less costly, but perhaps more useful, products of these regions — wax, tallow, skins, and furs, together with all the materials for ship-building, as timber, pitch and tar, hemp for sails and cordage — found their way to the ports of the Black Sea, down the rivers which empty into it; and it was along these shores that the Genoese had planted their colonies. Early in the fourteenth century they had founded Cafia, in the Crimea ; and this was followed by the planting of other colonies and factories, as Tana, near Azof, at the mouth of the Tanai's, or Don, and others ; some of which, however, were shared by the Venetians and other Italians. All the trade of this sea necessarily found its way through the Bosphorus, where it was commanded by the Genoese and Venetian establishments at Constantinople. The rival interests of their commerce occasioned, during a long period, bloody contests between the Venetians and Genoese, for supremacy at sea. Genoa had not the wonderfully organized government and self-supporting power of Venice ; she lacked that admixture of the aristocratic element which gave such stability to her rival, and was frequently obliged to seek a refuge from her own dissensions by submitting herself to foreign dominion : yet such were the energy of her population and the strength derived from her commerce, that she was repeatedly able to shake off these trammels, as well as to make head against her powerful rival in the Adriatic. We find her by turns under the protection of the Empire, of Naples, of Milan, of France ; but as the factious spirit of her population compelled her to submit to these Powers, so the same cause again freed her from their grasp. In 1435 the Genoese revolted from Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, because • An elaborate statement of the com- just before his death. — Hazlitt, J''cn, Bep, mcrce of Venice in 1423, will be found pp. 27 — 35. in the speeches of the Doge Mocenigo 48 FLORENCE. ITS GOVERNMENT. [Inteod. that Prince had dismissed Alfonso V., Eang of Aragon and Sicily, and would be King of Naples, whom he had taken prisoner. From hereditary hatred to the Catalans the Genoese had sup- ported the French Prince Rene of Anjou, in his claims to the Neapolitan throne, against Alfonso, and they now allied them- selves with Venice and Florence against the Duke of Milan. This revolution, however, was followed by twenty years of civil broil, in which the hostile factions of the Adorni and Fregosi contended for supreme power and the office of Doge ; the most important political and commercial interests of the Republic were abandoned at the critical moment of the triumph of the Turks in 1453 ; and at that period the name of Genoa is scarcely heard of in the affairs of Italy. Florence, the third great Italian Republic, presents a striking, and in some respects agreeable, contrast to those just described. Not so grasping as they, nor so entirely absorbed in the pursuit of material interests, her popular institutions favoured the develop- ment of individual genius, which the wealth derived from trade and manufactures enabled her to encourage and foster. Her in- land situation and the smallness of her foreign commerce rendered Florence more essentially Italian than either Venice or Genoa ; and accordingly we find her taking a stronger interest in the general affairs of Italy, and in the maintenance of its political equilibrium.^ The Florentine government was freer than that of Venice, and more aristocratic than that of Genoa, nominally, indeed, a democracy, but at the time when this history opens led and controlled by the large-minded, liberal, and cultivated chiefs of the House of Medici. The riches of that family, acquired by commerce, enabled them to display their taste and generosity; and, under their auspices, that literature and art flourished which had already sprung up before their time, and made Florence the mother of modern European culture. The intricate details of the Florentine constitution have been fully described by Mr. Hallam.^ It will suffice to recall to the reader's memory that its basis was popular and commercial, rest- ing on what were called the Arts {Arti), which were, in fact, much the same as the Teutonic guilds. These were twenty-one in number; namely, seven greater ones, called the Arti Maggiori, which included the professional classes and the higher kind of traders; and fourteen Arti Minori, comprehending the lesser ' See Sismondi, Republ. Ital. ch. Ivii. t. viii. p. 34. * Middle Ages, chap. iii. pt. ii. Intkod.] government OF THE ALBIZZI. 49 trades. It was only from among the members of the Arti that the Priors {Priori), or chief executive magistrates of the State^ could be elected. These magistrates, ultimately eight in number^ were chosen every two months, and during their tenure of office lived at the public expense. After the establishment of the militia companies, the Gonfalonier^ of Justice, who was at the head of them, was added to the Signoria, or executive govern- ment, and, indeed, as its president. To aid the deliberations of the Signory, there was a college composed of the sixteen Gonfa- loniers of the militia companies, and of* twelve leading men called Buon'uomini, literally, good men, to whose consideration every resolution or law was submitted before it was brought before the great Councils of the State. These Councils, which were changed every four months, were the Consiglio di Fopolo, consisting of 300 plebeians, and the Consiglio di Comiirie, into which nobles also might enter. In extraordinary conjunctures the whole of the citizens could resolve themselves into a sovereign assembly of the people, which was called Farsi Popolo. The most floui'ishing period of the Florentine Republic was the half century during which it was under the government of the Guelf, or aristocratic, party of Maso degli Albizzi and his son and successor Rinaldo, from 1382 to 1434." The measures of these rulers, the principal of whom, besides the Albizzi, were Gino Capponi and Niccolo da Uzzano, were in general wise and pa- triotic. They increased the prosperity of Florence, and at the same time upheld the liberties of Italy ; and their credit was sus- tained by a series of brilliant conquests, which subjected Pisa, Arezzo, Cortona, in short, half Tuscany, to the Florentine do- minion ; and while their arms prevailed abroad, peace reigned at home. The magistrates lived in a plain, unostentatious manner, and abused not their power for their own private ends ; the people, too, lived frugally, while the public magnificence was displayed in churches, palaces, and other buildings ; valuable libraries were collected ; and painting, statuary, and architecture flourished. At this time we are told that Florence counted 150,000 inhabitants within her walls, and enjoyed a revenue of 300,000 gold florins, or about 150,000^ sterling. Although its situation excluded ^ Gonfalionere means, literally, a stan- a part in the history of Florence. The dard-hcarer ; from ^oH/"a/o)if, a banner. Marchese seems to have taken for his * See Storia dclla Repubblica di Firenze model the early Florentine ehi'oniclers ; (vol. ii. p. 146 sqq. ed. 1876), by the but his work is interspersed with some Marchese Gino Capponi, a descendant of interesting chapters on literature and those Capponis who played so prominent art. I. E 50 COSMO De' MEDICI. [Introd Florence from that large share of foreign commerce enjoyed by Genoa and Venice — for it had no port of its own till it acquired Pisa by conquest, and Leghorn by purchase from the Genoese — yet even previously it had not been entirely destitute of mari- time trade, finding a harbour either at Pisa or in the Sienese port of Telamone. In 1434 Cosmo de' Medici succeeded in overthrowing the party of the Albizzi and seizing the reins of government. The first known member of the Medici family was Salvestro, who, in 1378, had led a successfubinsui-rection of the Ciompi, or Floren- tine populace. During the supremacy of the Albizzi, Giovanni de' Medici, Cosmo's father, who had made a large fortune by trade and banking, and was considered the richest man in Italy, had filled some of the chief offices of State ; and at his death, in 1429, Cosmo took the direction of a party which had been formed for the purpose of limiting the authority of the ruling oligarchy. After his return from his travels in Germany and France, Cosmo abstained from the society of the ruling party, and associated himself with men of low condition; but both he and his brother Lorenzo were connected by marriage with some of the leading Florentine families. Incurring the suspicion of the oligarchs, he was banished, in 1433, for ten years, to Padua; but, by a revo- lution in the government, he and his family were recalled in October, 1434. From this time, for three centuries, the history of Florence is connected mth that of the Medici. Cosmo is de- scribed by Machiavelli as of a generous and afiable temper ; of a demeanour at once grave and agreeable, he possessed, in addi- tion to his father's qualities, far more talent as a statesman. The revolution by which he attained the supreme power must, how- ever, be regarded as ushering in the fall of the Florentine Republic. It was, in fact, the establishment of a plutocracy. Cosmo continued to govern till his death in 1464 ; so that he was the leading man at Florence at the period chosen as our epoch. He continued to follow the trade of a merchant and banker, and during his long administration his views were con- stantly directed to the aggrandizement of his family, though, after his death, the Florentines honoured him with the title of Pater Patrife. The preceding administration of the Albizzi, although more beneficial to their country, is almost forgotten, because, like the princes before Agamemnon, they found no bard or historian to record their praise; whilst Cosmo de' Medici, a munificent patron of literature, had the g*ood fortune to be the Introd.] MILAN. — THE VISCONTI. 51 friend of many eminent writers. As liis power was chiefly sup- ported by the lower classes, he was enabled to extend it by means of his wealth; and he at length succeeded in reducing the government to a small oligarchy, having, in 1452, vested the privilege of naming to the Signory in only five persons. To sup- port his own dominion he courted the friendship of the tyrant Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, and assisted that Prince to oppress the Milanese.^ Sforza, a condottiere, or soldier of fortune, like his father before him, obtained Milan partly by a fortunate marriage and partly by arms. The history of the Yisconti, his predecessors in the duchy, is little more than a tissue of crime and treachery, of cruelty and ambition. Originally an archbishopric, John Galeazzo Visconti procured in 1396 the erection of Milan and its diocese as a duchy and Imperial fief, by a treaty with the Emperor Wenceslaus and the payment of 100,000 florins. This transaction introduced a new feature into Italian politics. The famous parties of the Guelfs and Ghibelins, whose names re- mained more or less in use till the end of the fifteenth century, had at first nothing specially to do with the internal affairs of the different Italian States : they were merely, in a general sense, the watchwords of Italian liberty and of Imperial and Teutonic des- potism — the Guelfs supporting the cause of Rome, and the Ghibe- lins that of the Emperor.^ Thus, some Italian Eepublics were Ghibelin, whilst several tyrants had arisen among the Guelf cities. But after the Visconti had established themselves at Milan and acquired a preponderating influence in Italy, they began to consider their interests as indissolubly connected with monarchical principles ; and from this period every Italian tyrant or usurper, if he had before been Guelf, became Ghibelin, and courted the friendship and protection of the Dukes of Milan ; while, on the other hand, if a Ghibelin city succeeded in throwing off the yoke of its lord, it raised the Guelf standard, and sought the alliance of Florence, a city pre-eminently Guelf; and thus those party names became the symbols of domestic as well as foreign liberty or slavery. The Duchy of Milan descended in time to Philip Maria ' The principal authority for Cosmo's was descended from the Welfs, or Guelfs, life is Fabroni, Vita di Cosmo. of Altorf in Suabia, the heiress of wliich - The names of G-iielf and Ghibelin family, Cunegund, had married Azzo, (or JVelf and Waibling), as party watch- Marquis of Este, about the middle of the words, originated in the war between eleventh century ; and the name of Guelf Conrad III. and Henry the Proud, in remained a patronymic in the family. H38, for the German crown. Henry The name Ghibelin was derived from 52 CLAIMS TO THE MILANESE SUCCESSION. [Introd. Viscontij the younger of Gian-Galeazzo's two sons. Philip had no children except an illegitimate daughter, Bianca ; and Francis Sforza, whom Pope Eugenius IV. had made lord of the Mai'ch of Ancona and Gonfalonier of the Church, aspired to her hand, in the hope that by such a marriage he might eventually establish himself in the Milanese succession. His courtship was some- what rough ; in order to win the daughter he made war upon the father. After the overthrow of the Albizzi by Cosmo de' Medici, and the banishment of his rival, Einaldo degli Albizzi, Visconti, at the instance of the latter, engaged in war with Florence and Venice, and Sforza entered the service of the Florentines. His operations were, however, unsuccessful, and he found himself entangled in a dangerous position near the castle of Martinengo, when he was unexpectedly relieved by a message from Duke Philip Maria. Disgusted with the insolence of his own captains, who, in contemplation of his death, were already demanding dif- ferent portions of his dominions, the Duke offered Sforza the hand of his daughter Bianca with Cremona and Pontremoli as a dowry, and left him to name his own conditions of peace. The marriage was accordingly celebrated in October, 1441 : but Visconti soon repented of his bargain, and entered into a new war in order to ruin his son-in-law, who again took the command of the A^enetian and Florentine armies. Being, however, hai-d pressed, the Duke had again recourse to Sforza, and offered him the Milanese suc- cession as the price of deserting his employers. The point of honour remained to be considered, on which Sforza consulted his friend, Cosmo de' Medici, who advised him to follow no rule but his own interests, and to disregard his obligations to two States which had employed him only for their own advantage.^ Visconti afterwards seemed disposed to break this agreement also; but scarcely had the reappearance of danger from the further success of the Venetians again obliged him to throw himself into the arms of Sforza, when he was suddenly carried off by a dysentery, August 13th, 1447. With Philip Maria ended the dynasty of the Visconti, which, as bishops and dukes, had ruled Milan 170 years (1277 — 1447). As he left no male heirs, or, indeed, legitimate children of any kind, his death occasioned four claims to the succession, which must here be stated, as they formed the subject of wars and Waiblingen, a Suabian village, where were afterwards applied to very different Frederick, Duke of Suabia, brother of factions from those which gave them birth. Conrad HI., was brought up. But the names ' Simonetta, lib. viii. p. 148 (eil. 1544). Introd.] MILANESE SUCCESSION. 53 negotiations which it will be our business to relate in the follow- ing pages. These claims were: — 1. That of Charles, Duke of Orleans^ founded on his being the son of Valentina Yisconti, eldest sister of the late Duke; 2. That of Bianca^ Philip's illegitimate daughter, and of her husband Francesco Sforza, who could also plead that he had been designated by Philip as his successor; 3. That of Alfonso, King of Naples, which rested on a genuine or pretended testament of the deceased Duke ; 4. That of the Emperor, who, in default of heirs, claimed the duchj as a lapsed fief. The question between Bianca and the House of Orleans rests on the issue, whether a legitimate collateral succession were pre- ferable to an illeg-itimate but direct one ? According to the usages of those times, when bastardy was not regarded as so complete a disqualification as it is at present, and when there were numerous instances of illegitimate succession in various Italian States, this question should perhaps be answered in the negative. Sforza's pretensions, as well as those of the King of Naples, rested on the question, whether the Duke had power to appoint in default of natural heirs ; and, if so, which of the two were the more valid appointment : but it must also be recollected that Sforza's claim was further strengthened by his marriage with Bianca. Thus far, then, we might, perhaps, be inclined to decide in favour of Sforza. But the claim of the Emperor remains to be considered. The charter to the Ducal House given by King Wenceslaus at Prague, October 13th, 1396, limited the succession to males, sons of males by a legitimate bed, or, in their default, to the natural male descendants of John Galeazzo, after they had been solemnly legitimated by the Emperor.^ Milan, therefore, was exclusively a male fief. But there were no male heirs of any kind, nor has it been shown that the Duke had any power of appointment by will or otherwise. This seems to make out a clear case in favour of the Emperor, according to the general usage respecting fiefs, unless his original power over the fief should be disputed. But this had been clearly acknowledged by John Galeazzo when he accepted the duchy at Wenceslaus^s hands, and had indeed been always previously recognized by the Ghibelin House of the Visconti. It is true, as a modern writer observes,^ that the sovereignty lay properly \\dth the Milanese ' Sismondi, Bep. Ital. t. ix. p. 282. laus: " Les Viscontis refurent une nov- ^ Ibid. p. 263. Yet Sismondi admits velle existence par les diplomes de Wen- the efficacy of the invcst'ture of Wences- ceslaus ; ils furent des lors considere's 54 FRANCIS SFORZA, DUKE. [Introd. people ; but they were unable efifectually to assert it^ aud subse- quently the pretensions actually contested were not those of the Emperor and the people, but of the Emperor and the claimants under the title of the Visconti. The people, indeed, after the death of the Duke, under the leadership of four distinguished citizens, established a Eepublic, while the council acknowledged Alfonso King of Aragon and Naples, and hoisted the Aragonese flag. Some of the Milanese towns, as Pa via, Como, and others, also erected themselves into Eepublics ; some submitted to Venice, others to Milan ; and Asti admitted a French garrison in the name of Charles, Duke of Orleans. The Venetians refused to give up the territories which they had con- quered ; and, under these circumstances, the Eepublic of Milan engaged the services of Francesco Sforza, who thus became for a while the servant of those whom he had expected to command, though with the secret hope of reversing the position. It belongs not to our subject to detail the campaigns of the next two or three years. It will sufiice to state generally that Sforza^s operations against the Venetians were eminently successful, and that particularly by the signal defeat which he inflicted on them at Caravaggio, September 15, 1448, they found it politic to induce him to enter their own service, by ofi'ering to instate him in the Duchy of Milan, but on condition of his ceding to Venice the Cremonese and the Ghiara d^Adda. The Venetians, however, soon perceived that they had committed a political blunder in handing over Milan to a warlike Prince instead of encouraging the nascent Republic ; and disregarding their engagements with Sforza, they concluded at Brescia a treaty with the Milanese re- publicans (September 27th, 1449), and withdrew their troops from Sforza^s army. But that commander had already reduced Milan to famine ; and knowing that there was within its walls a former officer of his own, Gaspard da Vicomercato, on whose services he might rely, Sforza boldly ordered his soldiers to approach the city, laden with as much bread as they could carry. At a distance of six miles they were met by the starving population ; the bread was distributed, and Sforza advanced without resistance to the gates. Ambrose Trivulzio and a small band of patriots would have imposed conditions before he entered, and made him swear to observe their laws and liberties : but it was too late — the populace had declared for Sforza; there were no means of resisting commcs les seigneurs neitvrels, ainsi qu'on I'exprimait, et non plus comme les tyrans de la Lombardie."' — Ibid. t. vii. p. 345, Lntrod.] TEEATY of LODI.— NAPLES. 55 his entry ; and when he appeared on the public place, he was saluted by the assembled multitude as their Duke and Lord. This revolution was accomplished towards the end of February, 1450. During the next few years, however, Sforza had to con- tend with the Venetians for the possession of his dominions. The fall of Constantinople caused the Italian belligerents to reflect on the pernicious nature of the contest in which they were engaged ; and Pope Nicholas V. summoned a congress at Rome to consider of the means of making head against the common enemy. None of the Italian Powers, however, was sincere in these negotiations ; not even Nicholas himself, who had learned by experience that the wars of the other Italian States assured the tranquillity of the Church. The Venetians, exhausted by the length of the war, and finding that the congress would not succeed in establishing a general peace, began secretly to nego- tiate with Sforza for a separate one. This led to the Treaty of Lodi, April 9th, 1454. The Marquis of Montferrat, the Duke of Savoy, and other Princes, were now compelled to relinquish those portions of the Milanese which they had occupied ; and in this man- ner, together with the cessions of the Venetians, Sforza recovered all the territories which had belonged to his predecessor.^ The remaining Italian States, with the exception of the Kingdom of Naples, are not important enough to arrest our attention. The chief of them were Ferrara, then ruled by the illustrious House of Este, Mantua, under the Gonzagas, and Savoy. The Counts of Savoy traced their descent up to the tenth century. The Emperor Sigismund, in the course of his frequent travels, having come into Savoy, erected that county into a duchy in favour of Amadeus VIII., who was afterwards Pope Felix v., by letters patent granted at Chambery, February 19th, 1416."^ Sigismund exercised this privilege on the ground that Savoy formed part of the ancient Burgundian Kingdom of Aries, and in consideration of a paltry loan of 12,000 crowns. When this history opens Naples had been more than ten years in possession of Alfonso V., King of Aragon, who had obtained the Neapolitan throne after a hard struggle with a rival claimant, the French Prince Rene d'Anjou. The pretensions of the House of Anjou were originally derived from the donation of Pope Urban IV. in the middle of the thirteenth century. The Nor- man conquerors of Naples had consented to hold the County, ' Sismondi, RSpiibl. ItalA. ix. p.415 sqq. ^ Guichenon, Hist. Geneal . de la lioyah Maison de Savoie, p. 456. 56 HOUSE OF ANJOU AT NAPLES. [Introd. afterwards Kingdom, of Sicily, as a fief of the Roman See, and the Norman line was represented at the time above-mentioned by Conradin, grandson of the Emperor Frederick II. ; whose uncle Manfred, an illegitimate son of Frederick, having usurped the Sicilian throne. Urban offered it to Charles, Count of Anjou, brother of Louis IX. of France. Manfred was defeated and slain in the battle of Benevento, 1266 ; and two years afterwards Conradin, who had been set up by the Ghibelin nobles, was also defeated at Tagliacozzo, and soon after put to death by order of Count Charles, who thus established in Naples and Sicily the first House of Anjou. The Crown was, however, disputed by Don Pedro III., King of Arag-on, who had married a daughter of Manfred ; a war ensued, and Pedro succeeded in seizing Sicily, and transmitting it to his posterity. The first House of Anjou continued in possession of the Kingdom of Naples down to the reign of Queen Joanna I., who was dethroned in 1381 by Charles of Durazzo her heir presumptive. She had previously, however, called in from France her cousin Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of the French King, Charles V. ; and his son, after the assassina- tion of Charles of Durazzo in Hungary in 1385, actually ascended the Neapolitan throne with the title of Louis II. The reign, however, of this second House of Anjou was but short. Louis was driven out the same year by Ladislaus, son of Charles of Durazzo, who, in spite of all the efforts of Louis, succeeded in re- taining the sovereignty till his death in 144^. He was succeeded by his sister, Joanna II., who, though twice married, remained childless. In these circumstances Joanna had displayed so much favour towards the Colonna family that it was expected she would be- queath her Crown to a member of it ; but from this purpose she was diverted by her paramour Caraccioli. Pope Martin V., a Colonna, piqued at this change in her behaviour, determined, if possible, to dethrone her in favour of Louis III., a stripling of fifteen, and son of Louis II., who had died in 1417 ; and with this view he engaged the services of Sforza Attendolo, a re- nowned condottiere, and father of Francis Sforza, whose history we have already related. Sforza Attendolo, who had been con- stable to Joanna II., but through the enmity of Caraccioli was now alienated from her, was to invade the Neapolitan dominions with an army, while Louis III. was to attack Naples from the sea. In this desperate situation Joanna invoked the aid of Alfonso v., King of Aragon and Sicily, and promised in return Introd.] revolutions OF NAPLES. 57 for liis services to adopt liim as heir to lier dominions (1420) . These terms were accepted : Alfonso was solemnly proclaimed Joanna's successor; the Duchy of Calabria was made over to him as security ; and having frustrated the enterprise of Louis, he fixed his residence at Naples as future King. Such was the origin of the second claim of the House of Ai-agon to the Neapolitan throne. To make it good^ Alfonso had to under- take a struggle of many years' duration, of which we need mark only the leading events. Perceiving that the Queen and Carac- cioli meant to betray him, Alfonso endeavoured to secure their persons ; but having failed in the attempt, Joanna cancelled his adoption as heir to the Crown, substituted Louis III. in his stead, and, having reconciled herself with Sforza, obtained the assistance of his arms. The war dragged slowly on ; Sforza was accidentally drowned in the Pescara, January 4th, 1424, when his command devolved to his son Francis ; and Alfonso, having been obliged to return to Aragon by a war with the Castilians, left his brothers, Don Pedro and Don Frederick, to conduct his affairs in Naples. But they were betrayed by their condottiere Caldora, and Joanna re-entered Naples with her adopted son, Louis III. of Anjou. In 1432 a revolution, chiefly conducted by the Duchess of Suessa, having accomplished the death of Caraccioli, who had disgusted everybody, and at last even Joanna herself, by his in- solence and brutality, the Duchess' and a large party of the Neapolitan nobles invited Alfonso to return ; and as he had now arranged the affairs of Aragon, he accepted the invitation. But his expedition was unsuccessful. Louis III. repulsed his attacks on Calabria ; and after some vain attempts to induce Joanna to recall her adoption of that prince, Alfonso concluded a peace for ten years, and retired from the Neapolitan territories early in 1433. The death of Louis in 1434, followed by that of Queen Joanna 11. in February, 1435, again threw Naples into anarchy. Joanna had bequeathed her Crown to Rene, Duke of Lorraine, Louis lll.'s next brother, who had succeeded to Lorraine as son-in-law of the deceased Duke Charles; but Antony, Count of Vaudemont, brother of Charles, contested with him this succession, defeated him, and made him prisoner. In this state of things the Neapolitan nobles again called in Alfonso ; but the partisans of the House of Anjou were supported by Philip Maria Viscouti, Duke of Milan, who could dispose of the maritime forces of Genoa, then under his government ; and. 58 RENE OF ANJOU. [Ixtrod. on the 5th of August, 1435, one of the bloodiest sca-fig-hts yet seen in the Mediterranean took place between the Genoese and Catalan fleets. That of King Alfonso was entirely defeated, all his ships were either captured or destroyed, and he himself,, together with his brother John, King of Navarre, and a great number of Spanish and Italian nobles, were made prisoners. But Alfonso showed his great qualities even in this extremity of misfortune. Being carried to Milan, he so worked upon Visconti by his address, and by pointing out the injurious con- sequences that would result to him from establishing the French in Italy, that the Duke dismissed him and the other prisonera without ransom. By this step, however, as we have already said [supra, p. 47 sq.) , Visconti lost Genoa; for the Genoese, disgusted with this mark of favour towards their ancient enemies the Catalans, rose and drove out their Milanese governor. Alfonso now renewed his attempts upon Naples, and the war dragged on five or six years ; but we shall not follow its details, which are both intricate and unimportant. The Pope, the Vene- tians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and Sforza favoured the House of Anjou ; the Duke of Milan hung dubious between the parties ; and the Condottieri sold themselves to both sides by turns. In the absence of Rene, his consort Isabella displayed abilities that were of much service to his cause ; and Rene himself, after his liberation, appeared off Naples with twelve galleys and a few other ships. But nothing important was done till 1442, when Alfonso succeeded in entering Naples through a subter- ranean aqueduct which in ancient times had been used for the same purpose by Belisarius. Rene soon after abandoned the contest and retired into France, and Alfonso speedily obtained possession of the whole kingdom.^ Having made peace with Eugenius IV., and recognized him as true head of the Church, that Pontiff confirmed Alfonso^s title a3 King of the Sicilies, under the old condition of feudal tenure ; and even secretly pro- mised to support the succession of his natm'al son Ferdinand, whom Alfonso had made Duke of Calabria, or, in other words, heir to the throne, to which he partly succeeded on his father^s death in 1458. Rene made a fruitless attempt in 1453 to recover Naples, which he never repeated. His quiet and unambitious character, testified by the name of "le bon roi Rene," led him to cede his claims both to Lorraine and the Sicilies to his son, and to ' The title of this prince, as King of Naples, was Alfonso I. Introd.] SPAIN. — CASTILE. 59 abandon himself in his Duchy of Provence to his love for poetry and the arts. Here he endeavoured to revive the days of the Troubadours and the love-courts of Languedoc ; but he had more taste than genius, and his efforts ended only in founding a school of insipid pastoral poetry. His children had more energy and ambition : Margaret, the strong-minded but unfortunate con- sort of our Henry VI., and John, whose efforts to recover the Neapolitan Crown there will be occasion to relate in the follow- ing pages. John, who assumed the title of Duke of Calabria, proceeded into Italy in 1454, and was for some time entertained by the Florentines, till their policy requiring the accession of Alfonso to the peace which they had concluded with Venice and Milan, John was dismissed. The Spanish peninsula was divided, like Italy, into several independent sovereignties.^ During the tardy expulsion of the Moors from northern and middle Spain, various Christian States were gradually formed, as Leon, Navarre, Castile, Aragon, Bar- celona, Valencia, &c. ; but in the middle of the fifteenth century these had been practically reduced to the three Kingdoms of Na- varre, Castile and Aragon, which now occupied the whole peninsula, with exception of the Kingdom of Portugal in the west and the Moorish Kingdom of Granada in the south. Of these Navarre comprised only a comparatively small district at the western ex- tremity of the Pyrenees ; to Aragon were attached the indepen- dent lands of Catalonia and Valencia; while Castile occupied, with the exceptions before named, the rest of Spain. The Kingdom of Castile was founded by Don Ferdinand, second son of Sanchez, surnamed the Great, King of Navarre. Sanchez had conquered Old Castile from its Count, and at his death, in 1035, left it to Ferdinand, who assumed the title of King of Castile, and subsequently added the Kingdom of Leon to his dominions. It belongs not to our plan to trace the history of the Spanish monarchies through the middle ages.^ It will suffice to observe that the boundaries of Castile were gradually en- larged by successive acquisitions, and that in 1368, a revolution ' The chief historian of Spain is the The English reader may consult Robert- Jesnit Mariana, whose work extends from son, Charles V., Introd. ; Modern Univ. the earliest times to the accession of Hist. vol. xvi. ; Prescott, Ferdinand and Charles I. (the Emperor Charles V.), Isabella, vol i. with a supplement containing a brief - The reader will iind a sketch of the abstract of events down to 1621. Zuri- history and constitution of the Spanish ta"s Annedes ele Aragon, also commencing Kingdoms during this period in jNIr. Hal- from the earliest period, are very ample lam's Middle Ages, chap. iv. for the reiffn of Ferdinand the Catholic. • 60 JOHN II. AND ALYARO DE LUNA. [Ixtrod. "wliich drove Peter the Cruel from the throne^ established on it the House of Trastamara, which continued to hold possession. In 1406 the Crown devolved to John II., an infant little more than a twelvemonth old, who wore it till 1454, and was conse- quently King at the time when this history opens. His father, Henry III., who died at the early age of twenty-seven, had ruled with wisdom and moderation, but at the same time with energy. An armament which he had prepared against the Moors in the very year of his death will convey some idea of the strength of the Kingdom. It consisted of 1,000 lances, or harnessed knights, 4,000 light cavalry, 50,000 infantry, and 80 ships or galleys ; and though Henry did not live to conduct the war, it was for some time prosecuted with vigour and success. But the long minority of John II. exposed the Kingdom to confusion and anarchy ; and subsequently the weakness of his mind, though he possessed no unamiable disposition, rendered him only fit to be governed by others. During nearly the whole of his reign Don Alvaro de Luna, Constable of Castile, possessed nearly unlimited power. It was the hope of crushing this haughty favourite by force of arms that detained Alfonso V. of Aragon in Spain, and pre- vented him from prosecuting his claims on Naples, as already related. After his return from Italy he proclaimed his deter- mination to invade Castile, and, as he said, to release the young King from Alvaro's tyranny ; and though the matter was tem- porarily arranged through the mediation of Alfonso's brother, John of Navarre, yet the unsettled state of the relations between Castile and Aragon detained Alfonso three years in the latter country. Don John, subsequently King of Navarre, and the Infant Don Henry, though Aragonese by nation, had large pos- sessions in Castile, and being grandees of that country, con- sidered themselves entitled to a share in the government, for which they entered into a long but unsuccessful struggle. In 1429, John II. of Castile, at the persuasion of Alvaro, invaded Aragon with a large army, and committed fearful devastations ; and in the following year, Alfonso, whose views were turned towards Italy, abandoned the cause of his brother, and concluded a truce of five years with the King of Castile. After this period the wealth and power of Alvaro went on wonderfully increasing. He obtained the greater part of the con- fiscated lands of the Aragonese Princes ; and as he was the only man capable of inspiring the haughty Castilian grandees with awe, he was invested by the King with almost absolute authority. Introd.] ARAGON. 61 He could muster 20,000 vassals at his residence at Escalona, -where he held a kind of court. The extent of his power may be inferred from the circumstance, that when the King became a widower, the Constable, without any notice, contracted him to Isabella of Portugal. Alvaro had, however, to maintain a constant struggle with the Castilian grandees, with whom at length even the King himself combined against him. In 1453 he was entrapped at Burgos, his house was beleaguered, and he was forced to capitu- late, after receiving security under the royal seal that his life, honour, and property should be respected. But he was no sooner secured than his vast possessions were confiscated, and he himself, after being subjected to a mock trial, was condemned to death, and executed like a common malefactor in the public place of Valladolid (July, 1453). The fortitude with which he met his fate turned in his favour the tide of popular opinion ; nor does it appear that he had done anything to deserve death. John II. soon found to his cost the value of Alvaro, and that he had no longer any check upon the insolence of the grandees. He sur- vived the Constable only a year, and died in July, 1454, leaving a son, who ascended the throne with the title of Henry IV. ; and by his second consort, a daughter, Isabella, afterwards the famous Queen of Castile, and a son named Alfonso. Aragon, like Castile, was first elevated to the dignity of a Kingdom in favour of a younger son of Sanchez the Great of Navarre, namely, Don Eamiro. Its territories were gradually extended by conquest. In 1118, the King Alfonso I., besides other conquests, wrested Saragossa from the Moors, and made it, instead of Huesca, the capital of Aragon. In 1137 Catalonia became united to Aragon by the marriage of the Aragonese heiress, Petronilla, niece of Alfonso, with Don Raymond, Count of Bar- celona. This was a most important acquisition for Aragon ; for the Catalans, a bold and hardy race, and excellent sailors, enabled the Aragonese monarchs to extend their dominions by sea. Under King James I. of Aragon (1213 — 1276), Minorca and Valencia were recovered from the Moors and added to the Kingdom, though these States, as well as Catalonia, enjoyed an independent government. James's son, Pedro III., as already mentioned, wrested Sicily from the tyrannical hands of Charles of Anjou. On his death in 1285, Don Pedro left the Crown of Sicily to his second son, James ; and from this period Sicily formed an inde- pendent kingdom under a separate branch of the House of Aragon, down to the death of Martin the Younger in 1409. That monarch 62 CASTILIAN CONSTITUTIOX. [Ixtrod. dying without legitimate children, the throne of Sicily came to his father, Martin the Elder, King of Aragon ; and the two Kingdoms remained henceforth united till the beginning- of the eighteenth century. On the death of Martin the Elder in 1410, the male branch of the House of Barcelona, in the direct line, became extinct, and various claimants to the Crown arose/ A civil war ensued, till at length, in June, 1412, a council of arbiters, to whom the dis- putants had agreed to refer their claims, decided in favour of Ferdinand of Castile, nephew of Martin by his sister Eleanor, formerly Queen-Consort of that country. Ferdinand, who was uncle to the minor King John II. of Castile, resigned the regency of that country on ascending the thrones of Aragon and Sicily. He was a mild and just Prince, and reigned till his death in 1416, when he was succeeded by his son, Alfonso Y., surnamed the Wise, whom we have already had occasion to mention. Alfonso left Naples to his natural son Ferdinand ; but he declared his brother John, King of Navarre, heir to Aragon and its dependencies ; namely, Valencia, Catalonia, Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily ; and that Prince accordingly ascended the Aragonese and Sicilian thrones with the title of John II., in 1458. Both Castile and Aragon while they existed under separate Kings enjoyed a very considerable share of liberty. The con- stitution of Castile bore a striking resemblance to our own in the time of the Plantagenets. Before the end of the twelfth century, the deputies of towns appear to have obtained a seat in the Cortes ^'^ or national assembly, which before that period consisted only of the Clergy and Grandees. The Cortes continued pretty fairly to represent the nation down to the reign of John II. and his successor Henry IV., when the deputies of many towns ceased to be sum- moned. The practice had, indeed, been previously irregular, but from this time it went on declining; apparently, however, not much to the regret of the burgesses, who grudged defraying the expenses of their representatives; and by the year 1480, the number of towns returning members had been reduced to seven- teen. Alfonso XI. (1312 — 1350) had previously restricted the privilege of election to the municipal magistrates, whose number rarely exceeded twenty-four in each town. The members of Cortes were summoned by a writ of much the same form as that ' See a table of them in Hallam, vol. ii. popular reitresentation in Castile occurred p. 40. at Burgos in 1169. Prescott, Ferdinand ^ The earliest instance on record of and Isabella, vol. i. p. 19. INTROD.] CONSTITUTION OF ARAGON. 63 in use for the English Parliament. The legislative power resided with the Cortes, though it was sometimes infringed by royal or- dinances, as it was in the earlier periods of our own history by the King^s proclamations. The nobles, not only the higher class of them, or Ricos Homhres, but also the Hidalgos, or second order, and the Cahalleros, or knights, were exempt from taxation ; and this was also, in some degree, the case in Aragon. The royal power was still more limited in Aragon than in Cas- tile. At first the King was elective; but the right of election was vested only in a few powerful barons, called from their wealth, the Ricos Homhres, or rich men. The King was inaugurated by kneeling bare-headed before the Justiciary, or chief judge, of the Kingdom, who himself sat uncovered. In later times the Cortes claimed the right, not indeed of electing the King, yet of con- firming the title of the heir on his accession. The Cortes of Ara- gon consisted of four Orders, called Brazos, or arms : — namely, 1 . The Prelates, including the commanders of military orders, who ranked as ecclesiastics; 2. The B&rons, or Ricos Homhres; 3. The Infanzones, that is, the equestrian order, or knights ; 4. The De- puties of the royal towns. Traces of popular representation occur earlier in the history of Aragon than in that of Castile, or of any other country ; and we find mention made of the Cortes in 1133. The towns which returned deputies were few; but some of them sent as many as ten representatives, and none fewer than four. The Cortes, both of Castile and Aragon, preserved a con- trol over the public expenditure ; and those of Aragon even ap- pointed, during their adjournment, a committee composed of members of the four estates to manage the public revenue, and to support the Justiciary in the discharge of his functions. This last magistrate {el Justicia de Aragon) was the chief administrator of justice. He had the sole execution of the laws : appeals, even from the King himself, might be made to him, and he was respon- sible to nobody but the Cortes. He had, however, a court of as- sessors, called the Court of Inquisition, composed of seventeen persons chosen by lot from the Cortes, who frequently controlled his decisions. The Justicia was appointed by the King from among the knights, never from the barons. At first he was re- movable at pleasure; but in 1442 he was appointed for life, and could be deposed only by authority of the Cortes. Catalonia and Valencia also enjoyed free and independent go- vernments, each having its Cortes, composed of three estates. It was not till the reign of Alfonso III. (1285—1291) that these 64 THE MILITARY ORDERS. [Introd. two dominions were finally and inseparably nnited with Aragon. After this period, general Cortes of the three kingdoms were in- deed sometimes held ; yet they continued to assemble in separate chambers, though meeting in the same city. Of the commercial greatness of Catalonia, there will be occasion to speak in another part of this work.^ The Military Orders form so prominent a feature of Spanish institutions, that it will be proper to say a few words respecting them. The Spaniards had three peculiar military orders, those of Calatrava, St. lago, and Alcantara, besides the Knights Templars and Knights of St, John, which were common to them with the rest of Europe. These orders were governed by elective Grand Masters, who enjoyed an almost regal power, and possessed their own fortified towns in different parts of Castile. The Grand Master of St. lago, especially, was reckoned next in dignity and power to the King. The order could bring into the field 1,000 men-at-arms, accompanied, it may be presumed, by the usual number of attendants, and had at its disposal eighty-four com- manderies, and two hundred priories and benefices. These orders being designed against the Moors, who then held a large part of Spain, had originally a patriotic as well as a religious destination, and were at first very popular among the people. The Knights took vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. The turbulent nobles of Spain, like those of Germany, carried on private feuds, and sometimes levied war against the King himself. The Aragonese nobles, indeed, by the Privilege of Union, asserted their constitutional right to confederate them- selves against the Sovereign in case he violated their laws and immunities, and even to depose him and elect another King if he refused redress. The Privilege of Union was granted by Alfonso III. in 1287, and in 1347 it was exercised against Peter IV. ; but in the following year, Peter having defeated the confederates at Epila, abrogated their dangerous privilege, cut the act which granted it into pieces with his sword, and cancelled or destroj^ed all the records in which it was mentioned. It will appear from the preceding description of Spain, that, although she already possessed, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the elements of political power, she was not yet in a condition to assert that rank in Europe which she afterwards attained. Castile and Aragon were not yet under one head ; ' See Clap. viii. Lntkod.] PORTUGAL. 65 the Moors still held the Kingdom of Granada in the souths and their reduction was to form one of the chief glories of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Kingdom of Portugal, the remaining division of the Spanish peninsula, is not of sufficient importance in European history to claim any lengthened notice/ Alfonso, or Affonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, first assumed the title of King of that country after his victory over the Moors at Ourique in 1139; and in 1147 he took Lisbon by help of some crusaders driven thither by stress of weather. The Kings of Portugal, like thosie of Spain, were continually engaged in combating the Moors, but their history presents little of importance. The line of Alfonso, continued to reign uninterruptedly in Portugal till 1383, when, on the death of King Ferdinand, John I. of Castile, who had married his natural daughter Beatrix and obtained from him a promise of the Portuguese succession for the issue of the marriage, claimed the throne. But the Portuguese, among whom, like the Moors, the custom prevailed of giving the sons of the concubine equal rights with those of the wife, declared John the Bastard, illegitimate brother of Ferdinand, to be their King; and after a civil war of two years^ duration he was, with the assistance of England, established on the throne, with the title of John I., by the decisive battle of Aljubarrota (1385) . The war with Castile continued nevertheless several years, till it was con- cluded by the peace of 1411 ; by which the Castilian government engaged to abandon all pretension to Portugal. John thus became the founder of a dynasty which occupied the Portuguese throne till 1580. He married Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1387), by whom he had a numerous issue. He was an able and energetic sovereign, and his reign was distinguished by the maritime enterprises conducted by his Constable, Nuno Alvares Pereira. In 1415, Pereira, accom- panied by the King and his three surviving sons, took Ceuta in Africa from the Moors, fortified it, and filled it with a Christian population. John^s fourth son, Henry, called " the Navigator," devoted himself entirely to maritime affairs, and the sciences connected with them ; thus giving an impulse to maritime dis- covery, for which the Portuguese became renowned, as there will be occasion to relate in the sequel. John I. was succeeded in 1433 by Edward, and Edward in 1438 by Alfonso V., who ' The chief histories of Portugal are, Historias Portugesas ; De la Clede, Hist. Manuel de Faria y Sousa, Epitome de las Gen. de Port.; and the Mod. Un. Hist. I. r (jQ • FRANCE. [Introd. reigned till 1481. John transferred to Lisbon the royal resi- dence, which had previously been at Coimbra. It remains only to notice that group of western nations — namely, France/ England, and the Netherlands — whose position brought them into close relations, which were too often of a hostile character. It is presumed that the reader has already acquired from other sources'^ a competent knowledge of their earlier history and constitution down to the close of the Middle Ages, and therefore no more will here be said than may be necessary to acquaint him with the posture of their afiairs at the period when this narrative commences. In 1453, the same year that Constantinople fell before the Turkish arms, the English were at length finally expelled from France. The civil broils which had formerly prevailed in that country, fomented by Philip, Duke of Burgundy, surnamed " the Good,^' facilitated the acquisition of the French Crown by Henry V. of England. The lunacy of Charles VI. of France occasioned a struggle for supreme power between Louis Duke of Orleans, the King^s brother, and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, grandfather of Philip the Good. On the death of Philip the Bold in 1404, the contest was continued by his son, John sans Feur or the Fearless, who in 1407 caused the Duke of Orleans to be assassinated at Paris, and openly avowed and justified the deed. A civil war ensued. France was divided into two furious parties : the Armagnacs, so called from the Count of Armagnac, father-in-law of the young Charles, Duke of Orleans ; and the Bourguignons, or Burgundian faction. The Armagnacs supported the imbecile King and his son the Dauphin ; a dignity which, after the death of his brothers, fell to the King^s fourth son, Charles : the Bourguignons were for a regency to be conducted by the Queen, Isabel of Bavaria. John the Fearless appeared to favour the pretensions of Henry Y. of England to the French throne ; but more with a view to turn to his own advantage the diversion occasioned by the English arms than to make over France to foreign dominion. Offended, how- • Strictly spealdng, the French kingdom History ; for the general state of society embraced at this period only a compara- in Europe, Mid. Ages, ch. ix. tively small part of the lands now com- The chief authorities for the earlier prehended under the name of France; but, history of France and Burgundy are: to avoid distinctions which might distract Oliver de la Marche, Mimoires (1435 — the reader, we shall use that name when 1475); Monstrelet, Chroniques (1400 — speaking of the country generally. 1467); Thomas Basin, Msi^. Caroli VII.; ^ See fur France and the Netherlands Pasquier. Rechcrches de la France; Ba- Hallam's Middle Ages, chs. i. and ii.; for rante, Hist, dcs Dues de Bourgogne. England, ch. viii., and the Constitutio7ial introd.] treaty of troyes. 67 ever^ by the harshness of the terms proposed hy Henry, as well as by the English King^s personal bearing towards him, the Duke of Burgundy resolved to join the party of the Dauphin, and thus to restore peace to France. Negotiations were accord- ingly opened, and John the Fearless was invited to discuss the matter with the Dauphin and his party ; but the latter mistrusted the Duke, who was basely murdered in presence and with con- nivance of the Dauphin, at an interview to which he had been invited on the bridge of Montereau, Sept. 1419. To avenge his father's death upon the Dauphin, Philip, the new Duke, resolved to sacrifice France, and even his own family, which had eventual claims to the Crown, by making it over to the English King. A treaty was accordingly concluded at Arras, towards the end of 1419, between PhiKp of Burgundy and Henry V., by which Philip agreed to recognize Henry as King of France after the death of Charles VI. ; and in considera- tion of Charles's mental imbecility, Henry was at once to assume the government of the Kingdom, after marrying Catharine, the youngest of the French King's daughters. This treaty was definitively executed at Troyes, May 21st, 1420, by Charles A^I., who knew not what he was signing, and by his Queen, Isabel of Bavaria, a vulgar, profligate woman, who was stimulated at once by hatred of her son the Dauphin and a doting afiection for her daughter Catharine. The treaty was ratified by the French States and by the Parliament of Paris ; Henry V. obtained possession of that capital, which was occupied by an English garrison under the command of the Duke of Clarence, and on the 1st December, 1420, the Kings of France and England, and the Duke of Burgundy, entered Paris with great pomp. Henry now helped the Duke of Burgundy to punish the murderers of his father, and kept the Dauphin Charles in check by his arms. The birth of a son, regarded as the heir both of France and England, seemed to fill up the measure of Henry's prosperity, when he was carried off by a fistula, August 31st, 1422. Henry appointed his brother the Duke of Bedford to the Regency of France ; his younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to that of England ; and the Earl of Warwick to be guardian of his infant son. The imbecile Charles VI. of France shortly afterwards de- scended to the grave (October 22), and the Dauphin, assuming the title of Charles VII., caused himself to be crowned at Poitiers. The treaty of Troyes had rallied the national feeling 68 THE BURGUNDIAN LANDS. [Introd. of the Frencli to the Dauphin, whose manners and disposition, as ■well as his lawful claim to the throne of France and the popular hatred of the English usurpers, had rendered him a favourite with the majority of the French nation ; and as a counterpoise to his influence, the Regent Bedford drew closer his connections both with the Dukes of Burgundy and Bi'ittany. It does not belong to our subject to detail the wars which followed, and the romantic story of Joan of Arc, which will be found related in the histories of England as well as of France/ The great abilities of Bedford secured during his lifetime the predominance of the English in France, and the young King Henry VI. was crowned in Paris December 17th, 1431. But this predominance was soon to be undermined ; first by the defection of the Duke of Bur- gundy from the English alliance, and then by the death of Bed- ford, and the disputes and divisions which ensued in the English government. The Imperial and French principalities ruled by the Duke of Burgundy made him, perhaps, a mightier Prince than the King of the French ; and it will be fit, therefore, to look back a little, and shortly trace the progress of his power. The Capetian line of Burgundy, which had ruled upwards of three centuries, died out with the young Duke Philip in 1361 ; and a year or two afterwards. King John of France bestowed the Burgundian Duchy as an hereditary fief on his youngest and favourite son, Philip the Bold, the first Burgundian Duke of the House of Valois. By this impolitic gift John founded the second House of Burgundy, who were destined to be such dangerous rivals to his successors on the throne of France. The last Capetian Duke, who was only sixteen when he was carried off by the peste noire, or black death, had married Margaret, heiress of Flanders, Artois, Antwerp, Mechlin, Nevers, Rethel, and Franche-Comte, or, as it was then called, the County of Burgundy ; and Philip the Bold espoused his predecessor's widow. Three sons, the issue of this marriage (John the Fearless, Antony, and Philip), divided among them the Burgundian dominions; and each extended his share by marriage, or by re-annexations. But all these portions, with * Some recent French historians have author, ih. ch. iv. ; and ]\Iartin, Hist, de dwelt upon and magnified the exploits of Fr. liv. xxxv. and xxxvi. The mystery the Pucelle d'Orleans with an unction into which these writers would convert bordering on the profane as well as the the story is easily solved by the ignorance ridiculous. M. Michelet does not scruple and superstition of the age. It should be to say : "Limitation de Jesus-Christ, sa remembered that, in the words of Lord Passion, rcprodnite dans la Pucelle, telle Mahon, " the worst wTongs of Joan were fut la redemption de la France I " — Hist. dealt upon her by the hands of her own de France, liv. x. ch, i. See the same countrymen."— Ms^ Essays, p. 47. Lntrod.] the burgundian *ands. 69 their augmentations, fell ultimately to Philip, called " the Good," son of John, whose accession has been already mentioned. Philip ruled from 1419 to 1467, and was consequently in possession of the Burgundian lands at the time when this history opens. Philip also obtained large additions to his dominions, chiefly by the deaths, without issue, of his relations; so that in 1440 he possessed, besides the lands already mentioned, Brabant, Lim- burg, Hainault, Holland, Zealand, Friesland, and Namur. To these in 1444 he added Luxemburg. Thus Philip was in fact at the head of a vast dominion, though nominally but a vassal of the Emperor and the French King. Philip also took advantage of his connection with the English, and of the crippled state of France which it produced, to augment still further his dominions at the French King^s expense. The Regent Bedford had married Philip's sister, Anne of Burgundy ; but her death without issue in November, 1432, severed all family ties between the two Princes; and soon afterwards Bedford incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Burgundy by his marriage with Jaquette of Luxemburg. Philip had now forgotten the resent- ment which had dictated the treaty of Troyes ; he was desirous of putting an end to the war which had so long desolated France, but, at the same time, of deriving advantage from it ; and he opened negotiations with the party of Charles VII. The terms stipulated by Philip in favour of his English allies became gradu- ally weaker and weaker ; at length he abandoned that connection altogether, and immediately after the death of Bedford, which removed all his scruples, he concluded with Charles VII. the treaty of Arras (September 21st, 1435), in which only his own interests were considered. By this treaty he obtained possession of the counties of Macon, Auxerre, and Ponthieu; of the lord- ships or baronies of Peronne, Roye, Montdidier, St. Quentin, Corbie, Amiens, Abbeville, Dourdon ; and of the towns of Dour- lens, St. Riquier, Crevecoeur, Arleux, and Mortagne, with a con- dition, however, that the towns of Picardy might be re-pvirchased by the French King for the sum of 400,000 crowns. Thus the territory of the Duke was extended to the neighbourhood of Paris, and he became one of the most powerful Princes of Europe. By the same treaty Charles VII. absolved the Duke for his life- time only, with regard to such of his territories as were under the French King's suzerainty, of the vassalage which he owed to France ; and Philip now styled himself " Due par la grace de Dieu," — a formula signifying that the person using it owned no 70 THE BURGUNDIAN COUET. [Introd. feudal superior. In fact, Philip had for some time harboured the design of erecting- his lands into an independent Kingdom, and of obtaining the vicarship of all the countries under suze- rainty of the Emperor on the left bank of the Rhine; and he had, in 1442, paid Frederick III. a sum of money to renounce his suzerainty of the Duchies of Brabant and Limburg, the Counties of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault, and the Lordship of Friesland. Philip's Belgian provinces were at that time in a condition of great prosperity. Of this prosperity the woollen manufacture was the chief foundation, in commemoration of which had been instituted the Order of the Toison d'Or, or Golden Fleece.^ Some of the Flemish cities, and especially Ghent and Bruges, were among the richest and most populous of Europe. They enjoyed a considerable share of independence ; they claimed great municipal privileges ; and they were frequently involved in disputes with Philip, whose exactions they resisted. The Duke's Court, one of the most magnificent in Europe, was distinguished by a pompous etiquette, and by a constant round of banquets, tournaments, and fetes. The historians of the time particularly dwell on the splendour of the three months' fetes by which Philip the Good's third marriage, in 1430, with Isabel of Portugal, was celebrated. On that occasion the streets of Bruges were spread with Flemish carpets ; wine of the finest quality flowed eight days and nights — Rhenish from a stone lion, Beaune from a stag; while, during the banquets, jets of rose- water and malmsey spurted from a unicorn.^ The arms, the dresses, the furniture of that period could not be surpassed ; the superbly wrought armour and iron work then manufactured have obtained for it the name of the Sieele defer. The pictures and the rich Arras tapestry of the time may still convey to us an idea of its magnificence. Nor was the Court of Philip the Good distinguished by sumptuousness alone. He was also a patron of literature and art; many literary men, some of con- siderable repute, were attracted to his Court ; and he formed a magnificent library, manuscripts from which still enrich the chief collections of Europe. A brilliant school of musicians, which lasted several generations, had its origin in his chapel. The painters of Bruges, whose pictures are still as fresh as on the ' This order was instituted by Philip Eeiffenberg. Hisf. de la Toison cfOr. the Good on the occasion of his marriage ^ Monstrelet, liv. ii. ch. 77. with Isabel of Portugal in 1430. See Inteod.] death of BEDFORD. 71 day they were finished, became illustrious, and especially through John van Eyck, who had been the valet, and afterwards, like Eubens, the counsellor of his Sovereign. Italy in some respects had as yet produced nothing equal to the paintings of John van Eyck and his brother Hubert, which were sought with avidity by Italian Princes and amateurs. This, however, must be attri- buted to the merit of their technical execution, and more espe- cially, perhaps, to their being painted in oil, — a method which originated with the Flemings, from whom it was borrowed by the Italians. For in inventive genius and the higher qualities of art the Florentine school under Giotto and his successors had already reached a height which had not been, and indeed never was, attained by the Flemings. The sister art of architecture also flourished ; and it is to this period we are indebted for most of those splendid town halls with which Belgium is adorned, par- ticularly those of Brussels and Louvain, All this refinement, however, was alloyed with a good deal of grossness and sensu- ality. Intemperance in the jDleasures of the table, which still in some degree marks those countries, was carried to excess, and the relations with the female sex were characterized by an un- bounded profligacy, of which the Sovereign himself set the example.^ The death of Bedford proved a fatal blow to English power in France. We shall not dwell on the contest which ensued between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort for the disposal of the French Regency. Suffice it to say that Richard, Duke of York, the nominee of Gloucester, at length obtained it, but after a delay which occasioned the loss of Paris. The English dominion there had long been the subject of much dis- content to the citizens, who, taking advantage of the neglect of the English Government during the abeyance of the Regency, opened their gates to the troops of Charles VII. The English garrison, which numbered only 1500 men, under Lord Wil- loughby, were compelled, after a short resistance, to capitulate, and were allowed to evacuate Paris unmolested, carrying away with them what property they could (April 17th, 1436). ' Philip the Good, besides three wives, bray, was served at the altar by thirty- had had twenty-four mistresses, by whom six illegitimate sons and grandsons. In he left sixteen natural children ; a mode- fact, the name of " Bastard " became al- rate quantity, however, when compared most a title of honour in that age. See with the illegitimate progeny of some of Reiffenberg, Hist, dc la Toison d'Or, In- the grandees of the period. A Count of ti'od. p. xxiv. ; Michelet, Hist, de France, Cleves had sixty-three natural children; t. vii. p. 24. and John of Burgundy, Bishop of Cam- 72 ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE. [Intuod. The war, however, dragged on for several years after the sur- render of Paris, but without vigour on either side. Henry VI. ^s consort, Margaret of Anjou, and her favourite the Earl of Suffolk, and his party, who ruled in England, neglected to put the Eng- lish possessions in France in a good posture of defence. Somer- set and Talbot, who commanded in I^ormandy, receiving no succours either of men or money, and being pressed on one side by the Constable Richemont, on another by Charles VII. in person, and Count Dunois, were forced to evacuate Normandy in 1450. In the autumn of the same year, a division of the French army, which appeared in Guienne, made some conquests there ; and in the spring of 1451 the whole French force, under Dunois, entered that duchy, and partly by arms, partly by negotiations with the inhabitants, effected its reduction. Guienne, indeed, again revolted in 1452 ; Bordeaux sent ambassadors to Talbot in London to invoke his aid ; and that veteran commander, then upwards of eighty years of age, quickly recovered that valuable possession. But in July of the following year, Charles VII. entered Guienne with a large army ; Talbot was slain before the town of Castillon, and his fate decided that of the duchy. Bor- deaux, the last town which held out, submitted to Charles in October, 1453 ; and thus, with the exception of Calais, the Eng- lish were expelled from all their possessions in France. The civil dissensions in England and the wars of the two Roses, which shortly afterwards broke out, prevented any attempt to recover them, and for a long period almost entirely annihilated the influ- ence of England in continental affairs. Before Henry's con- quests, it had been usual to consider Europe as divided into the four great nations of Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, and England as a lesser Kingdom, attached, nominally at least, to Germany. The case was formally argued at the Council of Con- stance, where the French deputies endeavoured to exclude the English from an independent vote ; and the decision by which they were admitted as a fifth nation seems to have been consider- ably influenced by the success of Henry's arms.^ The wars with the English, and the civil distractions by which France had been so long harassed, had prevented her from assuming that place among European nations to which she was entitled by her position, her internal resources, and the genius of her people. It was many years before she recovered from the effects of these pernicious influences. She had suffered as much ' See Gibbon, Decline and Fall. ch. Ixx. note 75. INTROD.] STATE OF THAT KINGDOM. 73 from the bands raised for her defence as from the invasions of the English ; and the combined effects of these two causes had almost reduced her to anarchy and utter ruin. Two bodies of her so-called defenders, particularly distinguished by their ferocity, ■were the Ecorcheurs and Eetondeurs,^ whose violence and brigan- dage were openly patronized by a large portion of the princes, nobles, and even magistrates of France. The dread of these lawless bands retarded the liberation of France, and especially the evacua- tion of Paris ; for the citizens hesitated to call in deliverers at whose hands they were likely to suffer more damage than from the well-trained troops of England, which, under Henry V., had been subjected to a rigorous and almost jouritanical discipline.^ The misery of France is depicted by a writer, who, under the title of a Bourgeois cle Paris, though he was in reality a doctor of the University, kept a journal of those times. He states that in 1438 5,000 persons died in the Hotel Dieu, and more than 45,000 in the city, from famine and its attendant epidemics. The wolves prowled around Paris, and even in its streets. In September, 1438, no fewer than fourteen persons were devoured by them between Montmartre and the Porte St. Martin, whilst in the open country around three or four score fell victims.'^ This picture presents a striking contrast to that just drawn of Belgium. In the struggle that was to ensue between the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, everything seemed to promise the success of the latter ; and it will be an interesting task to trace how the wise and politic conduct of one or two French Monarchs enabled them to combat all these disadvantages and finally to turn the scale in their favour. Yet the vast do- mains of the House of Burgundy contained from the first the seeds of future weakness and dissolution. Their population was composed of different races speaking various languages, and alien to one another in temperament, customs, and interests ; while the manner in which some of the provinces had been acquired had laid the foundation for future interminable disputes, both with France and with the Empire. In such a heterogeneous state there was no power of centralization — the principle by which France acquired, and stiU holds, her rank among nations. ' The name of Ecorcheurs speaks for Chartiei-, Hist, cle Charles VII. p. 99 (ed. itself; that of i?rfo/ifZei Cf. Philelphi, Epist. p. 195 (ed. 1502). ^ Hkt. Ber. Vcnet. p. Ill, ap. Zinkeisen, * Engel, B. lii. S. 349 f. unci Anm. B. ii. S. 377. Chap. I.] PEACE BETWEEN VENICE AND THE PORTE. 101 structed to submit to his demands. But his terms rose with the concessions offered, and the Venetians in disgust resolved to con- tinue the war. It went, however, in favour of the Turks. Kroja surrendered on a capitulation, which was not respected ; Scutari was twice assaulted and then blockaded. Meanwhile the re- sources of Venice continued to decline, and Giovanni Dario, Secretary of the Senate, was despatched to Constantinople, with full powers, to conclude a peace on any conditions. A treaty was accordingly signed, January 26th, 1479, by which the Venetians ceded their claims to Scutari and its territory, Kroja, the islands of Lemnos and Negropont, and the highlands of Maina, and engaged to restore within two months all the places which they had captured during the war. They also agreed to pay the Grand Signor a yearly sum of 10,000 ducats, in lieu of all customs on A^enetian goods imported into Turkish harbours. The Sultan, on his side, restored all the places in the Morea, Albania, and Dalmatia, except those before specified. Although the States of Europe had done little or nothing to help Venice in her arduous struggle with the Turk, they agreed in condemning the peace which necessity had imposed upon her. While the Venetian commerce was secured by this treaty, that of the Genoese in the Black Sea had been nearly annihilated during the last few years of the war. In 1475, Caffa, their principal colony, fell into the hands of the Turks, whence Mahomet extended his dominion over the smaller settlements. Although Caffa had capitulated, the Turks, with their habitual disregard of such engagements, carried off 40,000 of the inhabitants ; many of the principal citizens were barbarously tortured and killed, and fifteen hundred of the most promising youths were incorporated in the Janissaries. The peace enabled Mahomet to direct his operations against Hungary and Italy. In 1479 the Turks made dreadful inroads into Slavonia, Hungary, and Transylvania; but Paul Kinis, Count of Temesvar, whose name was long a terror to them, and Stephen Bathory, Voyvode of Transylvania, inflicted on them a memorable defeat on the Brotfeld, near Szaszvaros, or Broos (October 1:3th) . An anecdote will show the brutality of these wars. At a supper after the victory, the bodies of the slaughtered Turks were made to supply the place of tables, and Count Kinis himself fixed his teeth in one of them.^ This signal defeat put a stop for some time to the Turkish incursions. ' Engel, B. iii. S. 366. The Hungarians adopted the Turkish custom of 102 RETROSPECT OF ITALIAN AFFAIRS. [Chap. I. Mahomet soon after the peace wrested three of the Ionian Islands, St" Maura, Zante, and Cephalonia, from the Despot of Arta, This conquest afforded the Sultan an opportunity to dis- play one of those singular caprices in which despotic power alone can indulge. He caused some of the inhabitants to be conveyed to the islands in the Sea of Marmora, where he compelled them to intermarry with Africans, in order that he might have a race of coloured slaves ! ' The Turks also made an ineffectual attempt to take Rhodes, which was valiantly defended by the Knights under their Grand-Master, Pierre d'Aubusson. The aid afforded to the Knights, on this occasion, by Ferdinand of Naples, determined Mahomet to undertake an expedition against that King. The state of Italy was favourable to such an attempt ; but, before relating its progress, it will be proper to take a brief review of the history of that country. The treaty of Lodi before mentioned,* to which Alfonso, King of Aragon and the Sicilies, acceded in January, 1455, might have secured the peace of Italy, but for that monarch's implacable hatred of Genoa. The domestic factions of this city, and Alfonso's superiority at sea, compelled the Genoese to purchase the aid of France by submitting themselves to Charles VII., who invested John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, with the government of Genoa. This appointment of his old enemy incited Alfonso to still more vigorous action, and the fall of Genoa appeared im- minent, when she was unexpectedly delivered by the death of that King, June 27th, 1458. In spite of some defects, Alfonso must be regarded as one of the greatest and most generous Princes of the fifteenth century. He was both wise and courageous, he loved and patronized literature, and he was remarkable for a liberality which not un- frequently degenerated into profusion. His chief defects were his immeasurable ambition and his unbridled licentiousness. His last amour with a certain Lucrezia d'Alagna, the daughter of a Neapolitan gentleman, has been recorded by the good Pontiff Pius II., witheut a word of censure, in the Commentaries written after he was seated on the papal throne.* Alfonso, as we have said in the Introduction, appointed by cutting off the heads of their fallen foes. 'Lib. i. p. 27 (erl. Frankf. 1614). Two waggon-loads of Turks' heads were Pius, indeed, believed Lucrezia to be as exhibited to the Hungarian Diet in 1492 chaste as her namesake of antiquity. The {lb. p. 48). Life of Alfonso has been written by his ' Cantacusino,ap.Zinkeisen,B.ii,S.449. counsellor and secretary, Antonio Bicca- * Introduction, p. 55. telli, called Panormita, from his birth- Chap. I.] REVOLT OF THE NEAPOLITAN BARONS. 103 his will his natural son Ferdinand to be his successor on the throne of Naples ; and, in spite of his illegitimacy, Ferdinand had been recognized as rightful heir by two successive Popes, Eugenius lA^. and Nicholas V. In order to strengthen his son's claim, Alfonso had restored to the Neapolitan States the right of electing their Sovereign and making their own laws ; and the States, out of gratitude for the recovery of these privileges, had confirmed the appointment of Ferdinand (1443) . Calixtus III., however, who filled the Papal chair at the time of Alfonso's death, refused to invest Ferdinand with the sovereignty of Naples, on pretence that the war of Naples with Genoa prevented the forces of Italy from being employed against the Turks; but in reality, it is said, with the ambitious view of raising one of his nephews, the Duke of Spoleto, to the Neapolitan throne. This Pontiff, by name Alfonso Borgia, a native of Valencia in Spain, founded the greatness of that Borgian family, whose name has become synonymous with infamy. In the year of his accession he be- stowed the purple on his nephew Rodrigo Borgia, afterwards under the title of Alexander VI. notorious as the most wicked and profligate Pontiff that ever polluted the Chair of Peter. On the news of Alfonso's death, Calixtus published a bull in which he claimed Naples as a fief escheated to the Church ; and he endeavoured to procure the help of the Duke of Milan, in order to carry out his views upon that Kingdom. But the strong matri- monial connection between the Houses of Naples and Milan — Ferdinand's son Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, having married Francesco Sforza's daughter Ippolita (1456), while at the same time the Duke of Milan's third son, Sforza Maria or Sforzino, was betrothed to Ferdinand's daughter, Isabella — as well as political reasons, induced Sforza to support the cause of the Neapolitan King. From the opposition of Calixtus Ferdinand was soon delivered by the death of that Pontiff, August 6th ; and his successor, Pius II., acknowledged Ferdinand's claims, •exacting, however, a yearly payment, and the cession of Bene- yento, Ponte Corvo, and Terracina, which had formerly belonged to the Church. Pius also effected a marriage between his nephew, Antonio Piccolomini, and Mary, a natural daughter •of Ferdinand's. That monarch's most formidable opponents were the Neapolitan Barons, who, led by Gianantonio Orsino, Prince of Taranto, the place, Palermo. This work, entitled Bicta et Facta Alphonsi Regis Aragonice, has been frequently reprinted. j. 104 JOHN OF ANJOU INVADES NAPLES. [Chap. I. uncle of Ferdinand's own consort Isabella^ revolted against him. The malcontents having- in vain offered the Crown of Naples to Charles, Count of Viana, eldest son of John II. of Aragon and Sicily, as well as to John himself, applied to John of Anjou, who was still residing at Genoa as representative of the French King ; and from him they met with a move favourable reception. The moderation of John of Anjou had rendered him popular with the Genoese ; and when he communicated to their Senate the offer that had been made him, they voted him a force of ten galleys, three large transports, and a subsidy of 60,000 florins. John's- father, Rene, who had renounced in his son's favour his claims to the JSTeapolitan throne, also assisted him with twelve galleys, which had been assembled at Marseilles for the crusade against the Turks. Ferdinand endeavoured to detain John of Anjou at Genoa, by inciting against him the former Doge, Fregoso, who was discon- tented with the French because they had not rewarded him for his cession of that city. On the 13th of September Fregoso, with other exiles, attempted to take Genoa by a nocturnal assault, which, however, was repulsed, and Fregoso slain. Delivered from this danger, John of Anjou hastened on board his fleet, and on the 5th of October appeared off" Naples ; which city, as Ferdi- nand was absent in Calabria, would probably have fallen into his hands but for the vigilance and courage of Queen Isabella. In all other respects John's enterprise was eminently successful. He was joined by the chief Neapolitan nobles, and Nocera opened its gates to him. The events of the following year (1460) were still more in his favour. He defeated Ferdinand with great loss in a battle near the Sarno (July 7th) , and that King with difficulty es- caped to Naples with only twenty troopers. Towards the end of the same month, Ferdinand's captains, Alessandro Sforzaand the Count of Urbino, were also signally defeated in a bloody and obsti- nate battle at S. Fabriano. All the strong places in Campania and the Principato now surrendered to John of Anjou, who, had he marched directly on Naples, would probably have taken that city, in which there was a large party in his favour. Ferdinand, in this low ebb of his fortunes, is said to have owed the preservation of his Crown to the great qualities of his consort. Isabella, accompanied by her children, requested contributions for her husband's cause, in the streets and- public places of Naples; and her fine countenance, her dignified, yet modest and engaging address, proved in most cases irresistible. In the disguise of a Franciscan friar, she also Chap. I.] AFFAIRS OF FLORENCE. 105 proceeded to the camp of lier uncle, the Prince of Taranto, and besought him that, as he had raised her to the throne, he would permit her to die in possession of that dignity. Moved by her entreaties, Orsino adopted a policy which caused John of Anjou to lose the fruits of his victories, and by interposing delays led him to fritter away his strength in small undertakings. From this time the cause of the Duke of Anjou began to decline. In 1461 Ferdinand was assisted by Scanderbeg at the head of 800 horse, who are said to have been paid by Pope Pius II. out of the money raised by the Council of Mantua for a crusade against the Turks. Pius also assisted Ferdinand with his spiritual weapons, threatening with excommunication all who shovild favour the Angevin cause. The loss of Genoa by the French through the impolitic conduct of Charles VII., which will be related in the next chapter ; the death of that King and consequent accession of Louis XL, who was little disposed for foreign enterprises, were also fatal blows to the cause of John of Anjou. Louis even formed an alliance with Francis Sforza, the friend of Ferdinand, and from motives of self-interest, the warmest opponent of French influence in Italy. John was defeated by Ferdinand in an engagement near Troia, August 18th 1462 ; and in the following year the defection of some of his adherents, and the death of Orsino, by which all the possessions and fortresses of that Prince came into the hands of Ferdinand, determined John to quit Italy. His aged father Rene had indeed come to his aid with a fleet ; but as the French King had abandoned both to their fate, they returned to Provence (1464), and subsequently enrolled themselves among the enemies of Louis XI. About the same time Genoa, with the concurrence of the French King, fell under the dominion of the Duke of Milan. The same year (1464) was marked by the death of Pius II., already related, and also by that of Cosmo de^ Medici. During the last years of his life, Cosmo, debilitated by ill-health, had intrusted the administration of Florence to Luca Pitti,^ who availed himself of his friend^s retirement to promote his own advancement. His rule was harsh and tyrannical, and is said to have been regarded by Cosmo with sorrow. His contemporary, Pope Pius II., who could have been swayed by no motives of self-interest, has left a noble portrait of Cosmo in his Commentaries.'^ It was not so much ' This Pitti ei'ected the palace still of art, continues to form one of the chief bearini^ his name, which, with its beaiiti- attractions of Florence, fill gardens and rich collections of works ■ Lib. ii. p. 50, ed. Frankf. 1614. 106 CHARACTER OF COSMO DE' MEDICI. [Ciiap. I. by the extent of his wealth, as by the application which he made of it, that Cosmo gained his influence and credit. Far from re- lying on that pomp and show which are so captivating to the vul- gar^ his manner of life, both public and private, was of the plainest and most unostentatious kind. He employed his riches, not in dazzling the eyes of his fellow-citizens with his personal magnifi- cence, but in the patronage of learning and the arts, and in the erection of unequalled monuments. He encouraged the architects Michelozzi and Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello, the painter Masaccio, and with their assistance erected and adorned several churches, convents, and palaces in Florence and its neighbour- hood. His agents, throughout Europe as well as in the East, were instructed to buy or procure copies of all newly discovered manu- scripts ; he founded two private libraries, one at Florence and the other at Venice ; whilst his private collection formed the basis of the present Bibliotheca Laurentiana, so named after his grandson Lorenzo.^ He wa,3 not, however, a, laiere dilettcnite. He took an interest in the higher speculations of philosophy, especially those of Plato, in which studies he displayed a just and profound judg- ment : nor did he neglect the improvement of the more useful and practical arts of life, and especially agriculture. But this man, so wise, so enlightened, so accomplished, and so munificent, pre- ferred the interests of himself and his family to those of his country. By the charms of literature and art, and of a noble and splendid public luxury, he imperceptibly subjugated a lively and sensitive people : and Florence under Cosmo, somewhat like Athens under Pericles,^ remained indeed nominally a Republic, but under a first man, or Prince. Nothing can more strongly show the firm hold of power which the great qualities of Cosmo had enabled him to seize, than his transmitting it to his son Peter, who, besides that he lacked the abilities of his father, was so great an invalid that he resided chiefly in the country, and was accustomed to travel in a litter. Yet the dominion of Peter survived the attacks of the able, ex- perienced, and treacherous statesmen by whom he was surrounded. Pitti, who had allied himself with Diotisalvi Neroni, Nicholas Soderini, Angelo Acciajuoli, and other influential Florentines, encouraged by the death of Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan (1466), the fii^m ally of the House of Medici, attempted an insurrection, ' Cap^oni, St07-iadi Fircnz'e,\\h. v. c. 3, tnytii i>'i I'tto tov irpuirov avcfjog cipX'l- — Jin. Thucyd. ii. Go. - F.ylyvfTo re Xoyti) fih' SimoKparia, Chap. I.] PETER DE' MEDICI. 107 which, however, was frustrated by the vigilance of Peter de' Medici •and the neutrality of the Signoria ; and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the son and successor of Francis, remained true to his father's policy. ^ This abortive conspiracy only strengthened the hands of Peter. Pitti, whom he had gained over, and who had helped to dissipate the plot, lost all his influence and power ; most of his confederates fled and were declared enemies of their country ; others *were banished, and some were even tortured and put to death. Peter now began to govern dictatorially ; and he assumed those airs of princely state which his more prudent and moderate father liad carefully avoided. Yet a grand festival was celebrated to thank God that the democracy had been preserved ! The Flo- rentine exiles, with help of Venice, raised a considerable army, which they placed under the command of Bartholomew Coleone, a famous condottiere. The Florentines also armed, and were as- sisted with troops by Ferdinand of Naples and Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The latter joined the Florentine army with a body of cavalry ; but, either through cowardice or inability, proving rather a hindrance than a help, Peter de' Medici invited him to Florence, whilst the Florentine general, Frederick of Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, was instructed to deliver battle in his absence ; and accordingly a bloody but indecisive engagement took place near La Molinella, July 25th, 1467. Galeazzo Maria, offended by this slight, returned to Milan ; and the Venetians were obliged to abandon an enterprise which they had formed against that city in case Coleone should have proved victorious. Pope Paul II., with a view to compose these differences, but without consulting the parties intei'ested, published the terms of an arbitrary peace (Feb- ruary 2nd, 1468), in which he appointed Coleone commander of a league against the Turks, with an annual subsidy of 100,000 ducats, to be paid rateably by the different States ; and he threatened to excommunicate those who should refuse to accede to the treaty. Venice alone, however, in whose favour it was drawn, could be brought to assent ; and as Milan, Florence, and Naples refused to contribute, and answered the threat of excom- munication with the counter one of a General Council, Paul was induced to retract, and in April published a more moderate and equitable peace, to which all the belligerent States agreed. ' It may serve to show the still bar- in disguise, lest some lord through whose barous state of manners, that Galeazzo, territory he passed should seize his person who was in France at the time of his in order to extort a ransuin. Muratori, father's death, deemed it prudent to travel Annali, t. ix. p. 295. 108 DEATH OF PETER DE' MEDICI. [Ciiai-. I. Peter de' Medici, whose violence is lamented by Maccliiavelli, took fearful vengeance on the families of those who had promoted the war. The short remnant of his life ofi'ers little of importance. He died December 2nd, 1469, leaving two sons, Lorenzo and Julian, and two married daughters. Lorenzo, now twenty-on& years of age, was tall and robust; but his countenance was dis- figured by a flat nose and large jaws ; his sight was weak, his voice hoarse. He had received the rudiments of his education among the eminent literary men who frequented his father^s house ; the chief of whom, Marsilio Ficino, had initiated him in the then fashionable study of the Platonic philosophy. By these and other pagan studies, and by a loose manner of life, the re- ligious principles instilled into him by a devout mother were much effaced, though never entirely lost. His father had com- pleted his education by sending him to the most splendid Courts of Italy. A lofty genius, combined with patient industry, fitted him for statesmanship rather than arms ; and he had, even in his father's lifetime, been intrusted with some share of the public business, in which he displayed considerable ability. We learn from his own memoirs that on his father's death he was requested by the leading men of Florence to assume the charge of the Re- public, as his father and grandfather had done before him.^ His younger brother Julian, of a quieter and less ambitious temper, was wholly engrossed by the pursuit of pleasure. On July 26th, 1471, Pope Paul II. died of apoplexy. Vanity and selfishness were his chief characteristics. He was only forty- eight years of age at the time of his elevation to the tiara, and being remarkably handsome, proposed to take the title of Formoso; a folly from which it was difiicult to dissuade him. Paul was also suspicious and cruel, and rendered himself notorious by his per- secution of learned men. He regarded the members of the Roman Academy, established towards the close of his pontificate by Pomponio Leto, Platina, and other distinguished men, as enemies who were plotting against his own safety and the peace of the Church; and under pretence that they were heretics or atheists, caused several of them to be apprehended and subjected to torture, at which he himself presided. Agostino Campano died under the hands of his officers ; yet neither plot nor heresy could be discovered. The impunity with which the Popes escaped the Councils held in the early part of the fifteenth century, was well fitted to inspire ' Bicordi, ap. Fabroni, Bocumenti, p. 42; Capponi, t. ii. p. 354. ■Chap. I.] ASSASSINATION OF GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA. 109 them with a reckless contempt for public opinion ; and from that period down to the Reformation, it would be difficult to parallel among temporal Princes the ambitious, wicked, and profligate lives of many of the Roman Pontiffs. Among these, Francesco della Rovere, who succeeded Paul II. with the title of Sixtus IV., was not the least notorious. Born at Savona, of obscure family^ Sixtus raised his nephews, and his sons who passed for nephews, to the highest dignities in Church and State, and sacrificed for their aggrandisement the peace of Italy and the cause of Christen- dom against the Turks. Of his two nephews, Julian and Leonard della Rovere, the former, afterwards Pope Julius II., was raised to the purple in the second year of his uncle's pontificate, while Leonard was married to an illegitimate daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Peter and Jerome Riario^ who passed for the sons of Sixtus's sister, were commonly supposed to be his own. Peter Riario, bred as a low Franciscan friar, became, in a few months, and at the age of twenty-six. Cardinal of San Sisto, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Archbishop of Florence ; but in a few years debauchery put an end to his life (1474.) For Jerome Riario was obtained the County of Imola from the Manfredi family, and he was married to Catharine Sforza^ a natural daughter of the Duke of Milan. Italy was at that period in the highest bloom of material pros- perity, destined soon to wither through the decay of Genoese and Venetian commerce, and the losses inflicted on the Church by the Reformation. But its manners, though cultivated, were stained with a shameless libertinism, and many of its Princes, as well as its Popes, were models of tyranny and profligacy. Among such Princes, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, was conspicuous. He was not altogether devoid of the talent which had distinguished his father ; he possessed some eloquence, and his manners were elegant and dignified. But he was a tyrant after the old Greek and Roman type. Not content with the death of his victims, he buried them alive, or amused himself with their tortures ; he not only dishonoured the wives and daughters of the noblest families, but sought further gratification in acquainting husbands and parents with their shame. Among those whom he had wronged, two men of nobler race than himself. Carlo Visconti and Girolamo Olgiato, with Lampugnano, a patrician friend, animated by the exhortations of Cola de^ Montani, a distinguished scholar, resolved to rid the world of such a monster, and to establish a Republic at Milan. The confederates executed their plot during the celebra- 110 LEAGUES OF NORTH AND SOUTH ITALY. [Ciiai>. I. tion of an annual festival in the cathedral, on the 26th of December, 1476. The Court, with its attendants, being assembled in the Church, Lampugnano approached the Duke as if to ask a fevour,, and, saluting him with his left hand, stabbed him twice or thrice with the other ; while Visconti and GIgiato, pretending to hasten to Galeazzo's help, completed the work which their companion had begun. Bvit to their shouts for a Republic not a voice re- plied. Lampugnano was cut down in the church ; his confede- rates escaped for the moment, but were discovered a few days- after. Visconti was cut to pieces at the time of his capture; Olgiato was reserved for an execution preceded by dreadful tortures, during which he made his political confession, founded on the maxims of the ancients. As John Galeazzo, the son of the murdered Duke, was a child of eight years, his guardianship, as well as the regency, was assumed by his mother Bona, of Savoy, sister-in-law of King Louis XL Bona entrusted the con- duct of affairs to Ciecco Simonetta, brother of the historian, who had been in the service of Francis Sforza. In May, 1477, four of Galeazzo Maria's brothers, namely, Sforza, Duke of Bari, Lodovico,. surnamed II Moro,^ from a mother's mole, Ottaviano, and Ascanio, took up arms, and attempted to seize the government. Their plan was frustrated by Simonetta ; Ottaviano was drowned in attempt- ing- to escape by fording the Adda ; the other three brothers were captured and banished. A fifth, the eldest, Philip, acquiesced in the regency of Bona. Italy was at this time divided into two great parties or leagues. So intimate a connection, cemented by the marriage already men- tioned, had been formed between Sixtus IV. and Ferdinand of Naples, as excited the jealousy and suspicion of the northern. States of Italy ; and Lorenzo de' Medici, alarmed by the circum- stance that Frederick of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, who had commonly fought in the service of Florence, had joined the Pope and Ferdinand, had, towards the end of 1474, succeeded in form- ing a counter-league with Venice and Milan. The Venetians were offended with Sixtus because he had diverted to his own purposes the sums which he had raised under pretence of a cru- sade, and left them to struggle unaided with the Turks ; and with Ferdinand, because he had opposed their design of obtain- ing possession of Cyprus, by availing themselves of the dissen- sions in that island. For some years, however, the peace of ' This appellation was not uncommon mistranslation of it, the Ctiello of Sliake- in Italy; and it is probable that, from a speare is represented as a Moor. Chap. I.] CONSPIRACY OF THE PAZZI. Ill Italy remained undisturbed, till the affairs of Florence afforded Sixtus IV. au opportunity to gratify his enmity against the House of Medici. Under the name of a Republic, Lorenzo and Julian reigned almost despotically at Florence. The old forms of government had been changed, the chief power was in the hands of a few adherents of the Medici ; the taxes had been augmented, and the people were consoled for the loss of their ancient liberties by the splendour and magnificence of the ruling house. In a plutocracy such as Florence then was, it is not surprising that the rivalry of commerce should affect the affairs of State. The family of the Pazzi, one of the greatest and most ancient in Florence, vied with the Medici in the extent of their trade ; but pride and haughty manners made them less acceptable to the people, and they had not been able to obtain any of the leading* offices of the State. Hence a hatred between the two families, which was increased by commercial collisions. Sixtus IV. had deprived the Medici of the office of treasurers to the Holy See, and given it to Franceso Pazzi, who had established a Bank at Rome. And when Sixtus purchased the lordship of Imola for his nephew Girolamo Riario, Lorenzo de' Medici, who wished to secure that place for Florence, had tried to thwart the bargain, by preventing Francesco Pazzi becoming security for the purchase- money. By this act he drew on himself the virulent enmity both of Girolamo and Francesco. They formed the design of overthrowing* the Medici, and drew into their plans Francesco Salviati, Arch- bishop of Pisa, who was likewise their enemy, and who commonly resided in Rome. The Pope also aided the conspiracy, though without sanctioning the shedding of blood. Thus in 1478 was formed that plot against the Medici known as the "Conspiracy of the Pazzi /^ ^ and Sixtus was base enough to make his great- nephew, Raphael Riario, a mere youth of eighteen, who was studying at Pisa University, an instrument in the plot. Raphael was made a Cardinal, and sent to Florence on his way to Perugia as Legate, in order that his house might become the rendezvous of the conspirators. One Giambattista di Montesecco, a soldier, was also sent to Florence with instructions that the Pope wished a revolution there ; and he succeeded in gaining over the whole of the Pazzi family, though one of them was married to a sister ' For this conspiracy see Capponi, Sio- fi'iend and froUgi of the Medici {Coiijura- ria di Firenze, hb. v. cap. 5. An account iionis Pactianm Conimentarium). of it has also been written by Folitian, the 112 CONSPIRACY or THE PAZZI. [Chap. I. of Lorenzo. The plan was to assassinate Julian and Lorenzo, and tlien to seize the government. After one or two failures, it was resolved to perpetrate the murders, which were to bo simul- taneous, in the Cathedral itself, during the celebration of a solemn High Mass, on the 26th of April, 1478 ; and the elevation of the Host was to be the signal for the deed of blood. But here a difficulty arose. Montesecco, who was to have despatched Lorenzo, scrupled to commit the act at the very altar of God, although it had been sanctioned by the Archbishop of Pisa, as well as by Cardinal Riario. By a not uncommon union of super- stition with the perpetration of the darkest crimes, this feeling prevailed so extensively among the hravi of the time, that it was found necessary to secure the services of two priests ; the only order of men, according to an observation of the historian Galli, sufficiently at ease, inside a church to make it the scene of an assassination.^ The Cathedral was filled with people, but Julian was not among them. Francesco de ^Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini went to his house, accompanied him to the church with every mark of friend- ship, and, when the bell announced the elevation of the Host, despatched him with their daggers. The priests who were to murder Lorenzo were either less adroit or determined than their confederates, or Lorenzo was more wary or more active than his brother. He succeeded in gaining the sacristy with only a slight wound in the neck ; and, bolting the door, secured himself till some friends came to the rescue. Meanwhile the Archbishop Salviati and his associates had gone to the Palace of the Signory to seize the magistrates ; but the Gonfaloniere Petrucci and the Priors, assisted by their servants, made a stout resistance, till the populace, who mostly favoured the Medici, came to their aid. The attempt of Francesco Pazzi's uncle Jacopo to rouse the people, as, parading the town with a body of soldiers, he called on them to assert their liberty, utterly failed. He was only answered with shouts of Palle ! Falle ! the rallying cry of the Medici."'^ When the magistrates learned the death of Julian, and the attempt upon Lorenzo, their indignation knew no bounds. Salviati, who had been secui-ed during the tumult, was immediately hanged in his archiepiscopal robes out- side one of the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico ; Francesco de^ Pazzi, who was captured soon afterwards, underwent the same ' Ap. Sismondi, Rc]}. Ital. ch. Ixxxv. ^ From the palle iVoro, or golden balls, borne in the escutcheon of the Medici. Chap. I.] SIXTUS IV. ATTACKS THE FLORENTINES. 113 fate. The populace executed summary justice on seventy per- sons of distinction belonging to the Pazzi party^ including the two priestly assassins ; and 200 persons more were subsequently put to death. Thus ended a conspiracy whose nature^ the per- sons engaged in it, and the place of its execution, all tend to show, as a modern writer^ has observed, the ]3ractical atheism of the times. Many European Sovereigns manifested on this occasion their sympathy with Lorenzo. Louis XI., especially, expressed in a letter to him the greatest indignation at the Pope^s conduct ; he even threatened to cite Sixtus before a General Council, and to stop annates ; and he sent Philip de Comines to Florence to assure Lorenzo of his protection. Even Mahomet II. showed a friendly feeling towards the Florentine ruler by delivering up Bandini, who had sought refuge at Constantinople. But the Pope, supported by King Ferdinand, and impelled by the ambition of his nephew, displayed the most cynical contempt for public opinion. He ful- minated against the Florentines the censures of the Church for hanging an Archbishop and imprisoning a Cardinal; he placed them under an interdict, annulled their alliances, and forbade all military men to enter into their service. Thus his spiritual weapons were pressed into the support of the carnal ones, which he also adopted. In conjunction with King Ferdinand he de- spatched an army into Tuscany ; and, to prevent the Florentines from being succoured by Milan, he created employment for the forces of the Regent Bona by exciting an insurrection at Genoa, which, however, was only partially successful. At the instigation of Sixtus, Prosper Adorno, who governed Genoa for the Regent, threw off his allegiance, and defeated a Milanese army in the pass of the Bochetta, August 7th, 1478. But the success of Adorno was frustrated by raising up against him a rival, Battista Fregoso, who, with the help of Ibletto de^ Fieschi and his party, drove out Adomo, and made himself Doge. The Riviera di Levante, how- ever, still remained in the hands of Adorno. The Pope also ex- cited the Swiss League to hostilities against Milan, and this step was combined with a profitable speculation. A board of priests was established in Switzerland to decide cases of conscience, as well as to sell indulgences, which were despatched thither in great abundance, and proved a very marketable commodity among a people who hired themselves out to slay and plunder ; insomuch that Sixtus himself was astonished at the large sums which he ' Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs. I. I 114 EEVOLUTION AT MILAN. [Chap. I. drew from so poor a country. The Papal Legate excited tlie animosity of the Swiss against the Milanese Government on the subject of a chestnut wood in the Val Levantina, on the southern side of the St. Gothard, which had been made over to the Canton of Uri by Galeazzo Maria in 1466^ by a treaty called the Capitu- late of Milan} The wood had remained in dispute^ and towards the close of 1478 the men of Uri^ assisted by other Cantons^ carried their devastations as far as Bellinzona. Hostilities Avere continued with varied success till Louis XI. succeeded in me- diating a peace. Meanwhile the combined Papal and Neapolitan armies had entered Tuscany^ the former under command of the Duke of UrbinOj while that of Ferdinand was led by his son and heir^ Alfonso^ Duke of Calabria. The Pope demanded that Lorenzo de^ Medici should be surrendered into his hands. As the Flo- rentines had at first neither captain nor army, the Allies suc- ceeded in taking several places ; but Lorenzo at length procured the services of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, as well as of Robert Malatesta, Lord of Pesaro, Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, and other experienced captains ; and the Florentine cause was pro- ceeding pretty favourably in 1479, when it received a severe shock by a revolution which occurred at Milan. Ludovico II Moro, paternal uncle of the young Duke of Milan, having formed an alliance with Sanseverino, a celebrated condottlere , appeared suddenly before the Milanese town of Tortona (August 10th), and was admitted by the Governor ; whence marching upon Milan, he found the same reception. The Duchess Bona was now advised to reconcile herself with Ludovico : but that Prince, in whose hands the chief fortresses had been placed, soon dis- played his true colours. Three days after entering Milan, he caused Simonetta to be confined in the Castle of Pavia, where he was subjected to a trial accompanied with dreadful tortures, and in the following year he was beheaded. Ludovico then caused the majority of Galeazzo, who was only twelve years of age, to be proclaimed, in order that he himself might reign in his nephew's name, and Bona withdrew to Abbiate Grosso. This revolution deprived Lorenzo de^ Medici of the alliance of Milan, as the new Regent was on good terms with the King of Naples, who restored to him his brother's Duchy of Bari. The Florentines were also alarmed at the defeat of their army by the Duke of Calabria at Poggio Imperiale ; and even the friends and ' Planta, Helvetic Confederacy, vol. ii. p. 204. Chap. I.] THE TUEKS INVADE APULIA. 115 partisans of Lorenzo threatened to desert him. In this crisis of his fortunes^ Lorenzo adopted the bold step of proceeding in person to the Court of the treacherous Ferdinand -, where by his talents, address, and eloquence he made such an impression on that monarch that he succeeded in effecting not only a peace but a league with him (March, 1480) . This clandestine treaty made the Venetians as angry with Lorenzo as the Pope was with King Ferdinand, and they found no difficulty in persuading Sistus to form a league with themselves ; of which his nephew, Jerome Eiario, Count of Imola, was appointed Captain-General. Jerome now diverted his arms from Tuscany into Romagna, drove the noble house of Ordelaffi from Forli, and was invested by Sixtus with the lordship of that city. Such was the state of Italy when Mahomet II. determined on the expedition before referred to (p. 102), against Ferdinand of !Naples, in revenge for the aid which he had given to the Knights of Rhodes. It is admitted by Venetian historians that their Republic, with the view of ruining Ferdinand, not only made the peace just mentioned with the Pope, but also sent ambassadors to the Grand Signer to incite him to invade Ferdinand's dominions, by rejjresenting to him that he was entitled to Brindisi, Taranto, and Otranto, as places formerly remaining to the Byzantine Empire : though it is probable that they did not communicate this step to Sixtus.^ The landing of the Turks in Apulia induced the Pope to pardon the Florentines and reconcile them with the Church. Twelve of the leading citizens of Florence were de- spatched to Rome, where they were compelled to make the most abject submission, and to receive at the hands of the Pope the flogging usually inflicted on such occasions; and by way of penance the Florentines were ordered to fit out fifteen galleys against the Turks, Notwithstanding the peace between King Ferdinand and Lorenzo de^ Medici, the Neapolitan army, under the Duke of Calabria, was still in Tuscany, when, in August, 1480, the Turks, under Ahmed Keduk, Pasha of Vallona, effected the landing in Apulia already referred to. They took Otranto, put the greater part of the inhabitants to death, sawed the Commandant and the Archbishop in half, and committed many other atrocities. They also attacked Taranto, Brindisi, and Lecce ; but the approach of the Duke of Calabria compelled them to re-embark, leaving, * See Navagiero, Sior. Venet. in Mura- nuto, ibid. xxii. p. 1213. Cf. Daru, Hist. tori, Ital. Ber. SS. t. xxiii. p. 1165 ; Sa- dc Vt7iise, liv. xviii. §§ 3, 4. 116 DEATH OF MAH03IET II. [Chap. I. however, a garrison of 8,000 men in Otranto. The Pope, alarmed by the Turkish invasion and the menacing demands of King Ferdinand, who threatened that if he were not immediately assisted, he would treat with the invaders, and facilitate their march to Rome, formed a league with Milan, Ferrara, Genoa, and Florence ;^ and in order to provide speedier succour, he sent his own plate, as well as that of some of the churches, to the mint. Ferdinand also received a few troops from his son-in-law. King Matthias of Hungary, and from Ferdinand of Aragon. The Venetians, on the other hand, assisted the Turks to victual Otranto. In 1481 the Turks made a fresh attempt on the Terra di Otranto, but could not penetrate the lines of the Duke of Calabria ; and as the Neapolitan fleet was superior at sea, the garrison of Otranto began to feel the approach of famine. The unexpected news of Sultan Mahomet's death added to their dis- couragement, and on the 10th of September they capitulated. The Duke of Calabria, following their own example, violated the capitulation, and having captured some of the Tui-ks after they had set sail, compelled them to serve in the army and in the galleys. Mahomet died May 3rd, 1481, in his camp near Gebseh, while on his way to Byzantine Scutari ; and with him expired his magnificent projects, which amounted to nothing less than the utter extinction of the Christian name. He was fifty-one years of age at his death, of which he had reigned thirty. Possessing some of the qualities of a great and noble nature, he was never- theless the slave of passion and caprice, which often betrayed him into acts of the basest perfidy and most revolting inhumanity. He was, perhaps, the greatest conqueror of his martial race ; yet not a mere destroyer, for he could also construct and organize, as appears from the laws which he prescribed for his own State, and from the manner in which he preserved and adorned Constan- tinople. Having thus brought down the conquests of the Turks and the afiairs of Italy to the death of Mahomet II., we shall now direct our attention awhile to the nations of Western Europe. * See the bulls in Eaynaldus, t. x. p. 610 sq. Chap. II.] THE DAUPHIN LOUIS IN BRABANT. 117 CHAPTER II. AFTER the expulsion of the English from France^ the re- mainder of Charles VII.'s reign affords few events of im- portancej besides his quarrel with his son, the Dauphin Louis_, and the flight of the latter to the Court of Burgundy. Louis, after his relegation into Dauphine/ displayed in the government of that land, in a manner remarkable in so youthful a Prince, the same principles which afterwards guided his conduct as King of France. He cultivated the friendship of the people, and endeavoured to de- press the nobles, whom he forbade to exercise the right of private war ; he introduced many reforms into the administration of the country, which gave it the air of a little kingdom ; he established a Parliament at Grenoble and a University at Valence ; he coined money bearing his own superscription ; he raised a considerable army, and he negotiated with foreign Princes on the footing of an independent Sovereign. Against his father he waged open war. The hatred and jealousy between Charles VII. and his heir went on increasing, and in 1456 Charles resolved on reducing his re- bellious son, and bringing Dauphine under power of the Crown. Louis felt that, from the want of gens d'armes, he could bring- no force into the field able to cope -with his father's,^ and under pre- tence of joining the expedition which the Duke of Burgundy talked of preparing against the Turks, he fled to the Court of that Sovereign, where he met with a magnificent reception. Philip, however, would offer nothing but his mediation ; and he even made a sort of apology to Charles VII. for receiving Louis, protesting that he meant only the good both of father and son. But all negotiations proved unavailing, and Louis remained in Brabant, where he was treated with regal splendour : a resi- dence was assigned him at Genappe, near Nivelle, with a monthly pension of 2,500 livres ; and it was here that, to amuse his leisure hours, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles were com- • See above, p. 76. * See his letter, ap. Michelet, Hist, de France, t. viii. p. 99. 118 CHARACTER OF LOUIS. [Chap. II. posed^ in imitation of Boccaccio's Decameron. Charles VII. was accustomed to say that the Duke was sheltering the fox that would at last devour his hens. The residence of Louis at the Court of Burgundy afiForded him, indeed, ample opportunity to observe all the weak points of his future enemy, and the founda- tion was now laid of that antipathy between the heirs apparent of Burgundy and France, which afterwards proved of so much poli- tical importance. No characters could well be more dissimilar than those of the two young Princes. That of Louis offers the picture of a personage not often seen in the world — a royal cynic. Amidst the pomp and magnificence so pre-eminently cultivated at the Burgundian Court, Louis felt and displayed a profound contempt for all the trappings of state, and for everything that savoured of chivalry. In public conferences and assemblies, where the nobility and Crown vassals vied with one another in all the splendour of silk and velvet, gold and precious stones, Louis appeared in a short coat, an old doublet of grey fustian, and a scurvy felt hat. Such a temper was naturally accompanied with a turn for irony and raillery. Louis took no pride in his rank ; the only thing on which he piqued himself was, being more dexterous and able than others. Yet his simple, or rather mean, way of life, did not arise from the love of hoarding, but from the desire of employing the money which he saved in undertakings that might be useful to his interests. Expediency was his only rule ; and throughout his life he pre- ferred diplomacy to arms. In disposition he was sly and dis- sembling, also cruel where he deemed it necessary for his pur- pose. But there was a singular, and apparently incongruous, trait in the character of this hard-hearted man of the world — he was weakly superstitious : not according to the superstition of his age, which delighted in the splendour of public worship, in magnificent religious foundations, and in the glorification of the clergy, but a superstition trivial, debasing, centering wholly in himself. He cared little for the precepts of religion, and de- lighted in humiliating the clergy ; yet he constantly wore round his neck a huge wooden paternoster. In short, he was directly opposed to the spirit of the middle ages, which it seemed to be his mission utterly to destroy. Such a disposition, as it had led the Dauphin to hate and de- spise his father, the trifling, dissipated, extravagant Charles, so it now set him at variance with the Count of Charolais, the son and heir of Philip, afterwards known as Charles the Bold. That Chap. II.] DAUPHIKE UNITED TO FRANCE. 119 young Prince^ thovigh sedate and devoiit, wa.s Imuglityj inaperious, obstinate^ and inflexible ; a great admirer of that ancient chivalry which Louis despised ; and finding his chief amusement in read- ing books relating to it. War was his favourite passion, and he delighted in feats of arms and in bodily exercises. Like Louis, he was at variance with his father, being displeased with the favour shown by Philip to his ministers, the Croys, and on this subject a violent scene took place in 1457, when the old Duke was so enraged as to draw his sword upon his son. In pursuance of his habitual policy with regard to France, Philip the Good had compelled Charles to marry a French Princess, Isabella of Bour- bon, though the Count of Charolais's own views were directed towards a daughter of Richard, Duke of York, a connection which might have afforded him a prospect of the English throne. After the flight of Louis Charles VII. took possession of Dau- phine, which was now finally joined to the French monarchy, and never again administered as a separate sovereignty.^ Charles did not feel himself strong enough to make war upon the Duke of Burgundy, but jealousy and hatred were rankling in his breast; he took every occasion to thwart Philip's interests, and affected to treat him with a hauteur which must have been very galling to " the g-reat Duke of the West.'' Charles suffered no further serious disquietude from the English. A ray of glory might have been shed over his declining days had he known how to use the opportunity which fortune threw in his way by the making over to him of the sovereignty of Genoa by the Doge Pietro Fregoso in 1458, when Charles, as already related, made John of Anjou Governor of that city. But the ill policy of the French King soon proved fatal to his dominion at Genoa. During the wars of the Roses in England, Charles naturally sided with Mar- garet of Anjou and the House of Lancaster, while the cause of York was espoused by the Duke of Burgundy. Charles was un- reasonable enough to insist that the Genoese should aid Margaret with a fleet, and urged them to spend their blood and treasure, while he husbanded his own, in a cause to which they were per- fectly indifferent. The anger of the Genoese was roused by this injustice ; they rose and expelled the French Governor and gar- rison (March 9th, 1461); and an army which Charles despatched against them in the following July was utterly defeated. Towards the end of his life Charles VII. seems to have con- templated disinheriting the rebellious Louis, and leaving the > Sismondi, Hist, dcs Frangais, t. xiv. p. 3. 120 ACCESSION OF LOUIS XI. [Chap. II. Crown to his second son^ Charles, Duke of Berri, a purpose from which he is said to have been diverted by the counsel of Pope Pius 11.^ His last days were passed in an alternation between a wretched listlessness and those sensual pleasures which hastened his end. At last he fell into so deep a state of dejection as to fancy that all the world, and especially his son, the Dauphin, were engaged in a league to poison him, and obstinately re- fusing all sustenance, he literally died of starvation, July 22nd, 1461. The Dauphin, now Louis XI., was still at the Court of Bur- gundy when his father expired.^ With his characteristic dislike of pomp and magnificence, he declined Philip the Good's offer to escort him into France with a numerous retinue of knights ; and he set off with only a few attendants to take possession of his new Kingdom. The contrast between the Sovereigns was strikingly displayed at Louis's coronation, which took place shortly afterwards at Eheims. The Duke of Burgundy appeared there with the splendour worthy of an Emperor ; whilst the French King, as he rode before in mean and shabby attire, re- sembled some valet sent to announce the approach of the Duke. The latter's retinue, both men and horses, were almost buried under the weight of rich velvets adorned with jewels and massy golden chains ; the very beasts of burden had velvet housings embroidered with the Duke's arms, and silver bells tinkled on their necks. One hundred and forty superb chariots, over which floated Philip's banners, conveyed his gold and silver plate, the money that was to be thrown, the wine that was to be distributed, to the populace; while fat Flemish bullocks and small sheep of the Ardennes, destined to supply the banquets, closed the pro- cession. The King, on the other hand, in his ostentatious poverty, assumed a corresponding air of humble devotion. He was constantly on his knees ; he could not be raised from them when he received the chrism of the scdnte ampoule, or when the Duke of Burgundy, as premier Peer of France, put the crown upon his head. Yet amidst all this affected humility, Louis's penetrating glance, the ironical smile that played about his lips, betrayed his true character to the intelligent observer. After the coronation magnificent tournaments were celebrated at Paris, at one of which Louis contrived an exhibition that ' Raynalclus, anno 1461, t. X. p. 282. with a safe-conduct to treat with the ' Louis's first act was to arrest the Duke Duke. INIartin, t. vi. \. 522. of Somerset, who had entered Burgundy Chap. II.] HIS FIRST ACTS. 121 at once gratified his cynicism and gave presage of what he was meditating against the degenerate feudal lords. After the Count of Charolais and the rest of the nobles had jousted^ and paraded before the spectators their splendid accoutrements, their jewel- lery, and their plumes, a strange champion, grotesquely attired, as well as his horse, in the skins of wild beasts, suddenly entered the lists, and dismounted one after another all those gorgeous knights ; while the King, hidden behind some Parisian ladies, quietly enjoyed the spectacle from a window. He had selected and handsomely paid a tall and vigorous gendarme, who, mounted on a strong and fiery steed, overthrew all who ventured to oppose him. Louis's first acts foreshadowed the policy of his future reign — to lower the nobility, the Church, and everything that could offer a counterpoise to the royal authority. After the coronation ban- quet, Philip the Good had knelt down before him and solicited pardon for all who had offended him during his father's life ; and Louis, who could hardly refuse the first request of his benefactor, promised compliance, with certain exceptions. But he did not keep even this qualified promise, and Philip foretold the resis- tance of the persecuted nobles. The way in which Louis received the addresses of the clergy was in the highest degree rude and unmannerly. He stopped the Archbishop of Rheims, who was also Chancellor of France, at the first word ; and his reception of the celebrated Cardinal Bessarion, whom the Pope had sent to compliment him, was still worse. The learned Byzantine had prepared a long and somewhat pedantic speech ; but the King cut him short with a line from the Latin grammar : Barbara OrcBca genus retinent quod habere solebant P On the other hand, he despatched letters to his ''good towns," calling on the inhabitants to hold them well for the King — that is, against the governors, whom he suspected. These demonstrations did not remain mere idle words, but were soon followed up with corresponding acts. In order to curtail the jurisdiction of the Parliaments of Paris and Toulouse, he created that of Bordeaux ; he established at Bourges a rival University to that of Paris, which intercepted the students of the south; and he published several ordinances respecting ecclesiastical matters, claiming the disposal of benefices, and for- bidding all appeals to the Pope. One of the most remarkable of these was the ordinance of July 20th, 1463, commanding the clergy to make within a year a return of all Church property, ' Michelet, Hist, de France, t. vii'. y. 206. 122 DUCHY OF BRITTANY. [Chap. 11. '^in order that they may no longer encroach on our signorial rights, nor on those of our vassals." He banished the Papal collectors, and seized the temporalities of two or three Cardinals j among them, those of the Cardinal of Avignon, one of the richest of pluralists, from whom he obtained the revenues of the bishop- rics of Carcassone and Uses, of the abbey of St. Jean d'Angely, and several others.^ In order to degrade the aristocracy, Louis elevated farmers and lawyers to the rank of nobles. But his main efforts were directed against the holders of the large French fiefs, several of whom might be regarded as rivals to the Crown. After Burgundy, the principal of these was the Duke of Brittany, whose fief was dissimilar to those of the rest of France. There prevailed in Brittany a sort of clanship somewhat analogous to that of the Scotch Highlands ; the Duke styled himself Duke " by the grace of God;^'' he spoke of his royal and ducal powers, and wore a crown instead of the ducal hat. The pretensions of the Dukes of Brittany to independence had been favoured by the long struggle between France and England, and the question of homage to the Crown of France had been renewed at the accession of each Duke. The celebrated Constable Eichemont, who had succeeded to the Duchy of Brittany in 1457, with the title of Arthur III., had done only simple homage : that is, he neither took ofi" his belt nor bent his knee, but standing, and girt with his sword, he placed his hands between those of Charles VII., and pronounced the accustomed formula, which, however, was received with reserva- tion by the French monarch. The latter claimed a liege homage, which would have obliged the Duke to follow his banner every- where in war, and to sit in his courts of justice, in short, to be a Peer of France — a title by which the Dukes of Brittany would have thought themselves degraded. The question therefore was not one merely of rank and honour : it involved the more sub- stantial points of feudal services and payments, as also what were called the droits re'galiens, or the privilege of appoint- ing to bishoprics and receiving the fruits and revenues during avoidances. At the accession of Louis XI. Brittany was held by Duke Francis II., the nephew of Piichemont, who demurred to the King^s demand of formal liege homage ; and, in order to fortify himself against any attempt at compulsion, he contracted an alliance with the Duke of Normandy. The latter duchy, by a ' Michelet, Hii't. de France, p. 185 sqq. Chap. IL] TRUCE OF HESDIN. 123 policy wliich it is difficult to explain, Louis had conferred on the Count of Charolais, together with a revenue of 36,000 livres and the Hotel de Nesle at Paris. Louis can hardly be suspected of gratitude. One motive might have been that Charolais was at variance with his father; or Normandy might have been con- sidered more easy to reduce if placed in the hands of a sort of foreign Sovereign. Be this as it may, Louis, with his usual caution and foresight, did not immediately resort to open violence against the Duke of Brittany, but first of all proceeded to place the French Kingdom in such a state as might enable him to enforce his demands with safety. He first directed his views to the south, and, in an expedition which he undertook in 1462, he received the Catalan County of Rousillon in mortgage from the King of Aragon, and assigned it to the Count of Foix. This grant was accompanied with other acts calculated to make him popular among his subjects in those parts. Thus, he exempted Dauphine from the game laws, and granted to Toulouse, which had suffered from a great fire, an exemption from taxes for a century. A little afterwards he renewed his alliance with the Swiss, or Old League of High Germany, and with Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, to whom, as we have said, he abandoned all the French claims on Genoa and Savona, with reservation of the sovereignty. But what lay nearest his heart was the recovery of the towns on the Somme, which had been pledged to the Duke of Burgundy, and by which that potentate might have opened to the English the road to Paris. By the Treaty of Arras, Louis was entitled to redeem these towns; but he seems to have promised the Count of Charolais that he would not do so during the lifetime of Charolais's father. He preferred, however, that his money should go into the hands of Philip's favourites, the Croys, rather than into those of his heir ; and Charolais protested in vain. Thus, in October, 1463, the towns of St. Quentin, Peronne, Amiens, Abbeville, in short, all those on the Somme and in Picardy, were redeemed and re- annexed to the Crown of France ; but Orchies, Douay, and Lille, which had been pledged at an earlier period, remained in the hands of the Duke of Burgundy. In order to raise the neces- sary sum of 400,000 crowns, the King, besides taxing his towns, also laid his hands on the sacred deposit in Notre-Dame, the money of suitors, widows, and wards placed there by the Parlia- ment of Paris. Another measure of precaution was the truce which he concluded with Edward IV. at Hesdin (October 27th, 124 MEASURES AGAINST BRITTANY. [Chap. II. 1463. This Prince had mounted the throne only a few months before Louis, but the wars of the Roses still continued in Eng- land. Soon after his accession, Louis had lent some help to Henry VI. ; and on the other hand, a large naval expedition, under command of the Earl of Warwick, had been fitted out against France in 1462 ; but Warwick had contented himself with making a trifling descent at Brest. ^ After these precautions Louis prepared to strike a blow against the Duke of Brittany, who on his side had not been improvident or idle. He had confirmed his alliance with the Count of Charo- lais, as Duke of Normandy (March, 1464) ; he was negotiating with Edward IV., to whom he promised to transfer the homage of Brittany ; and he entered into a league with the malcontent Dukes of Bourbon and Berri, and with John of Anjou, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, son of Rene, titular King of the Sicilies. To crush so dangerous a vassal, Louis caused an army to assemble gradually and secretly on the frontier of Brittany ; and he then announced to Francis II. that he would no longer be permitted to style himself Duke " by the grace of God,^^ nor to exercise the prerogatives of a sovereign Prince. The Duke of Brittany did not venture directly to reject these commands ; but he alleged the necessity of consulting the States, and the whole matter was referred to an assembly to meet at Chinon in September, by which nothing was concluded. Louis knew that his policy had roused the distrust and hatred of the French nobility, and that a great confederacy was organizing* against him. His dissembling yet decisive character inspired the nobles with fear; and Pierre de Breze concentrated this feeling in an epigram, when he remarked that the King's horse did not carry him alone, but all his council. Not that Louis repelled advice ; on the contrary, he gave everybody an attentive hearing, but ended by deciding for himself. The lurking discontent wanted only an occasion to explode, which was soon afforded by a hasty step of the King's. Louis was aware that Romille, Vice- Chancellor of Brittany, was one of the chief agents in hatching the confederacy against him; that he was accustomed to travel about disguised as a monk, and was now at Gorcum, in Holland, with the Count of Charolais. The King, therefore, resolved to seize him and his papers, and it is said the Count of Charolais ' Michelet {Histoire de France, t. viii. that not a word of all this is to be found p. U6) insinuates that Warwick had al- in Lingard or Turner. We shall retui'n ready been hougJd hy Louis ; and observes, to this subject further on. Chap. I].] LIGUE DU BIEN PUBLIC. 125 also; and he despatched thither the Bastard of Rubempre, a notoriously bold and desperate character, in a smuggling vessel ; but Rubempre's appearance in the streets of Gorcum excited sus- picion, and he was apprehended. The Duke of Burgundy was informed that Louis, guided by certain astrologers, who had foretold the Duke's approaching death, had resolved on kid- napping his successor ; and the King's known addiction to astrology lent colour to the charge. To clear his honour the King sent an embassy to the Court of Philip, consisting- of the Count d'Eu, the Archbishop of Narbonne, and the Chancellor, Pierre de Morvilliers. The last discharged his mission with insolence. He reproached the Count of Charolais with his connection with the Duke of Brittany, demanded that Rubempre should be released, and that Olivier de la Marche,^ who had incriminated the King, should be surrendered, as well as a Jacobin friar, who had abused him in his sermons. ■ When the Ambassadors were departing the Count of Charolais bade the Archbishop of Narbonne recommend him very humbly to the King, and tell him that he had received a fine reprimand from his Chancellor, but that Louis should repent of it before a year was past. This breach with Burgundy encouraged the French nobles to fly to arms. They communicated with one another by means of envoys, who were recognized by a knot of red silk at their girdles; and towards the end of 1464 was concluded at Paris the confede- racy known as the Ligue, or Emprise clu JBien Public; a name, as Sismondi observes, which shows that some deference was begin- ning to be paid to public opinion. More than five hundred princes, lords, and ladies, are said to have enrolled themselves in this League. It was favoured by the clergy, whom Louis had ofiended by the measures before adverted to as well as by es:- cluding Bishops from the Parliament of Paris ; and they allowed the agents of the nobles to meet in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Philip the Good, fearing the rash and headstrong temper of his son, at first stood aloof from this confederacy : and it was only on persuasion of his nephew, John, Duke of Bourbon, that he was at length induced to join it. Bourbon, who had done good service against the English, had been alienated from the King by the refusal of the constableship on the death of Richemont, as well as ' The author of the contemporary Me- who was then in the service of the Duke moirs. At the period of this embassy of Bm'guudy, but afterwards attached begin the Memoirs of Philip de Comines, himself to Louis XI, 126 CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE. [Chap. II. by being deprived of the government of Guienne. The Duchy of Bourbon lies in the heart of the French Kingdom, but John also possessed many lands in the south, so that his territory might be said to reach from Bordeaux to Savoy. Among other principal leaders besides the Duke of Brittany, were the Duke of Alen9on, the Count of Armagnac, and John of Anjou, who had joined the League much against the inclination of his father, King Rene. The Angevin House of Provence and Lorraine had been hurt by the surrender of Genoa, which diminished their chance of recover- ing Naples ; while the Orleans family had also been oflfended by the King's alliance with Francesco Sforza, the old Duke Charles claiming Milan, as we have said, through his mother, Valentina Visconti. The confederates published violent manifestoes, in which they denounced the acts of the King, and they declared that their revolt had no other object than the good of the people. The King on his side despatched letters through the kingdom in which he pointed out the evils which would spring from this " false and damnable rebellion ;" and he asserted, perhaps with truth, that if he had consented to increase the pensions of the nobles, and allowed them to oppress their vassals as before, they would never have thought of the public weal. Stratagem and negotiation, Louis's familiar arts, were now of no avail ; it was necessary to oppose force by force, and he applied himself to the levying of an army. He increased the pay of the military, and, to meet this charge, he laid on taxes which con- siderably damaged his popularity. Abroad he entered into alliances with the Bohemians and with Venice, and he endea- voured to conciliate the Pope ; but the only foreign aid which he actually received was from the Duke of Milan and the King of Naples, who were naturally pleased that he should support them against the pretensions of his own vassals. Francesco Sforza sent his son, Galeazzo Maria, with troops ; and King Ferdinand de- spatched some galleys to cruise on the coast of Provence. Louis also courted the Medici; and it was now that he allowed Pietro to insert the lilies of France in his armorial bearings — a favour that was probably bought. It was at this conjuncture (June, 1464), that, in order to procure rapid intelligence from all parts of the realm, Louis first established posts, in imitation of those of ancient Rome, with relays of horses at every four leagues ; a very neces- sary step towards his policy of centralization. In March, 1465, the King's brother, Charles, Duke of Berri, from whom he had been some time estranged, joined the League, CiiAP. II.] BATTLE OF MONTLHERY. 127 and went into Brittany. This was the signal for the civil war which ensued, known as the guerre du hien public, or War of the Public Weal; and in May, almost the whole Kingdom, except Lyon, Dauphine, the greater part of Auvergne, Languedoc, and Guienne, had risen in arms. The King first led his forces against Bourbon; but learning that the Duke of Brittany was in his rear, and that the Count of Charolais was marching on Paris at the head of 26,000 men, he hastened towards the north. The Duke of Brittany was on the Loire, Charolais on the Somme; and their design was to form a junction in the Isle of France, and occupy Paris. Charolais^s military character was precipitate and rash, and his natural imprudence was increased by his father's advice to strike hard, accompanied with a promise that he himself, if neces- sary, would come to his aid at the head of 100,000 men. Charo- lais penetrated to Paris without waiting for the Duke of Brittany; but his army was ill organized and disciplined, and the Parisians made a valiant defence. Whilst the Count was hesitatino- whether to retreat or to await the arrival of his confederates, Louis un- expectedly aj)proached, the Oriflamme glittering in his ranks, which, during the domination of the English, had lain forgotten. This is the last time that the appearance of this celebrated stan- dard is recorded. Louis attacked the Burgundian army at Montlhery, July 16th, 1465. The accounts given of this battle by the two contemporary chroniclers, Philip de Comines and Olivier de la Marche, are not easily to be reconciled. Both leaders are said to have displayed personal valour, and both claimed the victory. Charolais remained in jDOSsession of the field, but he re- tired next day to Etampes, where he was joined by the Dukes of Brittany and Berri, while Louis seemed to have reaped the more substantial advantage of the day, as he lost fewer men, and entered Paris as a conqueror. About the middle of August, the army of the League, which had received large reinforcements, and had been joined by many of the confederate princes, reappeared before Paris. Louis had gone into Normandy to hasten the levies in that quarter, and meanwhile the Duke of Berri invited the Parisians to a negotia- tion at Beaute-sur-Marne, where he endeavoured, though without success, to persuade them to open their gates to him. In a few days Louis returned with the Norman levies; but though the hostile armies lay opposed to each other till September, only a few unimportant skirmishes took place. As Louis was master of the Seine down to the sea, he could always command a supply of pro- 128 TREATY OF CONFLANS. [Chap. U. visions^ and was therefore in no liurry to risk a battle ; he trusted rather to delay, and the effects which he hoped to produce through intrigue and address on princes of such dissimilar cha- racters and interests as those now leagued against him. He also relied on some diversions that were making in his favour. Galeazzo Maria Sforza had entered Dauphine with 5,000 men, and the citizens of Liege, with whom Louis had signed a treaty at the breaking out of the war, had risen against the Duke of Burgundy, and after sending him a defiance at Brussels, had laid siege to Limbm-g. The King also had incited the inhabitants of Dinant to war ; and they had ravaged the County of Namur, and hung up on a gallows before the gates of Bouvignes, an effigy of Charolais, with an insulting inscription, designating him as a bastard of the old Bishop of Liege. These were blows struck in the heart of the enemy's dominions ; the Count of Charolais became anxious to make his peace with Louis, in order that he might be able to chastise the insolence of his rebellious subjects ; and negotiations between the King and the League were opened at Charenton. Louis, who had no pride, or at all events never suffered it to interfere with his interests, flattered the vanity of Charolais by going thither in person, without asking for securities or hostages. He even condescended to say that the Count had fulfilled the promise made to his ambassadors — namely, that their master should repent his insolence before a year was expired, for he confessed that he repented of it already. Rouen had opened its gates to the Duke of Bourbon ; the ex- ample had been followed by some other towns of Normandy, and the demands of the princes and nobles became so extravagant, that Louis at first refused to listen to them. They were all, how- ever, for the private advantage of the confederates ; not a word about the " public weal,^' except that they stipulated for an assembly to consider of some reforms. Francesco Sforza advised Louis to concede everything, in order to dissipate this formid- able conspiracy, and to fulfil the conditions or not, according to circumstances. But Louis was not behind the subtlest Italian as a diplomatist. He improved upon this advice, and granted even more than the confederates asked ; seeing that the more he now conceded, the more ready would the people be to help him hereafter. He distinguished the Duke of Burgundy from the other members of the League, and concluded with him a separate treaty at Conflans, October 5th. The terms seemed most dis- advantageous to the Crown of France ; that especially by which Chap. IL] TREATY OF ST. MAUR. 129 tlie Count of Charolais recovered for himself, and his next heir, the towns of Picardy, with liberty to the King of France, after the demise of both, to repmxhase them for 200,000 gold crowns. The treaty with the other princes was signed at St. Maur des Fosses, October 29th. The King^s facility was calculated to rouse suspicion ; but the nobles were carried away by the advantages offered them, as well as by the example of Charolais. Nothing was said by them respecting the Etats Generaux, who might have questioned the concessions they had obtained; but in order to save appearances, they stipulated that the King should call an Assembly of Notables, to consist of twelve prelates, twelve knights and squires, and twelve lawyers. At the very time he was making these concessions, Louis entered a formal protest against them in the Parliament of Paris, as extorted by force, and therefore null and void ; and the Parliament on their 'side registered the protest with reservations, declaring themselves under constraint. By the failure of the League of the Public Good — for the treaty of St. Maur, notwithstanding its vast concessions, must be regarded as the consummation of its failure — not only was the fate of the French nobility decided, but also the future colour of the French constitution. The barons of England, uniting their cause with that of the commons against King John, established their own influence and the liberty of all. The French nobility, standing* by themselves, and contending at once with King and people, finally lost every remnant of power, and paved the way for demo- cracy and despotism. But their success would perhaps have been still more fatal to France. Under an aristocratical oligarchy public liberty might have been still more compromised ; while France, instead of becoming a compact and powerful monarchy, would probably, like Germany, have had the elements of its strength dissipated among a confederacy of feudal Princes. The first employment of Louis after his deliverance from imme- diate danger was to upset the treaty by which he had efiected it. With this view he entered privately into negotiations with the princes and nobles. He seemed mindful of the old fable of the bundle of rods, fragile separately, though infrangible while united. To conciliate Bourbon, the King made him his Lieutenant in the south, and conferred on the Bastard of Bourbon the ofiice of Admiral of France. The renowned Dunois, the old Bastard of Orleans, was detached from the interests of that House by giving I. K 130 EE-ANNEXATIOX OF NOEMAXDY. [Chap. II. Lis son the haud of Agnes of Savoy. ^ The Constable St. Pol, uncle to the Queen of England, was seduced by the prospect of advantageous marriages for himself and family. Even the Count of Charolais, now a widower, was propitiated by the offer of the hand of Louisas infant daughter, Anne, afterwards the celebrated Anne of France, with Champagne and the Laonnois as a dowry. But most of these promises Louis had no intention to keep, and his treacherous projects were favoured by the mutual jealousy of the Princes. The Dukes of Brittany and Normandy (Charolais) quarrelled on their journey from Paris to Rouen. Duke Francis wanted to seize the governorship of that city, and the principal offices, civil and military, of Normandy, in order to indemnify himself for the expenses of the war. He appealed to force, and was supported by the King, who ceded to him the droits regaUens of that province, made him a present of 120,000 gold crowns, and came to his assistance with an army. Their united force soon reduced Normandy, the towns of which made no defence, and that land was declared re-annexed to the French Crown (Jan. 21st, 1466). This event was accompanied with a double perfidy. The King neglected to fulfil his promise of bestowing Normandy on his brother the Duke of Berri, and the offer of Anne was transferred to John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, but with no better intention of fulfilling it. In this state of things, small attention was paid to the provisions of the treaty. The Notables, charged with the reformation of abuses, assembled, indeed, but were so selected as to leave the King nothing to fear from their proceedings. Meanwhile the Count of Charolais was employed in punishing the towns of Liege and Dinant, in whose favour Louis had made no stipulations in the Treaty of Conflans, though it was he who had incited them to war. He sacrificed Liege to his desire of conciliating Bourbon, whose brother Louis had been made Bishop of that principality by influence of Philip the Good ; and in order that Louis might re-enter his bishopric, from which he had been expelled, it was necessary that the King should withdraw his protection from the insurgent citizens. The Liege towns were reduced, condemned in heavy fines, and compelled to recognize the Duke of Burgundy as their hereditary protector. From this arrangement, however, the town of Dinant was specially excepted ; and in August (1466), Charolais appeared before Dinant with a ' Louis himself had mamed Charlotte, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy, and sister of Agnes. Chap. II.] DEATH OF PHILIP THE GOOD. 131 large army, battered it with Ms artillery, sacked it, razed it to the ground, and massacred the inhabitants in cold blood, 800 of whom, tied together in couples, were thrown into the Meuse. This horrible example procured the renewed submission of Liege. ^ Charolais must not bear alone the execration merited by these atrocious acts. The old Duke Philip was present before Dinant, and, though he was deemed more merciful than his son, he refused to listen to any conditions. It was one of the last acts of his reign; he died June 15th, 1467. His title of "the Good" was derived from a certain sensual good humour, which often passes with the vulgar for good nature, and supplies the place of virtue. By his last will he directed that his heart should be carried to Jerusalem ; for the Asiatic Princes at this time leagued against the Sultan Mahomet II. had promised to place him on the throne of that visionary Kingdom.^ By the accession of Charles to his father's dominions, Louis foresaw that a war with Burgundy would soon become inevitable; and in contemplation of it, he used every art to increase his popu- larity among his own subjects. He particularly cultivated the friendship of the Parisians, spoke familiarly with all, dined and supped with the principal magistrates and citizens, and engaged his Queen to make bathing parties with their wives. From his former intimacy with Charles, he was well acquainted with all the weak points in his character, and he prepared to take advantage of them. That Prince, who has obtained the surnames of " the Terrible," " the Bold," and " the Rash," was of middle stature, dark complexion, and commanding aspect. In many respects he was the reverse of his father. He was temperate and true to his marriage vow, warlike, inured to hardship and fatigue, but impro- ^^dent, overbearing, and cruel. While Philip was regretted, his son soon became universally hated by the people, for his hos- tility to their municipal privileges, and the heavy taxes which he imposed upon them ; by the nobles, for the haughtiness of his manners, and the inexorable severity with which he punished their excesses. Peace, order, and economy were the things chiefly coveted by the commercial Netherlanders : Philip had studied to maintain them, but by Charles they were neglected. The luxury and splendour of the Court and nobles were excessive, while the * Charles, however, appears to have the same author, vol. ii. p. 299 sqq. protected the women and children. Kirk, "^ Saniito, Vite fZe' Diichi, ap. Muratori, Charles the Bold, vol. i. p. 374. For a SS. t. xxii. p. 1184. general defence of Chai'les's character, see 132 UNPOPULARITY OF CHARLES THE BOLD. [Chap. IL middle and commercial classes, though wealthy, were frugal and orderly in their mode of living; and they were particularly annoyed by the troops, commanded for the most part by bastard sons of the nobility, who lived almost at free quarters upon them. The elements of discontent were, therefore, sujficiently almndant ; and, in order to foment it, Louis retained agents in the principal Burgundian towns. Soon after his accession, Charles had repaired to Ghent, when the citizens, discontented with a tax called the CueiUette, rose in insurrection, subjected the Duke to a kind of durance, and compelled him to repeal the obnoxious tax. This example ope- rated in other towns, and Louis availed himself of the conjuncture to excite fresh disturbances in Liege. But that town was again soon reduced by Charles ; Louis, as usual, having abandoned it to its fate. The state of the western provinces of the French Kingdom rendered it highly inexpedient for Louis to provoke immediate hostilities with the Duke of Burgundy. That Prince, in spite of their recent quarrels, was again leagued with the Duke of Brittany, at whose Court the Duke of Berri, enraged at his dis- appointment respecting Normandy, was now residing; and all the King^s endeavours to conciliate his brother proved unsuc- cessful. The Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany were negotiating* with Edward IV. of England, and towards the close of 1467 the long-protracted endeavours of these Princes were brought to a fortunate conclusion.^ A marriage was arranged between Charles and Margaret of York, Edward^s sister, which was celebrated with great pomp at Bruges in July, 1468 ; and thus the blood of the House of Burgundy was once more mixed with that of the Plantagenets. Edward promised 3000 English archers to assist in an invasion of Normandy, on condition that the j^laces con- quered should be made over to England. But before any fruits could be derived from this alliance, Louis had contrived to render harmless the league between the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. In accordance with his usual policy, he appealed against the princes to the people, and summoned the States General to meet at Toui-s in April, 1468. Their composi- tion was more than usually democratic. Most of the Peers of France were absent, whilst 192 deputies attended from sixty-fom* ' An elaborate treaty of commerce, to son, Aiuials of Commerce, vol. i. p. 683. be in force thirty years, was concluded In the following June a treaty of the same between Edward IV. and the Duke of kind, but on broader and more liberal Burgundy, November 24th, 1467. Rymer, principles, was also concluded with Brit- t. xi. p. 591. An abstract in Macpher- tany. Rymer, ibid. p. 618. Chap. II.] TKEATY OF ANCENIS. 133 of the principal towns of the realm. The indignation roused by the alliance of the Dukes with England operated in favour of the King. The Assembly, although it complained of many domestic grievances, unanimously disapproved a separation of Normandy from the Crown ; and they were of opinion that '^ Monsieur Chai'les " (the Duke of Berri) ought to be very well satisfied with his brother's handsome ofier of a pension of 60,000 livres, seeing that an edict of Charles the Wise assigned only 12,000 to a younger son. Armed with this decision of his States, Louis hastened to strike a blow against Brittany, before the English succours could arrive. Besides the dread inspired by his arms, the King had gained by his liberalities the Sire de Lescun, the chief counsellor and favourite of Duke Francis, who persuaded his master to a truce, and finally to subscribe the peace of An- cenis, September 10th, 1468, by which he abjured all alliances except the King's, and siibmitted the question of " Monsieur Charles's" appanage to the arbitration of the Duke of Calabria and of the Chancellor of Brittany. The Duke of Berri subse- quently acceded to this treaty. One motive with Francis for entering into it was the non- appearance of the Duke of Burgundy. Charles had been retarded by fresh symptoms of an outbreak at Liege ; whither had returned, armed with clubs and other rustic weapons, a crowd of half- naked, half- starved fugitives, who had been living in the woods. When Charles arrived on the Somme, nothing could equal his surprise at receiving a copy of the treaty : he could not be persuaded but that it was a stratagem contrived to arrest his advance, and he was on the point of hanging for an impostor the herald who brought the document. But when the truth, by further con- firmation, at length stared him in the face, he displayed a readi- ness to negotiate ; and the King himself, although he seemed to have Charles at an advantage, according to his habitual policy, preferred diplomacy to arms. His reliance, however, on his own superior dexterity brought him into a very awkward dilemma. He resolved on personally visiting Charles at Peronne, as he had previously done at Charenton during the War of the Public Weal; though he had no security but a letter of the Duke's, in which he said, that happen what might, the King should come, remain, and depart in safety. On October 10th, the day after Louis's arrival at Peronne, news came to the Duke of Burgundy that the citizens of Liege had sur- prised Tongres on the night of St. Denis (8th to 9th October), 134 LOUIS ENTRAPPED AT PERONNE. [Chai-. II. and killed the Bishop of Liege and several canons in presence of Louis's agents. At*'tliis news Charles affected a violent rage, and confined Louis in the castle, whence he could descry the tower where Charles the Simple had died as the prisoner of Herbert of Yermandois. The Duke's courtiers begged him not to spare "the universal spider/' now at last caught in his own web ; but Charles would have gained nothing by the King's death, and he contented himself with extorting from him some very hard conditions. Louis was required to confirm the treaties of Arras and Conflans, to convert the Duke of Burgundy's dependence on the French Crown into a mere empty homage for separate provinces, to ab- rogate the appellate jurisdiction of the Paris Parliament in Flanders, to abandon the revenues of Picardy, and to confer on his brother, the Duke of Berri, the provinces of Champagne and Brie instead of Normandy. Louis subscribed these terms, October 14, but with the secret determination, in this case perhaps in some degree justified, to break them on the first opportunity. The Duke of Burgundy, aware of the King's superstition, would not receive his oath except on a piece of the Cross of St. L6, which Louis always carried with him . This precious relic, which derived its same from having been long kept in the church of St. L6 at Angers, was reputed to be a portion of the true Cross ; it had always accompanied Charlemagne on his journeys, and Louis was known to entertain the opinion that if he perjured himself upon it he would die within the year. But the hardest condition of all, if Louis retained any moral sense or feeling of honour, was, that he was compelled to accom- pany the Duke of Burgundy to Liege, and to behold the chastize- ment of those very citizens whom his own arts had excited to re- bellion. He carried out, however, to the last the new character he had assumed of Charles's friend. Far from appearing at Liege as a mere forced and unwilling spectator, he exhibited himself before the town with the cross of St. Andrew in his hat, and to the citizens' cry of Vive la France! responded with a shout of Vive Bourgogne ! Yet on this occasion he displayed as much mili- tary courage as moral cowardice, and repulsed a sortie from the town with great coolness, when the Duke had quite lost his head. Liege was taken by assault on Sunday, October 30th, when the Duke of Burgundy exhibited the most deliberate cruelty in his treatment of the citizens. Those who had survived the assault and sack were proceeded against for weeks, nay months, after- Chap. II.] CHARLES- ACQUIRES ALSACE, ETC. 135 wardsj with a show of judicial inquiry ; but few escaped except those who could purchase their lives, and thousands were either hanged or drowned in the Meuse. The town was burnt with the exception of the religious edifices and the houses belonging to the clergy, and gens d'armes were despatched into the Ardennes to make an end of those miserable fugitives who had not already died of cold and hunger. Louis had been permitted to return to France, jN^ovember 2nd, more vexed perhaps at being overreached than at the loss of his honour : but for the present, at least, he considered it advisable to cany out the stipulations of Peronne ; and he ordered the treaty to be published at Paris, and to be registered by the Par- liament. Yet with all his cynicism he could not help feeling his degradation. He displayed an unaccustomed sensitiveness to public opinion, especially that of his capital, and passed on to Tours instead of entering Paris. On the other hand, Charles the Bold now began to push those ambitious projects of founding a Burgundian Kingdom which had been entertained by his father ; and with that view he entered into negotiations with the Austrian Duke Sigismund of Tyrol, surnamed the Weak, who was then staying in the Netherlands. In consideration of a sum of 80,000 ducats, Sigismund pledged to Charles in 1469 all the rights and possessions of the House of Habsburg in Alsace, the Breisgau, the Sundgau, the forest towns of the Rhine, and the lordship of Pfirt, or Ferrette. Charles thought of nothing less than over- throwing the King of France, and even obtaining the Imperial crown after the death of Frederick III. ; little dreaming that his aspiring aims were only preparing the way for his own de- struction. An unguarded expression of the Duke of Burgundy's seemed to the superstitious yet unscrupulous mind of Louis to afford him a loophole of escape from his oath. He had suddenly asked the Duke at parting what he should do in case his brother were not content with the portion assigned him ? And Charles had care- lessly answered that he must satisfy him in some other way, and that he left the matter to them. Regarding this answer as ab- solving him from his terrible oath, Louis offered his brother the Duchy of Guienne in place of Champagne and Brie ; but the Duke of Berri, who was at that time governed by the counsels of Cardinal Balue, would by no means consent to the exchange. Balue, a roguish simoniacal priest, whom Louis had raised from low condition to the height of trust and power, had sold himself 13G CARDINAL BALUE. [Chap. II. to the Duke of Burgundy, and it is suspected to liave been through his machinations that Louis was entrapped at Peronne : after which, finding that he had lost the King^s confidence, he attached himself to the Duke of Berri. This was far from being the only instance in which Louis was betrayed by his ministers ; for, clever and unprincipled himself, he selected his advisers for the same qualities. He was a great admirer of Italian politics, and especially of the government of Venice, in whose principles he had employed two Venetians to instruct him. A certain flexi- bility of conscience was in his view a recommendation of a states- man, provided it were combined with the requisite dexterity and audacity ; and thus, for instance, Pierre de Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans, was actually under prosecution for malversation in his judicial functions as conseiller-clerc in the Parliament of Paris, at the very time when he was made Chancellor. It was, therefore, no wonder that Louis was often deceived, for which he had nobody but himself to blame. On discovering Balue^s treachery, he caused him to be apprehended, together with the Bishop of Verdun, his creature ; he sequestered the Cardinal's enormous wealth, and he requested the Pope to send Apostolic Vicars into France to try the Roman prelate. But the Court of Rome replied that a Roman Cardinal could be tried only in Consistory ; and Louis, afraid to put Balue to death, subjected him to a punish- ment which the Cardinal himself is said to have suggested in the case of another criminal, and which had been long in use in Spain and Italy. Louis confined him in an iron cage eight feet square, in the Castle of Loches, in Touraine, where he remained ten years without being brought to trial. The Bishop of Verdun was sent to the Bastille. After the removal of these counsellors, the King efiected an arrangement with the Duke of Berri, April 1469 ; the latter consenting to accept Guienne in compensation for Normandy, and binding himself by oath on the Cross of St. L6 not to marry Charles's daughter, the heiress of Burgundy. By this arrange- ment Louis removed his brother from the sphere of the Duke of Burgundy's influence, rendered him an object of suspicion to the Duke of Brittany, and opposed him to the English, whose views were still directed towards Guienne. The Duke of Burgundy expected that his brother-in-law, Edward IV., would make a descent on Guienne in 1470 ; but this was i^revented by the insurrection of the Duke of Clarence, under- taken at the instigation of Warwick, whose daughter that Prince ha& married. The secret history of the Courts of England and CHAr. II.] LOUIS XI. AND WARWICK. 137 France at this period is so important that we must take up the subject a little earlier. After the marrige of Edward IV. with Elizabeth Woodville, in 1464, the advancement of Elizabeth's family gave great umbrage to many of the old nobility, and espe- cially to the Earl of Warwick, who had also other causes of dis- content. That powerful nobleman, with his two brothers, the Archbishop of York and Lord Montague, now Earl of Northumber- land, had hitherto governed the kingdom, but since the appear- ance of this rival family, the King seemed to have grown weary of Warwick's counsels. The first open symptom of coldness, however, between Edward and that nobleman arose on the occa- sion of the marriage of Margaret of York and the Duke of Bur- gundy, before mentioned. Warwick had advised a union with a French Prince, and Edward had authorized him to negotiate with Louis on the subject ; for which purpose Warwick proceeded to Eouen, in 1467. Here he was treated by the French King in the most intimate and confidential manner. The wall between their lodgings was pierced, in order that they might confer at all hours unobserved; Louis, by his presents and flattering attentions, con- verted Warwick into a lasting friend, and from this time they appear to have kept up a constant secret correspondence.^ At the very same time the Bastard of Burgundy was in London, employed, it was suspected, in negotiating the marriage which afterwards took place between Charles and Margaret. Warwick I'eturned in a month or two, accompanied by certain French am- bassadors, whose object it was to prevent this marriage and the alliance that must spring from it between Edward and Charles, now become, by the death of his father, Duke of Burgundy ; and they ofl'ered Edward an annual pension from the King of France, as well as to refer his claims to Normandy and Aquitaine to the decision of the Pope. Bribery and corruption were Louis's familiar arts ; and it is not improbable that the bearer of such a message to his Sovereign was himself not insensible to the charms of gold ; a supposition which would at least explain much that is acknowledged to be unaccountable in Warwick's conduct.^ Edward disdainfully rejected the proposals of France, and War- wick retired in discontent to his castle at Middleham, in York- shire. In his absence he was accused of being a secret partisan ' Miclielet, Hisfoire de France, t. ix. with having receiver! bribes from Louis as p. 42 ; Hearne's Fragments, p. 296 S(]ij. early as 1462 {Hist, de France, t. viii. ap. Turner, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 281. p. 146), but there seems little in his con- 2 See Hume, vol. iii. p. 2.34. M. Miche- duct, previously to Edward's marriage at let does not hesitate to charge Warwick least, to justify the suspicion. 138 WARWICK AND EDWARD IV. [Chap. II. of the House of Lancaster at the French Courts and a ^Yatch was set upon his actions ; but a reconcihation took place between him and Edward ; Warwick again appeared at Court in 1468, and even escorted Margaret through London on her way to her husband in Flanders. Clarence^s marriage with Isabel, daughter of Warwick, took place at Calais, in July, 1469, against the will of King Edward. At this very time an insurrection broke out in Yorkshire, in which county the Nevilles possessed their principal interest. The Earl of Northumberland, Warwick^s brother, though he defeated the rebels, did not efficiently quell the rising ; and the insurgents were subsequently headed by two kinsmen of Warwick, Lords Fitzhugh and Latimer, who openly avowed their aim to be the removal of the Woodvilles. The King now summoned Clarence and Warwick to meet him at Nottingham, where he told War- wick that he did not believe the reports that were circulated against him. But soon after the royalists were defeated by the insurgents, when Earl Rivers and Sir John Woodville, the father and brother of Queen Elizabeth, being captured, were executed, by the order, or pretended order, of Clarence and Warwick. The two last, together with the Ai'chbishop of York, now sought the King at Olney, and in fact made him their prisoner, and he was placed at Middleham, under custody of the Archbishop.^ There are still some circumstances in AVarwick's conduct at this period which it is difficult to explain, even on the assumption that he was the secret and bribed partisan of Louis and the House of Lancaster. Such was his putting down the insurrection in Scotland, in favour of Henry VI., in August, 1469 ; which, if that assumption be adopted, can only be attributed to his not being yet thoroughly decided. For the release of Edward IV. a little after, an explanation has been ofiered. It appears from the Chronicle of John of Wavrin, a contemporary writer,"^ that the Duke of Burgundy addressed a threatening letter to the mayor and citizens of London, in case they did not behave loyally to their King, and that Warwick, though feigning to know nothing of the letter, permitted Edward to depart to London. It is probable enough that the large commerce which the Londoners enjoyed with the Low Countries would have rendered a war with the Duke of Burgundy highly unpopular; and they may have ' See Lingard, History of England. - See Michelet, i/w!'. rfeF?-fl/iff. liv. xvi. Lingard is the fii-st modern historian who (t. vi. p. 299). has revived this well-authenticated fact. Chap. II.] WARWICK TAKES REFUGE IN FRANCE. 139 remonstrated with Warwick and procured the liberation of Ed- ward. A reconciliation now took place, which seemed to be sincere : Edward granted a pardon to Warwick, Clarence, and all the other rebels, and promised his youthful daughter to the son of Northumberland. Early in 1470 the project above referred to of invading France in concert with the Duke of Burgundy was agitated ; but suspicion still prevailed between the King and Warwick, and the expedition was prevented by an insurrection in Lincolnshire, headed by Sir Eobert Welles, and supported by Clarence and Warwick. The rebels were defeated ; AVarwick and Clarence were proclaimed traitors, and sailed for Calais with a few ships, bvit Warwick's lieutenant in that place, instead of admitting him, fired on and repulsed his little fleet. Warwick then sought an asylum from Louis, who placed Harfleur at his disposal (May 1470) ; and his ships, on their way to that port, seized and carried fifteen Flemish coasting vessels into the Seine, and publicly sold at Eoueu the goods captured from the Duke of Burgundy^s subjects. Charles the Bold remonstrated with Louis, who promised satisfaction, but at the same time instructed his Admiral to repel any attack that the Duke^s fleet might make on the English ships, Louis was not prepared, however, for an open rupture with that Prince, and with a view to conciliate him, he sent, in July, an embassy to St. Omer, which Charles received with more than his usual haughti- ness. He had caused a throne to be erected higher than any ever raised for King or Emperor ; the canopy was of gold, the steps were covered with black velvet, and upon them were ranged in due order his nobles, his knights of the Golden Fleece, and the great officers of his state and household. Although the French ambassadors fell upon their knees, Charles did not even deign to salute them, but with his hand making a sign to them to rise, addressed them in a speech interlarded with oaths ; refused to listen to their proposals, and flnally dismissed them from his pre- sence with marks of the greatest anger. Meanwhile Louis had succeeded in efiecting a reconciliation between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou, who was then residing in France. The powerful Earl had put her friends to death, had thrown her husband into prison, and proclaimed her infant son a bastard born in adultery; yet, such are the victories often achieved by political interest over the most sensitive feelings of human nature, an alliance was efiected between these once mortal enemies, and it was agreed that this very son of Margaret^s, the 140 WARWICK AND QUEEX MARGARET RECONCILED. [Chaf. II. last hope of the House of Lancaster, should be married to AYarwick^s second daughter. In order to effect this reconcilia- tion, Louis had assured Margaret that he was more beholden to Warwick than to any man living : an extraordinary confession, which strongly confirms the suspicions of the EarVs integrity.^ An ai'mament was then prepared in the French ports : Warwick, accompanied by the Admiral of France, landed at Dartmouth ; the standard of the Red Rose was again displayed in England ; and in the short space of eleven days was accomplished that surprising revolution which restored Henry YI. to the throne. Edwai'd IV., abandoned both by nobles and people, fled to Lynn in Norfolk, where he embarked for ^olland (September, 1470). The Duke of Burgundy afforded his brother-in-law an asylum, but at once declared that he could not openly interfere in the affairs of England ; and he acknowledged the restored Henry. This revolution encouraged Louis to dispute the validity of the Treaty of Peronne. In spite of his order that it should be regis- tered, the Parliament of Paris had demurred to do so, on the ground that its provisions were at variance with the fundamental laws of the Kingdom, and consequently ipso facto null and void ; and they proceeded to resume their jurisdiction in Flanders, which the treaty had abrogated, by summoning Flemish subjects before them, and by receiving appeals from Flemish tribunals. These proceedings threw Charles into transports of rage. He caused the French summoning officers to be imprisoned, and put to death such of his subjects as had appealed to the Paris Parlia- ment. But Louis proceeded steadily in his plans. His next step was to declare certain bailiwicks, for which the Duke of Burgundy should have done homage, escheated to the Crown ; and as he turned a deaf ear to all Charleses remonstrances on the subject, the latter called upon the Dukes of Lorraine and Brit- tany, who had been securities for the due execution of the treaty, to enforce its provisions. The King, who had made up his mind to proceed to extremities, in order to support his cause by the public voice of the nation, summoned an assembly of Notables to meet at Tours, to whom he submitted the whole question (November, 1470). This assembly declared the Treaty of Peronne to be null and void, and pronounced the Duke of Burgundy guilty of high treason on a long list of charges that had been brought against him ; in pursuance of which verdict the Parliament of Paris was instructed to proceed against Charles, ' Harl. MSS. ap. Turner, Midd. Ages, vol. iii. p. 284. Chap. II.] BATTLES OF BARXET AND TEWKESBURY. 141 and an officer was despatched to Ghent to summon him to appear before that tribunal. The astonishment and rage of the haughty Duke at this summons may be readily imagined. With savage eyes he glared in silence on the messenger^ then cast him into prison ; but after a few days sent him back without an answer. The conjuncture was unpropitious for Charles. His finances were burdened by the aid he was secretly lending to Edward IV. for the recovery of his throne ; and the fate of the expedition undertaken by that Prince, which we need only briefly recall to the reader^s memory, was still undecided. Edward, accompanied by his brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, sailed from Yeere in Zealand, March 10th, 1471, with some ISTetherland vessels and a force of 2,000 men ; and having landed at Ravenspur in York- shire, he marched to London, entered that city without oppo- sition, and re-committed Henry VI. to the Tower. Warwick despatched Clarence against his brothers; but that Prince, as Edward knew before he sailed, had returned to his allegiance, and instead of opposing the King's advance, joined him near Coventry with all his forces. Warwick, who had himself marched against Edward, was defeated and slain at Barnet, April 14th. On the very same day Queen Margaret and the Prince of Wales, ac- companied by a small French force, had landed at Weymouth, and were afterwards joined by the Cornish and Devon partisans of the Red Rose and by the remains of Warwick's army. But Edward defeated them at Tewkesbury, May 4th, before they could forni a junction with the Welsh; the young Edward, Prince of Wales, who was captured together with his mother, was murdered, almost in the King's presence, by Clarence and Glou- cester, and Margaret was thrown into the Tower, in which for- tress her unfortunate husband died a few days after, murdered, it has been supposed, but without adequate or indeed probable testimony, by the hand of Gloucester. Louis, meanwhile, had commenced hostilities with the Duke of Burgundy, though not in an open and vigorous manner, but by instructing the Constable Dammartin to inflict what injury be could. Charles on his side had invaded France with a large army, burnt Pequigny, crossed the Somme, and laid siege to Amiens, when all of a sudden, without any apparent motive, except per- haps the uncertain state of things in England, he began to negotiate with the King, and on April 4th a provisional truce of three months was concluded. Louis, besides his habitual dislike of war, was induced to agree to this suspension of arms 142 TRUCE BETWEEN FRANCE AND BURGUNDY. [Chap. II. from his knowledge that his bi'other, as -u'ell as the Duke of Brittany^ Avas in correspondence with Charles. The truce, which was subsequently pi'olonged till June 13th, 1472, brought a good deal of obloquy on the King : the Duke of Brittany called him the roi couard, and the Parisians vented their contempt and ridicule in libels and abusive ballads. Louis combated this feeling by striving to render himself popular. He visited the leading citizens, showed himself at the Hotel de Yille, and on St. John's day lighted with his own hand the accustomed bon- fire. By such arts did he secure the aflfection of the volatile Parisians. Edward's success in England turned the scale in favour of the Duke of Burgundy, and, instead of Louis receiving, as he had expected, 10,000 English archers from Henry VI., the might of England was now ranged on the side of Burgundy. K'everthe- less, Charles observed the truce, though both parties stood watch- ing each other, and resorted to all the arts of cabal and intrigue. The chief source of Louis's anxiety was the conduct of his brother. After their reconciliation, the King had presented the Duke of Berri, now called Duke of Guienne, with the order of St. Michael, which he had recently instituted. These orders were not then regarded as merely honorary. The members of them were obliged to the observance of very strict duties towards the head and chapter of their order, and bound themselves by oath not to enter any other ; and hence the acceptance by the Duke of Brittany of the Burgundian order of the Golden Fleece was naturally regarded by Louis as an act of hostility. But, notwith- standing this pledge of reconciliation with Louis, by accepting the order of St. Michael, the Duke of Guienne had kept up his connec- tion with Charles. The birth of a Dauphin in June, 1470, after- wards Charles VIIL, by disappointing any hopes which the Duke of Guienne might have entertained of succeeding to the Crown of France^ naturally rendered him more disposed to seize all present advantages. Contrary to the oath which he had taken, he was now in warm pursuit of Charles's daughter Mary, the heiress of Burgundy; though, in order to thro