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The New Despotism - 1350-1492

It must further be noticed that the rise of mercenaries was synchronous with a change in the nature of Italian despotism. The tyrant established themselves as captains of the people, vicars of the empire, vicars for the church, leaders of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties. They were accepted by a population eager for repose, who had merged old class distinctions in the conflicts of preceding centuries. They rested, in large measure, on the favor of the multitude, and pursued a policy of sacrificing to their interests the nobles. It was natural that these self-made princes should seek to secure the peace which they had promised in their cities, by freeing the people from military service and disarming the aristocracy.

As their tenure of power grew firmer, they advanced dynastic claims, assumed titles, and took the style of petty sovereigns. Their government became paternal; and, though there was no limit to their cruelty when stung by terror, they used the purse rather than the sword, bribery at home and treasonable intrigue abroad in preference to coercive measures or open war. Thus was elaborated the type of despot which attained completeness in Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Lorenzo de' Medici. No longer a tyrant of Ezzelino's stamp, he reigned by intelligence and terrorism masked beneath a smile. He substituted cunning and corruption for violence. The lesser people tolerated him because he extended the power ot their city and made it beautiful with public buildings. The bourgeoisie, protected in their trade, found it convenient to support him. The nobles, turned into courtiers, placemen, diplomatists, and men of affairs, ended by preferring his authority to the alternative of democratic institutions.

A lethargy of well-being, broken only by the pinch of taxation for war-costs, or by outbursts of frantic ferocity and lust in the less calculating tyrants, descended on the population of cities which had boasted of their freedom. Only Florence and Venice, at the close of this period, maintained their republican independence. And Venice was ruled by a close oligarchy; Florence was passing from the hands of her oligarchs into the power of the Medlcean merchants.

Between the years 1305, when Clement V settled at Avignon, and the year 1447, when Nicholas V reestablished the papacy upon a solid basis at Rome, the Italians approximated more nearly to self-government than at any other epoch of their history. The conditions which have been described, of despotism, mercenary warfare, and bourgeois prosperity, determined the character of this epoch, which was also the period when the great achievements of the Renaissance were prepared. At the end of this century and a half, five principal powers divided the Peninsula; and their confederated action during the next forty-five years (1447-1492) secured for Italy a season of peace and brilliant prosperity. These five powers were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice, and the papacy.

Italy was now for a brief space independent. The humanistic movement had created a common culture, a common language, and sense of common nationality. The five great powers, with their satellites-dukes of Savoy and Urbino, marquises of Ferrara and Mantua, republics of Bologna, Perugia, Siena-were constituted. All political institutions tended toward despotism. The Medici became yearly more indispensable to Florence, the Bentivogli more autocratic in Bologna, the Baglioni in Perugia ; and even Siena was ruled by the Petrueci. But this despotism was of a mild type. The princes were Italians; they shared the common enthusiasms of the nation for art, learning, literature, and science ; they studied how to mask their tyranny with arts agreeable to the multitude. When Italy had reached this point, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. On all sides it was felt that the Italian alliance must lie tightened; and one of the last and best acts of Nicholas V's pontificate was the appeal in 1453 to the five great powers in federation. As regards their common opposition to the Turk, this appeal led to nothing; but it marked the growth of a new Italian consciousness.

Between 1453 and 1492 Italy continued to be prosperous and tranquil. Nearly all wars during this period were undertaken either to check the growing power of Venice or to further the ambition of the papacy. Having become despots, the popes sought to establish their relatives in principalities. The word nepotism acquired new significance in the reigns of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. Though the country was convulsed by great struggle, these forty years witnessed a truly appalling increase of political crime. To be a prince was tantamount to being the mark of secret conspiracy and assassination. Among the most noteworthy examples of such attempts may be mentioned the revolt of the barons against Ferdinand I of Naples (1464), the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan (1476), and the plot of the Pazzi to destroy the Medici (1478).

The Italian League, a loose alliance agreed to in 1455 at the pope's prompting, was designed to keep the peace among the Italian city states and to prevent foreign intervention in Italian affairs. Florence's influential balancing role and a succession of particularly able statesmen popes contributed to the success of the league, which endured for 40 years and coincided with the period of the finest cultural and intellectual achievements of the Renaissance.

Florence was the linchpin of the Italian alliance system. After the collapse of the Medici seigniory, the allies in the Italian League renewed their incessant fighting, leaving Italy open once again to foreign invasion. In 1494 the French pressed longstanding claims to Naples to Milan in 1498 and invaded, ending an era of relative peace. They temporarily conquered the Kingdom of Naples but were later repulsed. A second invasion, in 1499, provoked the intervention of Spain, which itself occupied Naples in 1504. By this time it was clear that Italy was virtually defenseless and became the pawn in a protracted struggle among the rival expansionist nations for the hegemony of Europe, suffering invasions by the Germans and the Turks.