Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/503

 1519-1606.] summoned by his predecessors. But such schemes were now obsolete and anachronistic. They led to a languid lingering Italian campaign, which was settled far beyond the Alps by Philip s victories over the French at St Quentin and Gravelines. The peace of Gateau Carabresis, signed in 1559, left the Spanish monarch undisputed lord of Italy. Of free commonwealths there now survived ouly Venice, which, together with Spain, achieved for Europe the victory of Lepanto in 1573; Genoa, which, after the ineffectual Fieschi revolution in 1547, abode beneath the rule of the great Doria family, and held a feeble sway in Corsica ; and the two insignificant republics of Lucca and San Marino. The future hope of Italy, however, was growing in a remote and hitherto neglected corner. A clause in the treaty of Gateau Cambresis recognized the right of Emmanuele Filiberto, duke of Savoy, to Piedmont. Hs owed this recognition, as Alessandro owed his duchy of Parma, to the fact that ha was one of Philip s bravest generals. Yet Emmanuele Filibsrto represented the oldest and not the least illustrious reigning house in Europe, and his descendants were destined to achieve for Italy the independence which no other power or prince had given her since the fall of ancient Rome. It is therefore needful at this p.oint to trace the history cf the counts of Savoy from the date of their first emergence on the stage of Italian politics. In the 10th century the founders of the house of Savoy of were masters over Burgundy and Western Lombardy. Their provinces stretched beyond what is now called Savoy on the west and north, and southward touched the Mediterranean at Savona. In the course of the next two centuries the family divided. Its elder branch ruled Savoy and the northern shores of Lake Geneva. The younger line held Piedmont with the city of Turin for capital. The former were frequently at war with the dauphins of Yienne and the house of Hapsburg, seeking to extend their domains in the direction of Switzerland and Provence. The latter proved but ill neighbours to the marquises of Montferrat and Saluzzo. When the first league of the Swiss was formed, the counts of Savoy were vigorously driven back within their northern borders. At the same time the powers of France repelled them from Provence. Entrenched within their mountains, they now looked towards Italy for expansion. This southward growth of a state which had hitherto been undefined between its cisalpine and transalpine provinces was further determined by the union of the two branches of the family in the person of Amadeus VIII. Succeeding to the honours of the elder line in 1391, he joined Piedmont to Savoy in 1418, and received the title of duke from the emperor Sigismund. During his lifetime he annexed Saluzzo, took Chivasso from Montferrat, and received Vercelli from Filippo Maria Visconti. Nice had already joined itself to Savoy in 1383, The duchy of Savoy, checked in its development upon the further side of the Alpine barrier, gained in solidity and extent upon the south, and took rank definitely from this time forward as a considerable Italian power. Amadeus was one of the most remarkable personages of his day. Having built up the fortunes of his house by diplomatic ability in an age of policy and intrigue, he abdicated in 1434, and went into cloistral retirement at Ripaille. Henca he emerged in 1440 to receive the papal tiara from the council of Basel. He took the name of Felix V., but resigned in 1449, leaving Nicholas Y. sole pope. When he died in 1451, he had reigned for sixty-one years as count, duke, prior of a hermit convent, anti-pope, and dean of the Holy College. The immediate successors of Amadeus VIII. undid a great deal of his work. They entered into unprofitable warfare with Geneva, Freiburg, Bern, and Vaud, and were still further shorn of territory 483 and prestige upon the side of Switzerland. The French invaded Savoy, and their Lombard domains became the theatre of the Franco-Spanish wars. When Emmanuele Filiberto succeeded to his father Charbs III. in 1553, he was a duke without a duchy. But the princes of the house of Savoy wera a race of warriors ; and what Emmanuele Filiberto lost as sovereign hs regained as captain of adven ture in the service of his cousin Philip II. The treaty of Gateau Cambresis in 1559, and the evacuation of the Piedmontese cities held by French and Spanish troops in 1574, restored his state. By removing the capital from Chambery to Turin, he completed the transformation of the dukes of Savoy from Burgundian into Italian sovereigns. They still owned Savoy beyond the Alps, the plains of Bresse, and the maritime province of Nice. Emmanuele Filiberto was succeeded by his son Carlo Emmanuele I., who married Catherine, a daughter of Philip II. He seized the first opportunity of annexing Saluzzo, which had been lost to Savoy in the last two reigns, and renewed the disastrous policy of his grandfather Charles III. by invading Geneva and threatening Provence. Henry IV. of France forced him in 1601 to relinquish Bresse and his Burgundian possessions. In return he was allowed to keep Saluzzo. All hopes of conquest on the transalpine side were now quenched ; but the keys of Italy had been given to the dukes of Savoy ; and their attention was still further concentrated upon Lombard conquests. Carlo Emmanuele now attempted the acquisition of Montferrat, which was soon to become vacant by the death of Francesco Gonzaga, who held it together with Mantua. In order to secure this territory, he went to war with Philip III. of Spain, and allied himself with Venice and the Grisons to expel the Spaniards from the Valtelline. When the male line of the Gonzaga family expired in 1627, Charles, duke of Nevers, claimed Mantua and Montferrat in right of his wife, the only daughter of the last duke. Carlo Emmanuele was now checkmated by France, as he had formerly been by Spain. The total gains of all his strenuous endeavours amounted to the acquisition of a few places on the borders of Montferrat. Not only the Gonzagas, but several other ancient ducal Extinc- families, died out about the date which we have reached, tion of The legitimate line of the Estensi ended in 1597 by the ldd V ca!: death of Alfonso II., the last duke of Ferrara. He left his domains to a natural relative, Cesare d Este, who would in earlier days have inherited without dispute, for bastardy had been no bar on more than one occasion in the Este pedigree. Urban VIII., however, put in a claim to Ferrara, which, it will be remembered, had been recognized a papal fief in 1530. Cesare d Este had to content himself with Modena and Reggio, where his descendants reigned as dukes till 1794. Under the same pontiff, the Holy See absorbed the duchy of Urbino on the death of Francesco Maria II., the last representative of Montefeltro and Delia Rovere. The popes were now masters of a fine and compact territory, embracing no inconsiderable portion of Countess Matilda s legacy, in addition to Pippin s donation and th patrimony of St Peter. Meanwhile Spanish fanaticism, the suppression of the Huguenots in France, and the Catholic policy of Austria combined to strengthen their authority as pontiffs. Urban s predecessor, Paul V., ad vanced so far as to extend his spiritual jurisdiction over Venice, which, up to the date of his election (1605), had resisted all encroachments of the Holy See. Venice offered the single instance in Italy of a national church. The republic managed the tithes, and the clergy acknowledged no chief above their own patriarch. Paul V. now forced the Venetians to admit his ecclesiastical supremacy ; but they refused to readmit the Jesuits, who had been expelled in 1606. This, if we do not count the proclamation of