trade, and make the handicraftsmen comfortable. Even the
Florentines in 1342 submitted for a few months to the despotism
of the duke of Athens. They conferred the signory upon him
for life; and, had he not mismanaged matters, he might have
held the city in his grasp. Italy was settling down and turning
her attention to home comforts, arts and literature. Boccaccio,
the contented bourgeois, succeeded to Dante, the fierce aristocrat.
The most marked proof of the change which came over Italy towards the middle of the 14th century is furnished by the companies of adventure. It was with their own militia that the burghers won freedom in the war of independence, subdued the nobles, and fought the battles of the parties. But from this time forward they laid down their arms, and played the game of warfare by the aid of mercenaries. Ecclesiastical overlords, interfering from a distance in Italian politics; prosperous republics, with plenty of money to spend but no leisure or inclination for camp-life; cautious tyrants, glad of every pretext to emasculate their subjects, and courting popularity by exchanging conscription for taxation—all combined to favour the new system. Mercenary troops are said to have been first levied from disbanded Germans, together with Breton and English adventurers, whom the Visconti and Castruccio took into their pay. They soon appeared under their own captains, who hired them out to the highest bidder, or marched them on marauding expeditions up and down the less protected districts. The names of some of these earliest captains of adventure, Fra Moriale, Count Lando and Duke Werner, who styled himself the “Enemy of God and Mercy,” have been preserved to us. As the companies grew in size and improved their discipline, it was seen by the Italian nobles that this kind of service offered a good career for men of spirit, who had learned the use of arms. To leave so powerful and profitable a calling in the hands of foreigners seemed both dangerous and uneconomical. Therefore, after the middle of the century, this profession fell into the hands of natives. The first Italian who formed an exclusively Italian company was Alberico da Barbiano, a nobleman of Romagna, and founder of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso. In his school the great condottieri Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo were formed; and henceforth the battles of Italy were fought by Italian generals commanding native troops. This was better in some respects than if the mercenaries had been foreigners. Yet it must not be forgotten that the new companies of adventure, who decided Italian affairs for the next century, were in no sense patriotic. They sold themselves for money, irrespective of the cause which they upheld; and, while changing masters, they had no care for any interests but their own. The name condottiero, derived from condotta, a paid contract to supply so many fighting men in serviceable order, sufficiently indicates the nature of the business. In the hands of able captains, like Francesco Sforza or Piccinino, these mercenary troops became moving despotisms, draining the country of its wealth, and always eager to fasten and found tyrannies upon the provinces they had been summoned to defend. Their generals substituted heavy-armed cavalry for the old militia, and introduced systems of campaigning which reduced the art of war to a game of skill. Battles became all but bloodless; diplomacy and tactics superseded feats of arms and hard blows in pitched fields. In this way the Italians lost their military vigour, and wars were waged by despots from their cabinets, who pulled the strings of puppet captains in their pay. Nor were the people only enfeebled for resistance to a real foe; the whole political spirit of the race was demoralized. The purely selfish bond between condottieri and their employers, whether princes or republics, involved intrigues and treachery, checks and counterchecks, secret terror on the one hand and treasonable practice on the other, which ended by making statecraft in Italy synonymous with perfidy.
It must further be noticed that the rise of mercenaries was synchronous with a change in the nature of Italian despotism. The tyrants, as we have already seen, established themselves as captains of the people, vicars of the empire, vicars for the church, leaders of the Guelph and Ghibelline parties. They were Change in type of despotism. accepted by a population eager for repose, who had merged old class distinctions in the conflicts of preceding centuries. They rested in large measure on the favour of the multitude, and pursued a policy of sacrificing to their interests the nobles. It was natural that these self-made princes should seek to secure the peace which they had promised in their cities, by freeing the people from military service and disarming the aristocracy. As their tenure of power grew firmer, they advanced dynastic claims, assumed titles, and took the style of petty sovereigns. Their government became paternal; and, though there was no limit to their cruelty when stung by terror, they used the purse rather than the sword, bribery at home and treasonable intrigue abroad in preference to coercive measures or open war. Thus was elaborated the type of despot which attained completeness in Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Lorenzo de’ Medici. No longer a tyrant of Ezzelino’s stamp, he reigned by intelligence and terrorism masked beneath a smile. He substituted cunning and corruption for violence. The lesser people tolerated him because he extended the power of their city and made it beautiful with public buildings. The bourgeoisie, protected in their trade, found it convenient to support him. The nobles, turned into courtiers, placemen, diplomatists and men of affairs, ended by preferring his authority to the alternative of democratic institutions. A lethargy of well-being, broken only by the pinch of taxation for war-costs, or by outbursts of frantic ferocity and lust in the less calculating tyrants, descended on the population of cities which had boasted of their freedom. Only Florence and Venice, at the close of the period upon which we are now entering, maintained their republican independence. And Venice was ruled by a close oligarchy; Florence was passing from the hands of her oligarchs into the power of the Medicean merchants.
Between the year 1305, when Clement V. settled at Avignon, and the year 1447, when Nicholas V. re-established the papacy upon a solid basis at Rome, the Italians approximated more nearly to self-government than at any other epoch of their history. The conditions which have Discrimination of the five great powers. been described, of despotism, mercenary warfare and bourgeois prosperity, determined the character of this epoch, which was also the period when the great achievements of the Renaissance were prepared. At the end of this century and a half, five principal powers divided the peninsula; and their confederated action during the next forty-five years (1447–1492) secured for Italy a season of peace and brilliant prosperity. These five powers were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice and the papacy. The subsequent events of Italian history will be rendered most intelligible if at this point we trace the development of these five constituents of Italian greatness separately.
When Robert of Anjou died in 1343, he was succeeded by his grand-daughter Joan, the childless wife of four successive husbands, Andrew of Hungary, Louis of Taranto, James of Aragon and Otto of Brunswick. Charles of Durazzo, the last male scion of the Angevine house in The Two Sicilies. Lower Italy, murdered Joan in 1382, and held the kingdom for five years. Dying in 1387, he transmitted Naples to his son Ladislaus, who had no children, and was followed in 1414 by his sister Joan II. She too, though twice married, died without issue, having at one time adopted Louis III. of Provence and his brother René, at another Alfonso V. of Aragon, who inherited the crown of Sicily. After her death in February 1435 the kingdom was fought for between René of Anjou and Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous. René found supporters among the Italian princes, especially the Milanese Visconti, who helped him to assert his claims with arms. During the war of succession which ensued, Alfonso was taken prisoner by the Genoese fleet in August 1435, and was sent a prisoner to Filippo Maria at Milan. Here he pleaded his own cause so powerfully, and proved so incontestably the advantage which might ensue to the Visconti from his alliance, if he held the regno, that he obtained his release and recognition as king. From the end of the year 1435
