Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/307

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 299 success of this policy sufficiently accounts for the continual efforts of the Elizabethan government to find a similar fiscal resource in mining and the extractive industries during the same period. Miss Boyce's general views, whether implicit or explicit, are sometimes open to criticism, as when she regards the abstention of Julius from any share in the European conflicts of his time as one of the causes of the Thirty Years' war, or implies that the ' careful regulation ' of an industry as practised by civic or national authorities in the sixteenth century was an essential factor in its prosperity. The general background provided in her two last chapters might have gained in breadth if Dr. J. Strieder's recent studies in sixteenth-century capitalism had been available, but her essay as a whole is the best account of early German mining accessible in English, and by her death on the eve of its publication Chicago University has lost a promis- ing historian. Gr. U. Miss Cicely Booth's Cosimo I, Duke of Florence (Cambridge : Univer- sity Press, 1921), deals with a period in the history of Florence which is perforce something of an anticlimax. The days which had already become to Italians the lieti tempi, before the first French invasion of 1494, were gone never to return ; Spanish domination was the prevailing factor in the political situation. Of the Florence of Duke Cosimo perhaps the best that can be said is that it is the nearest approach which the sixteenth century can show to an earlier and a happier age. Florence in 1537 found herself in a dilemma, familiar to students of her history. On the one hand, an irradicable love of liberty impelled her to make one more bid for a republican form of government. On the other hand, such were the evils of party strife that the establishment of a republic brought with it grave danger of the loss of Florentine independence. The election of Cosimo dei Medici as duke was of the nature of a compromise. Some measure of political liberty must be sacrificed in order that Florence might gain a champion against the attacks of her own fuorusciti and the aggressions of France and Spain. The Florentines had on the whole little cause to repent their action. If Cosimo succeeded in making himself considerably more of a despot than his original supporters had contem- plated, he gave his fellow citizens peace and justice to *a degree hitherto unknown. He maintained friendly but independent relations with Spain. While consenting to rule Siena as a Spanish fief, he stole a march on Philip II by persuading Pius V to crown him as grand duke of Tuscany. He raised the prestige of Florence among Italian states and created a navy which acquitted itself bravely at Lepanto. The first Medici of the grand-ducal line was in fact a notable figure in sixteenth-century Europe, and, like his fifteenth-century ancestors (Cosimo, be it remembered, wag a great-grandson of Lorenzo il Magnifico through his mother), he owed his position mainly to his personality. He showed tact, energy, capacity for detail, and great political acumen. Above all he had, as Miss Booth says, ' the essential quality of the Florentine statesman, that of so identifying himself with his city that her fortunes must needs be his, and no good come to him but Florence must indirectly share it '. Miss Booth has found fresh material for the domestic history of Duke Cosimo in the Florentine archives,