Ferdinand I. died in 1609, leaving four sons, of whom the
eldest, Cosimo II., succeeded to the throne at the age of nineteen.
He was at first assisted in the government by his
mother and a council of regency. He had a good
disposition, and the fortune to reign during a period when
Europe was at peace and Tuscany blessed with abundantCosimo II.
harvests. Of his rule there is little to relate. His chief care
was given to the galleys of St Stephen, and he sent them to assist
the Druses against the Porte. On one occasion he was involved
in a quarrel with France. Concino Concini, the Marshal d'Ancre,
being assassinated in 1617, Louis XIII. claimed the right of
transferring the property of the murdered man to De Luynes.
Cosimo, refusing to recognize the confiscation decreed by the
French tribunals, demanded that Concini’s son should be allowed
to inherit. Hence followed much ill-feeling and mutual reprisals
between the two countries, finally brought to an end by the
intervention of the duke of Lorraine.
Like his predecessors, Cosimo II. studied to promote the prosperity of Leghorn, and he deserves honour for abandoning all commerce on his own account. But it was no praiseworthy act to pass a law depriving women of almost all rights of inheritance. By this means many daughters of the nobility were driven into convents against their will. He gave scanty attention to the general affairs of the state. He was fond of luxury, spent freely on public festivities and detested trouble. Tuscany was apparently tranquil and prosperous; but the decay of which the seeds were sown under Cosimo I. and Ferdinand I. was rapidly spreading, and became before long patent to all and beyond all hope of remedy. The best deed done by Cosimo II. was the protection accorded by him to Galileo Galilei, who had removed to Padua, and there made some of his grandest discoveries. The grand duke recalled him to Florence in 1610, and nominated him court mathematician and philosopher. Cosimo died in February 1621. Feeling his end draw near, when he was only aged thirty and all his sons were still in their childhood, he hastened to arrange his family affairs. His mother, Cristina of Lorraine, and his wife, Maddalena of Austria, were nominated regents and guardians to his eldest son Ferdinand II., a boy of ten, and a council of four appointed, whose functions were regulated by law. After Cosimo’s death, the young Ferdinand was sent to Rome and Vienna to complete his education, and the government of Tuscany remained in the hands of two jealous and quarrelsome women. Thus the administration of justice and finance speedily went to ruin. Out of submissiveness to the pope, the regents did not dare to maintain their legitimate right to inherit the duchy of Urbino. They conferred exaggerated privileges on the new Tuscan nobility, which became increasingly insolent and worthless. They resumed the practice of trading on their own account, and, without reaping much benefit thereby, did the utmost damage to private enterprise.
In 1627 Ferdinand II., then aged seventeen, returned to Italy and assumed the reins of government; but, being of a very gentle disposition, he decided on sharing his power with the regents and his brothers, and arranged matters in such wise that each was almost independent of the other. He gained the love of his subjects by his great goodness; and, whenFerdinand II. Florence and Tuscany were ravaged by the plague in 1630, he showed admirable courage and carried out many useful measures. But he was totally incapable of energy as a statesman. When the pope made bitter complaints because the board of health had dared to subject certain monks and priests to the necessary quarantine, the grand-duke insisted on his officers asking pardon on their knees for having done their duty. On the death in 1631 of the last duke of Urbino, the pope was allowed to seize the duchy without the slightest opposition on the part of Tuscany. As a natural consequence the pretensions of the Roman curia became increasingly exorbitant; ecclesiastics usurped the functions of the state; and the ancient laws of the republic, together with the regulations decreed by Cosimo I. as a check upon similar abuses, were allowed to become obsolete. On the extinction of the line of the Gonzagas at Mantua in 1627, war broke out between France on the one side and Spain, Germany and Savoy on the other. The grand duke, uncertain of his policy, trimmed his sails according to events. Fortunately peace was re-established in 1631. Mantua and Monferrato fell to the duke of Nevers, as France had always desired. But Europe was again in arms for the Thirty Years’ War, and Italy was not at peace. Urban VIII. wished to aggrandize his nephews, the Barberini, by wresting Castro and Ronciglione from Odoardo Farnese, duke of Parma and brother-in-law to Ferdinand. Farnese marched his army through Tuscany into the territories of the pope, who was greatly alarmed by the attack. The grand-duke was drawn into the war to defend his own state and his kinsman. His military operations, however, were of the feeblest and often the most laughable character. At last, by means of the French intervention, peace was made in 1644. But, although the pope was forced to yield, he resigned none of his ecclesiastical pretensions in Tuscany. It was during Ferdinand’s reign that the septuagenarian Galileo was obliged to appear before the Inquisition in Rome, which treated him with infamous cruelty. On the death of this great and unfortunate man, the grand-duke wished to erect a monument to him, but was withheld by fear of the opposition of the clergy. The dynasty as well as the country now seemed on the brink of decay. Two of the grand-duke’s brothers had already died childless, and Ippolito, the sole survivor, was a cardinal. The only remaining heir was his son Cosimo, born in 1642.
Like nearly all his predecessors, Ferdinand II. gave liberal patronage to science and letters, greatly aided therein by his brother Leopold, who had been trained by Galileo Galilei, and who joined with men of learning in founding the celebrated academy Del Cimento, of which he was named president. This academy took for its motto the words Provando e riprovando, and followed the experimental method of Galileo. Formed in 1657, it was dissolved in 1667 in consequence of the jealousies and dissensions of its members, but during its brief existence won renown by the number and importance of its works.
Cosimo III. succeeded his father in 1670. He was weak, vain, bigoted and hypocritical. In 1661 he had espoused Louise of Orléans, niece of Louis XIV., who, being enamoured of duke Charles of Lorraine, was very reluctant to come to Italy, and speedily detested both her husband and his country, of which she refused to learn the language. She hadCosimo III. two sons and one daughter, but after the birth of her third child, Giovan Gastone, her hatred for her husband increased almost to madness. She first withdrew to Poggio a Caiano, and then, being unable to get her marriage annulled, returned to France, where, although supposed to live in conventual seclusion, she passed the greater part of her time as a welcome visitor at court. Even her testamentary dispositions attested the violence of her dislike to her husband.
Cosimo’s hypocritical zeal for religion compelled his subjects to multiply services and processions that greatly infringed upon their working hours. He wasted enormous sums in pensioning converts—even those from other countries—and in giving rich endowments to sanctuaries. Meanwhile funds often failed for the payment of government clerks and soldiers. His court was composed of bigots and parasites; he ransacked the world for dainties for his table, adorned his palace with costly foreign hangings, had foreign servants, and filled his gardens with exotic plants. He purchased from the emperor the title of “Highness” in order to be the equal of the duke of Savoy. He remained neutral during the Franco-Spanish War, and submitted to every humiliation and requisition exacted by the emperor. He had vague notions of promoting agriculture, but accomplished no results. At one time he caused eight hundred families to be brought over from the Morea for the cultivation of the Maremme, where all of them died of fever. But when, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Huguenots offered to apply their labour and capital to the same purpose, the grand duke’s religious scruples refused them refuge. So ruin fell upon Tuscany. Crime and misery increased, and the poor, who only asked for work, were given alms and sent oftener to church. This period
