TION. glittering prospect of a court before their eyes. The INTRODUC natural progress of opulence, by withdrawing the nobles from the seat at once of their usefulness and their influence, proved fatal to a power which made no provision for general felicity; and the wisdom of nature rendered the follies of the great the means of destroying the power, which they had rendered the instrument of oppression, instead of the bulwark of freedom. 36. freedom in Europe. While this was the fate of the liberty which the barbarian conquerors of the Roman empire brought with Progress of them from their native wilds, the progress of events was the south of different in the south of Europe, where the ancient traces of Roman civilisation had never been wholly extirpated, and the wild shoots of Gothic freedom had never fully expanded. The liberty of modern Italy did not spring from the independence of the landed proprietors, but the free spirit of the inhabitants of towns; its cradle was the workshop, not the tent; the centre of its power the turbulent forum, not the baronial hall. While the great landowners were engaged in projects of mutual slaughter, and issued only from their fastnesses in the Apennines to ravage the plains below, the inhabitants of the towns flourished under the protection of their native ramparts, and revived on their ancient hearths the decaying embers of urban liberty. At a time when the Transalpine states were still immersed in barbarism, and industry was beginning only to spring in sheltered situations under the shadow of the castle wall, the Italian republics were already far advanced in opulence, and the arts had struck deep root amidst the monuments of ancient splendour. The age of Edward I. of England, when the nobles of that country were still living in rustic plenty on their estates, when rushes were spread on the floors instead of carpets, and few of the barons could sign their name, was contemporary with that of Dante in Italy, with the conceptions of Bramante, and the fancy of Boccaccio. The genius of Raphael and the thoughts of Machiavelli were TION. INTRODUC- not far removed in point of time from the frightful devastations of the English bands in France, and the unutterable horrors of the Jacquerie rebellion. When Charles VIII., at the head of the brave but barbarous nobility of France, burst into Italy at the close of the fifteenth century, he found himself in the midst of an opulent and highly civilised people, far advanced in the career of improvement, and abounding in merchants who numbered all the sovereigns of Europe among their debtors. When the feudal chieftain threatened to blow his trumpets within the walls of Florence, her citizens declared they would sound the tocsin, and the monarch of the greatest military kingdom of Europe shrank from a contest with the burghers of a pacific republic.1 1 Sism. Rep iii. 157; v. 365; xii. 168. Hume, ii. 349. 37. of the urban Nor were the civil virtues of this period of Italian Rapid rise greatness less remarkable than its opulence and splendour. civilisation So early as the twelfth century, the Emperor of Germany was defeated by a coalition of the republics of Lombardy, patriotic and the virtues of the Grecian states were rivalled by the these states. patriotism of modern freedom. History has to record of Italy. Great and efforts of with pride, that, when the inhuman cruelty of the German soldiery placed the children of the citizens of Crema before the walls of the city, to deter the besieged from discharging their weapons, their parents wept aloud, but did not cease to combat for their liberties; and that, when eleven thousand of the first citizens of Pisa were confined in the prisons of Genoa, they sent a unanimous request to the senate, not to purchase their freedom by the surrender of one fortress in the hands of the republic. The naval wars of Genoa and Venice want only historians as graphic as Livy or Thucydides to render them as celebrated in story, as they were as fertile in heroic actions, as those of Athens and Sparta, of Rome and Carthage. We speak with exultation of the efforts made Rep. Ital. by the British empire during the late war; but how great soever, they must yield in comparison with the exertions of Italian patriotism,2 which manned the rival fleets 2 Sism. iii. 90; iv. 22, 29. TION. of Genoa and Pisa with as many sailors, at the battle of INTRODUCLa Meloria, as served the navies of England and France at Trafalgar. 38. their de But the republics of Italy yielded to the influence of the same causes which had proved so pernicious to the Causes of Grecian commonwealths, and destroyed the feudal inde- cline. pendence of the north of Europe. They made no provision for the liberties or interests of the great body of the people. The states of Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, were not in reality free: they were communities in which a few individuals had usurped the rights, and disposed of the fortunes, of the great bulk of their fellowcitizens, whom they governed as subjects, or insulted as slaves. During the most flourishing period of their history, the citizens of all the Italian republics did not amount to twenty thousand; and these privileged classes held as many millions in subjection. The citizens of Venice were 2500 those of Genoa, 4500—those of Pisa, Sienna, Lucca, and Florence, taken together, not above 6000. The right of citizenship, thus limited, descended in a few families, and was as carefully guarded from invasion as the private estates of the nobility. To the conquered provinces no privileges were extended; to the republics in alliance no rights were communicated. A rigid system at once of political and mercantile exclusion directed their whole policy. The privileged classes in the dominant state anxiously retained the whole powers of government in their own hands, and the jealous spirit of mercantile monopoly ruled the fortunes of the state as much as it cramped the industrial energies of the subject territory. From freedom thus confined, no general benefit could be expected; on a basis thus narrowed, no structure of permanent duration could be raised. Even during their greatest prosperity, these states were disgraced by perpetual discord springing from so unjust and arbitrary an exclusion; and the massy architecture of Florence still attests the period when every noble family was prepared to stand a VOL. I. C TION. INTRODUC- siege in their own palace, in defence of the rights which they sternly denied to their fellow-citizens. The rapid progress and splendid history of these aristocratic republics may teach us the animating influence of freedom, even upon a limited class of society; their sudden decline, and speedy loss of public spirit, the inevitable consequence of confining to a few the rights which should be shared 1 Sism. Rep. by a larger circle, and governing in the narrow spirit of 16, 18, 21. mercantile monopoly, not in the enlarged views of equal administration.1 Ital. xii. 12, 39. fection of states on disaster. Republics thus constituted were unable either to withGeneral de stand the shocks of adverse, or resist the silent decay the subject consequent upon prosperous fortune. The first great disaster stripped the selfish state of all its allies, and reduced it to the forces that were to be found within its own walls. The Venetian oligarchy gave no rights to the conquered provinces in the Trevisan March, though the senate announced, that in sending them the standard of St Marc it restored their liberties; and accordingly, in one day Venice was stripped of all its possessions, and reduced to its original limits within the lagunæ of the capital. When Florence reduced the rival republic of Pisa, she received no addition of strength, because she gave no community of advantages; and the troops employed to keep the conquered state in subjection, were so much lost to the victorious power. The dissolution of the Athenian confederacy after the defeat before Syracuse, of the Lacedemonian power after the battle of Leuctra, of the Theban supremacy after the death of Epaminondas, have all their counterparts in the history of modern Italy, when, on any serious reverse to Venice, Florence, or Genoa, the cities of which they formed the head broke off from a subjection which they hated, and joined the arms of any invader, to destroy that invidious authority in which they were not permitted to bear a part. Without the disasters of fortune, the silent operation of time brought the weakness of age upon TION. communities which depended only on the energies of the INTRODUChigher classes. The families, in whose hands the sovereign power was vested, became extinct from age, or enfeebled by opulence, and no infusion of vigour from the inferior orders took place to restore their energy; the number of citizens continually declined, while the discontents of those subjected to their influence incessantly increased. The experienced evils arising from such a form of government led to a very general dislike to its Sism. xii. continuance; and, to avoid the ruinous contests of fac- Machiations, as many of the Italian republics made a voluntary 27. surrender of their liberties as lost them from the invasion of foreign power.1 1 16, 18, 21. velli, iii. c. 40. Flemish The industry and wealth of Flanders early nourished a free spirit, and the utmost efforts were long made by the Decline of inhabitants of its cities for the maintenance of their lib- freedom. erties. The effects of these efforts were immense; they converted arid sands into fertile fields, and overspread the land with numerous and opulent cities; they rendered Brabant the garden of Europe, the object alike of monarchs' envy and of nations' ambition. But its freedom was confined to the burghers of the towns: the peasantry of the country joined their feudal leaders, in combating the rising influence of the manufacturing classes ; and the jealousies of rival industry generally prevented the inhabitants from joining in any common measure for the defence of their independence. Once only an unhoped-for victory roused the whole country to arms, and a leader of greater military experience might have established their freedom on a durable basis; but the burghers of Ghent had Barante, i. not the firmness of the shepherds of Underwalden, and Sism. the victory of Resebecque crushed for centuries the rising 249. independence of commercial industry under the barbarous yoke of feudal power.2 Experience, therefore, had demonstrated that the freedom which arose from the independence of the desert, equally with that which was nursed in the bosom of cities, 2 42, 43. France, xi. |