Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/504

 484 ITALY [HISTORY. James I. of England (1604), was the earliest instance of the order s banishment from a state where it had proved disloyal to the commonwealth. Decline Venice rapidly declined throughout the 17th century. ofVenice The loss of trade consequent upon the closing of Egypt ^. and the Levant, together with the discovery of America and the sea-route to the Indies, had dried up her chief source of wealth. Prolonged warfare with the Ottomans, who forced her to abandon Candia in 1669, as they had robbed her of Cyprus in 1570, still further crippled her resources. Yet she kept the Adriatic free of pirates, notably by sup pressing the sea-robbers called Uscocchi (1601-1617), main tained herself in the Ionian Islands, and in 1684 added one more to the series of victorious episodes which render her annals so romantic. In that year Francesco Morosini, upon whose tomb we still may read the title Peloponnesiacus, wrested the whole of the Morea from the Turks. But after his death in 1715 the republic relaxed her hold upon his conquests. The Venetian nobles abandoned themselves to indolence and vice. Many of them fell into the slough of pauperism, and were saved from starvation by public doles. Though the signory still made a brave show upon occasions of parade, it was clear that the state was rotten to the core, and sinking into the decrepitude of dotage. The Spanish monarchy at the same epoch dwindled with apparently less reason. Philip s Austrian successors reduced it to the rank of a secondary European power. This decline of vigour was felt, with the customary effects of discord and bad government, in Lower Italy. The revolt of Masaniello in Naples (1647), followed by rebellions at Palermo and Messina, which placed Sicily for a while in the hands of Louis XIV. (1676-1678), were symptoms of progressive anarchy. The population, ground down by preposterous taxes, ill-used as only the subjects of Spaniards, Turks, or Bourbons are handled, rose in blind exasperation against their oppressors. It is impossible to attach political importance to these revolutions ; nor did they bring the people any appreciable good. The destinies of Italy were decided in the cabinets and on the battlefields of Northern Europe. A Bourbon at Versailles, a Hapsburg at Vienna, or a thick-lipped Lorrainer, with a stroke of his pen, wrote off province against province, regarding not the populations who had bled for him or thrown themselves upon his mercy. Wars of This inglorious and passive chapter of Italian history is succes- continued to the date of the French Revolution with the sion. records of three dynastic wars, the war of the Spajiish succession, the war of the Polish succession, the war of the Austrian succession, followed by three European treaties, which brought them respectively to diplomatic terminations. Italy, handled .ad rehandled, settled and resettled, upon each of these occasions, changed masters without caring or knowing what befel the principals in any one of the dis putes. Humiliating to human nature in general as are the annals of the 18th century campaigns in Europe, there is no point of view from which they appear in a light so tragi-comic as from that afforded by Italian history. The system of setting nations by the ears with the view of settling the quarrels of a few reigning houses was reduced to absurdity when the people, as in thsse cases, came to be partitioned and exchanged without the assertion or negation of a single principle affecting their interests or rousing their emotions. Spanish In 1700 Charles II. died, and with him ended the sueces- Austrian family in Spain. Louis XIV. claimed the throne iion. f or pyii^ c j u k e O f Anjou. Charles, archduke of Austria, opposed him. The dispute was fought out in Flanders ; but Lombardy felt the shock, as usual, of the French and Austrian dynasties. The French armies were more than once defeated by Prince Eugene of Savoy, who drove them out of Italy in 1707. Therefore, in the peace of Utrecht (1713), the services of the house of Savoy had to be duly recognized. Vittorio Amedeo II. received Sicily with the title of king. Montferrat and Alessandria were added to, his northern provinces, and his state was recognized as independent. Charles of Austria, now emperor, took I Milan, Mantua, Naples, and Sardinia for his portion of the kings, renouncing in Italy all that his Hapsburg predeces sors had gained. Discontented with this diminution of the Spanish heritage, Philip V. married Elisabetta Farnese, heiress to the last duke of Parma, in 1714. He hoped to secure this duchy for his son, Don Carlos; and Elisabetta further brought with her a claim to the grand-duchy of I Tuscany, which would soon become vacant by the death of Gian Gastone de Medici. After this marriage Philip broke the peace of Europe by invading Sardinia. The
 * Italian spoil Philip founded the Bourbon line of Spanish
 * Quadruple Alliance was formed, and the new king of Sicily
 * was punished for his supposed adherence to Philip V. by

( the forced exchange of Sicily for the island of Sardinia. It was thus that in 1720 the house of Savoy assumed the regal title which it bore until the declaration of the Italian kingdom in this century. Vittorio Amedeo II. s reign was of great importance in the history of his state. Though a despot, as all monarchs were obliged to be at that date, he reigned with prudence, probity, and zeal for the welfare of his subjects. He took public education out of the hands of the Jesuits, which, for the future development of manli ness in his dominions, was a measure of incalculable value. ! The duchy of Savoy in his days became a kingdom, and Sardinia, though it seemed a poor exchange for Sicily, was I a far less perilous possession than the larger and wealthier island would have been. In 1730 Vittorio Amedeo abdi- cated in favour of his son Carlo Emmanuele III. Repent- I ing of this step, he subsequently attempted to regain Turin, but was imprisoned in the castle of Rivoli, where he ended his days in 1732. The war of the Polish succession which now disturbed p Europe is only important in Italian history because the si treaty of Vienna in 1738 settled the disputed affairs of the si duchies of Parma and Tuscany. The duke Antonio Farnese died in 1731 ; the grand-duke Gian Gastone de Medici died in 1737. In the duchy of Parma Don Carlos had already been proclaimed. But he was now transferred to the Two Sicilies, while Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, took Tuscany and Parma. Milan and Mantua remained in the hands of the Austrians. On this occasion Carlo Emmanuele acquired Tortona and Novara. Worse complications ensued for the Italians when the A emperor Charles VI., father of Maria Theresa, died in 8 } 1 1740. The three branches of the Bourbon house, ruling bl in France, Spain, and the Sicilies, joined with Prussia, Bavaria, and the kingdom of Sardinia to despoil Maria Theresa of her heritage. Lombardy was made the seat of war; and here the king of Sardinia acted as in some sense the arbiter of the situation. After war broke out, he changed sides and supported theHapsburg-Lorraine party. At first, in 1745, the Sardinians were defeated by the French and Spanish troops. But Francis of Lorraine, elected emperor in that year, sent an army to the king s support, which in 1746 obtained a signal victory over the Bourbons at Piacenza, Carlo Emmanuele now threatened Cenoa. The Austrian soldiers already held the town. But the citizens expelled them, and the republic kept her independence. In 1748 the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which put an end to the war of the Austrian succession, , once more redivided Italy. Parma, Piacenza, and Guas- talla were formed into a duchy for Don Philip, brother of Charles III. of the Two Sicilies, and son of Philip V. of, Spain. Charles III. was confirmed in his kingdom of the