Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/499

 1343-1458.] ITALY 479 the emperor Wenceslaus, and there is no doubt that he was aiming at the sovereignty of Italy. But no sooner was he dead than the essential weakness of an artificial state, built up by cunning and perfidious policy, with the aid of bought troops, dignified by no dynastic title, and consolidated by no sense of loyalty, became apparent. Gian Galeazzo s duchy was a masterpiece of mechanical contrivance, the creation of a scheming intellect and lawless will. When the mind which had planned it was with drawn, it fell to pieces, and the very hands which had been used to build it helped to scatter its fragments. The Visconti s own generals, Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, Ottobon Terzo, seized upon the tyranny of several Lombard cities. In others the petty tyrants whom the Visconti had uprooted re appeared. The Estensi recovered their grasp upon Ferrara, and the Gonzaghi upon Mantua. Venice strengthened herself between the Adriatic and the Alps. Florence reassigned her Tuscan hegemony. Other communes which still preserved the shadow of independence, like Perugia and Bologna, began once more to dream of republican freedom under their own leading families. Meanwhile Gian Galeazzo had left two sons, Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria. Giovanni, a monster of cruelty and lust, was assassinated by some Milanese nobles in 1412 ; and now Filippo set about rebuilding his father s duchy. Herein he was aided by the troops of Facino Cane, who, dying opportunely at this period, left considerable wealth, a well- trained band of mercenaries, and a widow, Beatrice di Tenda. Filippo married and then beheaded Beatrice after a mock trial for adultery, having used her money &quot;^and her influence in reuniting several subject cities to the crown of Milan. He subsequently spent a long, suspicious, secret, and incomprehensible career in the attempt to piece together Gian Galeazzo s Lombard state, and to carry out his schemes of Italian conquest. In this en deavour he met with vigorous opponents. Venice and Florence, strong in the strength of their resentful oli garchies, offered a determined resistance ; nor was Filippo equal in ability to his father. His infernal cunning often defeated its own aims, checkmating him at the point of achievement by suggestions of duplicity or&quot; terror. In the course of Filippo s wars with Florence and Venice, the greatest generals of this age were formed Francesco Carmagnola, who was beheaded between the columns at Venice in 1432 ; Niccolo Piccinino, who died at Milan in 1444; and Francesco Sforza, who survived to seize his master s heritage in 1450. Son of Attendolo Sforza, this Francesco received the hand of Filippo s natural daughter, Bianca, as a reward for past service and a pledge of future support. &quot;When the Visconti dynasty ended by the duke s death in 1447, he pretended to espouse the cause of the Milanese republic, which was then reestab lished ; but he played his cards so subtly as to make himself, by the help of Cosimo de Medici in Florence, duke de facto if not de jure. Francesco Sforza was the only condottiero among many aspiring to be tyrants who planted himself firmly on a throne of first-rate importance. Once seated in the duchy of Milan, he displayed rare qualities as a ruler ; for he not only entered into the spirit of the age, which required humanity and culture from a despot, but he also knew how to curb his desire for terri tory. The conception of confederated Italy found in him a vigorous supporter. Thus the limitation of the Milanese duchy under Filippo Maria Visconti, and its consolidation under Francesco Sforza, were equally effectual in preparing the balance of power to which Italian politics now tended. e- This balance could not have been established without the concurrent aid of Florence. After the expulsion of the duke of Athens in 1343, and the great plague of 1348, the Florentine proletariate rose up against the merchant princes. This insurgence of the artisans, in a republic which had been remodelled upon economical principles by Giano della Bella s constitution of 1292, reached a climax in 1378, when the Ciompi rebellion placed the city for a few years in the hands of the Lesser Arts. The revolution was but temporary, and was rather a symptom of demo cratic tendencies in the state than the sign of any capacity for government on the part of the working classes. The necessities of war and foreign affairs soon placed Florence in the power of an oligarchy headed by the great Albizzi family. They fought the battles of the republic with suc cess against the Visconti, and widely extended the Floren tine domain over the Tuscan cities. During their season of ascendency Pisa was enslaved, and Florence gained the access to the sea. But throughout this period a powerful opposition was gathering strength. It was led by the Medici, who sided with the common people, and increased their political importance by the accumulation and wise employment of vast [commercial wealth. In 1433 the Albizzi and the Medici came to open strife. Cosimo de Medici, the chief of the opposition, was exiled to Venice, In the next year he returned, assumed the presidency of the democratic party, and by a system of corruption and popularity-hunting, combined with the patronage of arts and letters, established himself as the real but unacknow ledged dictator of the commonwealth. Cosimo abandoned the policy of his predecessors. Instead of opposing Fran cesco Sforza in Milan, he lent him his prestige and influ ence, foreseeing that the dynastic future of his own family and the pacification of Italy might be secured by a balance of power in which Florence should rank on equal terms with Milan and Naples. The republic of Venice differed essentially from any Venice. other state in Italy ; and her history was so separate that, up to this point, it would have been needless to interrupt the narrative by tracing it. Venice, however, in the 14th century took her place at last as an Italian power on an equality at least with the very greatest. The constitution of the commonwealth had slowly matured itself through a series of revolutions, which confirmed and defined a type of singular stability. During the earlier days of the re public the doge had been a prince elected by the people, and answerable only to the popular assemblies. In 1032 he was obliged to act in concert with a senate, called pre- gadi; and in 1172 the grand council, which became the real sovereign of the state, was formed. The several steps whereby the members of the grand council succeeded in eliminating the people from a share in the government, and reducing the doge to the position of their ornamental representative, cannot here be described. It must suffice to say that these changes culminated in 1297, when an act was passed for closing the grand council, or in other words for confining it to a fixed number of privileged families, in whom the government was henceforth vested by hereditary right. This ratification of the oligarchical principle, together with the establishment in 1311 of the Council ffi Ten, completed that famous constitution which endured till the extinction of the republic in 1797. Meanwhile, throughout the Middle Ages, it had been the policy of Venice to refrain from conquests on the Italian mainland, and to confine her energies to commerce in the East. The first entry of any moment made by the Venetians into strictly Italian affairs was in 133G, when the republics of Florence and St Mark allied themselves against Mastino della Scala, and the latter took possession of Treviso. After this, for thirty years, between 1352 and 1381, Venice and Genoa contested the supremacy of the Mediterranean. Pisa s maritime power having been extinguished in the battle of Meloria (1284), the two