THE SPANISH DOMINION IN LIGURIA.

The Fieschi at the court of France—Louis XIV supports their claims—Bad effects of the law of Garibetto—Severe laws against the Plebeians—Death of Andrea Doria—Estimate of his public services—New commotions—Magnanimity of the people—The old nobles make open war on the Republic—Treaty of Casale in 1576—The Spanish power in Italy, particularly in Liguria—Aragonese manners corrupt our people—New taxes and customs—The nobility accepts the fashions, manners and vices of the Spaniards—Change of the character of the Genoese people—Last splendours of Italian genius.

It is not our purpose to follow Count Scipione in his wanderings; we shall only speak of so much of his exile as is necessary to the narration of the last of the Fieschi drama. He married Alfonsina, daughter of Robert Strozzi and Maddalena de’ Medici, and obtained many marks of esteem from the royal house of France, whom he and Strozzi served. Elizabeth, wife of Charles IX., treated him with the same familiarity as Catherine de’ Medici. He distinguished himself at the siege of Rochelle, and Henry III. knighted him in the order of Saint Esprit.

Scipione left a son, Francesco, Count of Lavagna and Bressuire, who fell at the head of his troops in the siege of Monte Albano (1621), and from whose marriage with Anna Le Veneur a noble family was born. The eldest, Charles Leo, married Gillona de Harcourt, (1643), who bore him Gianluigi Mario, a name which the Genoese Republic never forgot. Louis XIV. took him under his protection, and demanded of the Republic the restoration to Mario of his ancestral domains. The Senate refused, and he sent a formidable fleet, commanded by Segnalai (1684), who bombarded the city, and ruined churches, monuments and palaces. Innocent XI. interposed without effect; the fierce monarch required that the Doge and four senators should supplicate mercy in Paris; that the Republic should disarm its galleys and pay a hundred thousand crowns to Count Fieschi. The Republic abandoned by Spain, was forced to accept these conditions, and Louis on his part promised no longer to support the pretentions of the Fieschi. Count Gianluigi Mario died in 1708, without offspring, and the counts of Lavagna in the line of primogeniture ended with him.

We have spoken in another place of the addition to our statutes of the law called in derision, Garibetto,[52] the effect of which was to exclude the new nobles and the men of the people from political power.

The artifice was this: The old and new nobles in equal numbers filled the public offices, and, the latter being the more numerous class, the individuals of it held the highest office less frequently than the individuals of the old nobility. The rule was distasteful for many reasons: it was not made in a lawful way, but imposed by the authority of Andrea Doria, when many of the nobles themselves (says Doge Lercaro) were opposed to the measure; and it was contrary to the wishes of the vast majority that a few patricians should have almost exclusive claims upon the Dogate.

The people were little pleased that they were now totally excluded from that office, to which formerly they alone were eligible, while the plebeians[53] fretted at the insolence of the patricians and Spanish gentlemen among us.

There were new conspiracies. The spies of the emperor learned that a Fra Clemente of the order of St. Francis had brought back from France some schemes for a revolution and Suarez communicated the information to the Senate. The friar was arrested at Ceva and, having been tortured, he declared that De Fornari was intriguing with the king of France to promote a revolution in Genoa. De Fornari, the same who had been elected Doge against the wish of the old nobles, and who was therefore very obnoxious to that party and idolized by the people, was captured and confined in Antwerp.

Such movements led the Senate to distrust the people more than ever and to deprive them of the right to bear arms. In fact, when Agostino Pinelli was Doge, Italian troops were no longer trusted with the custody of the ducal palace; but the Republic enlisted Swiss, German and Trentine mercenaries. Giocante Della Casa Bianca who had commanded the guard for twenty-five years, gave up his sword to a German adventurer and accepted a subordinate position.

Besides, though the plebeians did not revolt or renew the conspiracies of Fieschi and Cybo, the Senate endeavoured to ruin all those who were pronounced friends of the ancient popular system. Oberto Foglietta having published in Rome, where he resided (1556), two books on the Genoese Republic, in which he exalted the popular citizens over the patricians, declaring that the first had served the country with greater fidelity than the second, the government declared him guilty of felony and punished him with banishment and confiscation of goods. Many years after, Giovanni Andrea Doria, to whom he dedicated his eulogies of illustrious Ligurians, procured the revocation of the sentence. While the Senate banished Foglietta, it praised to the skies the ignoble treatise of Pellegro Grimaldi, who, though a Republican, taught us to beg the favour of princes, and the logic of Lovenzo Capelloni, who, adhering consistently to the party of the victors, declared that the Holy See owed its fame to the house of Borgia.

On the 25th of November, 1560, Andrea Doria died, having lived almost one hundred and one years. The nobles called him the father of his country; but Cosimo, the old, was equally flattered. The plebeians with more sense surnamed Andrea Good Fortune, because except in a very few cases, his plans were always successful. He was the first admiral of his time and conquered everybody but himself; sad proof of which are the misfortunes of Fieschi, Farnese, Cybo and a long list of exalted names. He bore arms against his country, to dissolve, he said, its alliance with France; but the act was equally in his own interest after he had deserted the French service.

If he emancipated us from France, he took away the popular franchises and established the Spanish tyranny. He did not wish the office of Doge; but being the minister of Charles V. in Italy and the lord of the Main, it did not become him to descend to an office of less rank. The magnanimity of his own heart and the temper of his fellow citizens alike forbade him to assume the supreme power of a prince in Genoa. That was probably destined in his mind for Gianettino, and only the Fieschi conspiracy saved us from that fate. If Doria had wielded his sword and shed his blood for Italy as he did for foreign masters, he might perhaps have saved us three centuries of humiliation. Foglietta proposed to him a more generous service; to despoil himself of galleys, giving them or selling them to the Republic—an example which other citizens would imitate—so that Genoa, having fifty ships in her service, could hold French and Spaniards at bay and use the seas for her commerce. Such a course would have given Andrea the glory of Ottaviano Fregoso, who by destroying the forts of the Faro, showed that he loved his country better than his personal dignity and interest. But the Republic saw in her waters a fleet which belonged to her sons, while she lacked ships to protect her coasts from the pirates of Barbary. The splendid scheme of Foglietta came to nothing; Andrea spent his life in keeping the seas open for French and Spaniards and in maintaining foreign powers. He preserved to Genoa the name of independence, but it was a mockery. Though he put on our necks the yoke of Spain, he was great and strong enough to be the only minister and agent of that power.

A great soldier in the service of the enemies of Italy, he stripped the Republic of her popular power, founded an oligarchy on the ruins of liberty and closed the glorious epopee of Genoese conquests in an endless succession of domestic conspiracies and political contentions. Such is our estimate of Andrea. We believe that now that the angry passions which his actions evoked have ceased to glow, the sentence of history should be written with impassable justice. After his death, the Fieschi party again took courage. They attempted to remove the old nobles from power and in 1560 (writes Doge Lercaro) conferences were openly held in many places, especially in the house of Basadonne, so that it was necessary to refer the matter to the Senate. Finally, the nobles of San Pietro, headed by Matteo Senarega, a man of much legal learning and political experience whom the arrogance of Doge Gianotto Lomellini had driven from the secretaryship of state, resolved to renew the Fieschi movement, humble the patricians and destroy the Spanish power. The contest began in the election of Doge, each party wishing to elect one of their own number, and they came to blows. The Porch of St. Luca was supported by its large army of vassals, by the arms of Spain and by the galleys of Prince Giovanni Andrea Doria. The porch of St. Pietro had the support of the populace who hoped to regain their old place in the political system of the Republic. In the midst of the quarrel (1572) Galeazzo Fregoso arrived with two large triremes, and after an enthusiastic reception by the people announced that the king of France would give support to the popular cause.

Scipione Fieschi also repaired two ships in order to support the revolution. But both found an invincible repugnance in the people to a revolution supported by foreign arms, and relinquished the enterprise. The people trusting in their own stout arms, revolted under the leadership of Sebastiano Ceronio, Ambrosio Ceresa and Bartolomeo Montobbio, sons of the people. However, the life and soul of the insurrection was Bartolomeo Coronato, who though noble by birth, patriotically espoused the popular cause. They occupied the city, closed the streets with barricades and shut up the patricians in their houses. These movements lasted for a month, the deputies of the people demanding that the laws of 1547 be abolished and the most worthy of the citizens inscribed in the book of gold. The Doge trembled at the audacious demand and the Senate saw no escape from its perplexity until Giovanni Battista Lercaro entered the hall and said:—“Since you have not been able to save the country from its peril and are ignorant of the art of governing, yield your places to better men. Elevated to your offices by the spirit of faction and personal interest, you are unfit to rule.”

These words of Lercaro, a man of great dignity and a noble of the porch of San Luca, frightened the Senate who promptly declared their willingness to follow his advice. But the plebeians always generous to their own hurt, answered:—“We have not taken arms for political power. We only want the law of Garibetto revoked.” Whereupon the Senate took fresh courage, annulled the odious law, added three hundred families to the nobility, abolished an unpopular excise duty upon wine and raised the daily wages of the weavers three soldi. The populace were satisfied and returned to their daily duties, while the nobles of San Pietro who had feared a popular tempest managed the movement with so much address that they obtained complete control of the state.

But the noblemen of San Luca, as indignant after, as pusillanimous before the peril, refused to recognize the new laws and, abandoning the city, retired first to their castles and afterwards collected at Finale, then in the power of Spain. Here they declared open war against the Republic, and failing to obtain assent to their demands by the mediation of princes and even of the Pope, they invoked foreign arms to desolate the country. A powerful fleet commanded by John of Austria, brother of king Phillip, sailed into our waters. The old nobles, knowing the hatred of our people to Spain, required that the expedition should sail under Ligurian colours; but this did not secure the success of the enterprise. Meanwhile Giovanni Andrea Doria, heir of the political opinions of his Grandfather as well as his riches and rank, stormed the castles of Spezia, Porto Venere, Chiavari, Sestri and Rapallo; and without listening to proposals of peace proceeded to the conquest of the western Riviera, capturing Noli and Pietra.

The nobility, whose remittances from Spain came in very slowly, was reduced to such extremities as to be unable to continue the war. Giacomo Durazzo was Doge. Prospero Fattinanti took his place and a compromise was effected through the ambassadors of the Pope, the emperor and the king of Spain assembled in Casale in 1576. The accord of the two parties of the nobility excluded the people from all political power. The plebeians were enraged at this new betrayal of their cause, and Matteo Senarega who had laboured so hard to promote popular rights, prophesied that the bondage of the plebeians would be eternal. He wrote:—“He who is oppressed by a prince yields to necessity and to destiny, with the consolation that a change of masters may lighten his burdens; but he who sinks under the despotism of a few, assuming the name of a Republic, loses his disgust at the tyranny in the sound of a word and under a sweet delusion wears his chains for ever.”

The old and new nobles now intrigued with such success as to destroy the spirit of popular liberty; and Coronato, whom Lercaro though of the opposite faction praises so highly, lost his head on the scaffold. On the other hand, Prince Giovanni Andrea Doria, who had dyed his sword so often in the blood of his fellow citizens, was called, “Preserver of the liberties of his country.” To this day he holds that rank in history; but our history must be re-written.

We have seen that the reforms of Andrea destroyed the popular constitution, placed all political power in the hands of the patricians, and opened the doors of the Republic to Spanish supremacy. When the city of Finale, exasperated by the lust and avarice of Alfonso Del Caretto, shook off his yoke, the dispossessed lord appealed as an imperial vassal to the Diet of Augusta; and the emperor, far from favouring the Republic, which had taken part in the fall of Alfonso, decided that the marquis should be restored to his feud, compelled Genoa to pay him for the damage he had suffered. The Republic clamoured against the sentence, it is true; but when a few years later Gabrielle Della Cueva, duke of Albuquerque, and governor of Milan, garrisoned Finale, Genoa had not courage to oppose the measure, and suffered a foreign power to intrench itself in the very heart of Liguria. At the death of Marquis Francesco (1598), the line of Carretto became extinct, and the Senate allowed Finale to pass into the possession of Spain, who, not content with this, assassinated Ercole Grimaldi, in order to become master of the principate of Monaco, (1614.)

Conquests and wars were finished, and Genoa had scarcely strength to keep down domestic revolt, and resist the aggressions of immediate neighbours. The greater part of the conspiracies which for almost a century disturbed the dreams of our masters, had no other object than to restore the popular constitution. The free systems were falling throughout the Peninsula. The people hoped when the council of Trent was opened that it would not only correct the gross abuses of the Papal court, but restore the church itself to its ancient democratic forms. But when the council closed, it was found that no innovation had been effected, that a few vices had been forbidden; but the Church remained a monarchy, as Gregory VII. and Innocent III. had left it. Not content with this, the Papacy, with its famous bull In coena domini (1567), endeavoured to attach all the powers of the world to its triumphal car. The fall of the communes was complete, and the Latin principle was strangled by the monarchial and foreign element.

The Italian states, for the most part subject to foreign powers, were changing into monarchies. Italy was a province of Spain; and yet so detestable was that power that Navagero tells us, Paul IV. never spoke of the emperor or the Spaniards without calling them “heretics, robbers, accursed of God, children of Moors and Jews, offscouring of the earth,” and bewailing the fate of Italy compelled to serve such vile masters. Spain left such fierce antipathies behind her that the interjection “Cursed be Spain,” came down to our times. A wise Pope, Sixtus V., who tried to oppose the imperial power, died by poison (1590). For two centuries, the decrees which regulated Italian politics came from Madrid. Naples and Milan groaned in chains; the lords of Mantua, Ferrara, and Parma, gloried in their shameful bondage. Venice herself purchased peace by ignoble sacrifices. Of Rome I do not speak. That she was badly governed, witness the incessant revolts of her people, the conspiracy of Benedetto Accolti, and the obsequies of Paul IV.

Emanuele Filiberto, who won for Austria the battles of San Quintino and Gravelines, consolidated with his victories the foreign dominion; and, educated in the school of Phillip II., he extinguished liberty in Savoy by abolishing his states general, and bathed his valleys with the blood of the Vaudois. The Republics of central Italy saw their last days in the same terrible period; Florence was in the grasp of Cosimo, Pistoia under the guns of a fortress; Arezzo paid with her liberties for favouring the imperial army; Lucca bought with money and the blood of Burlamacchi a short reprieve; Siena more generous than all others fought to the last extremity and perished, like Saguntum, among her own ruins. Thus while in the middle of the sixteenth century the great nations were consolidated which now control Europe, Italy was dying and dying by the fault of her own sons. The treaty of Castel Cambrese recognized and sealed the foreign dominion.

From that moment, the love of letters ceased to be a worship. The form was polished; but the spirit was stifled. Our most illustrious artists, forced to live upon the patronage of foreign princes, preferred the security of servile ease to the dignity and modesty of true art. The money of the great seduced them to abandon truth and the people without whom genius is neither great nor productive. Pleasure for courtiers was their only aim. The country was dying, but no voice sang the hymn of death; no one gave history those pages of heroism which save the dignity of vanquished nations. On the contrary, Giovio with unblushing brow eulogized his golden pen; Casa sang in honour of the Charles V. whom he had once satirized. Alamanni apologized to the emperor for his famous verse saying that it is the poet’s office to lie, and Cellini himself could write:—“I work for pay.”

In this general decline, the ideas of Fieschi did not utterly die. Some generous souls continued to protest. Let it suffice to cite Tassoni and Campanella, the last of whom in his conspiracy against Spain was supported not only by many barons but also by the Visir Cicala, a Calabrian renegade (though of Ligurian descent) who promised to land Turks in the kingdom. Nor would we forget that some of our nobles in Genoa tried to tear up the poisonous plant which had taken root in the Republic; as, for example, Agostino and Francesco, Pallavicini, NicolÒ Doria, who married a sister of Gianluigi Fieschi, and Agostino Vignolo who during the Piedmontese wars intrigued with lord bishop Brissac to aid the French arms.

But the Spanish government, which was destroying letters and arts, struck its roots more deeply every day and we reached such depths of degradation, we tremble in writing it, that the Senate issued a decree in the Spanish language and consented that it should be used in lectures and sermons. The plebeians, groaning under a double slavery, sometimes appealed to Spain against the arrogant despotism of the patricians; but the appeal reacted against the petitioners and Doctor Ligalupo, a man of much learning and great virtue, was imprisoned for life.

In the reports of the Venitian ambassadors to the Senate, the condition of Genoa is described in a few fit words; Badoero writes:—“They hate the Spanish nation as strongly as possible and matters stand thus:—the people see only France; those in power see only Spain, and none seem to think of the common weal.”

With the loss of liberty our manners became dissolute. Courtesans were held in honour. Imperia in Rome. Tullia in Venice were courted by men of genius. Catarina da S. Celso, Vanozza, Borgia and Bianca Capello married into illustrious houses. To speak of Liguria alone, a brief of Pope Clement VII. to the archbishop of Genoa and the prior of S. Teodoro, exhorts these prelates to unite with the government in reforming the cloisters, because the nuns have become utterly dissolute from contact with every sort of persons. The Genoese nuns had infamous repute throughout Italy. Bandello says:—They go where they please and when they return to the cloister say to the abbess “Mother, by your permission, we have been to divert ourselves.” It seems that subterranean passages were opened between the cloisters of nuns and friars. In our times, when the convent of S. Brigida was torn down, in the open walls were found skeletons of children who had been buried there as soon as born. Cardinal Bembo justly said that “all human vices and crimes were perpetrated in the cloisters under cover of a diabolical hypocrisy.”

On the fourth of September 1551, another brief on the corrupt morals of the convents was issued by Julius III., but it produced no effect. Gregory XIII., in a third brief of the first of July, 1583, made a new attempt to correct the gross immoralities of the cloister and the fruitlessness of his efforts is shown by the fact that he issued another soon after. The Aragonese license, penetrating the palace and the sanctuary, corrupted everything exalted or sacred; and then gradually diffused itself among the people, who had hitherto been so virtuous that the magistracy of Virtue, instituted in 1512, had no occasion to make regulations in regard to popular morals.

Before the Fieschi insurrection extraordinary imposts and forced loans were unknown. The customs were collected on principles of equity. It was wonderful to see the finances in healthful equilibrium, while the strife of faction raged so fiercely. The city added a fleet and an army to its forces at the cost of only four hundred and seventeen thousand lire, and the entire income of the government was only four hundred and thirty-five thousand lire. Love of country and not private interest ruled the hearts of the citizens; public services were either gratuitous or very slightly paid. In 1461, the annual pay of the Doge was less than twelve thousand lire, with three thousand more for office and secret expenses; that of the commander of the city guards was only four thousand lire; and other salaries were in proportion.

But purity of manners disappeared when the foreign power was consolidated, and the mechanism of the State was altered to suit the character of our masters. To pervert the plebeians, the Senate established the lottery (the first in Italy) in 1550, under the name of Borse della Ventura and it was so profitable to the treasury that an impost of sixty-thousand lire was collected from it, and the sum was increased year by year until it reached three hundred and sixty thousand.

Genoa, like Venice, committed the great error of oppressing her dependencies with heavy imposts instead of treating them with generous liberality. As early as 1539, a tax of four denari was levied on every pint of wine and it soon after increased to eight soldi on each mezzarola. Later, that is in 1588, the duty on salt was raised to a crown per mina. Three per cent. was imposed on incomes, and a tax was levied on fruits, and also on paper of which a large amount was exported to foreign countries. These taxes were light in comparison with the murderous taxation of our times, but they were none the less annoying to citizens unused to the visits of tax-gatherers. It had not been customary to drain the money of the poor, but the rich paid in proportion to their splendid fortunes or new columns were opened in the bank of St. George.

The governors of this bank, seeing the Republic restricted to a few families and the Ottoman power becoming master of the seas, wisely returned to the state (1562) Corsica, the cities of Ventimiglia and Sarzana, with its strong castles, the burgh of Levanto and the populous valley of Teico.

Our rich citizens lent their fortunes at high interest to the government of Spain; but the industries which had been the life of the people gradually declined.

In the first years of the century, Liguria was in its most flourishing condition. The smallest hamlets had profitable industries and trade. On the Western Riviera, Taggia was famous for its Muscatelle wines which Alberti says were not inferior to those of Candia and Cyprus. The trade in them was very active. Oneglia was prosperous, and Diana sometimes produced twenty thousand barrels of oil in a single year. Albenga, though its air was unwholesome (whence the proverb of the time,) “Albenga piana, se fosse sana si domanderebbe stella Diana,” was rich in the produce of its fruitful soil. There was universal movement, industry, wealth. But it was of short duration; the new system of government dried up all the fountains of our riches. In 1597, Genoa was reduced to sixty-one thousand inhabitants; Savona which had once counted thirty-six thousand citizens, in 1560 numbered only fourteen thousand, and in 1625, the number had fallen to eight thousand. The decrease was in this proportion throughout the Republic. Campanella had good cause to say to Genoa:—“Leave your markets, your gains, your barren glories! Blush for the riches of your citizens which contrast so terribly with the misery of the Republic.”

The foreign influence slowly killed the manly virtues of the Genoese. Italy no longer existed. We had a corrupt people in a corrupt state. All care was given to externals; every free thought was a crime; we were vile and called our vileness love of peace, and our indolence, moderation; religion had become a superstition, and the rites of the church merely a ladder to worldly preferment. Luxury and parade were unparalleled; but poverty was seen through the pompous vestments. The first born was rich, but his brothers were usurers or celibates in the cloisters. In their vanity and degradation, the great forgot that they had a country. Trade seemed ignominious to our princes and nobles, and they believed that their names at the foot of a bill of exchange would make a bad figure in history. This beggared many families to whom false pride closed the paths by which their fathers had become great. Knightly virtues disappeared; noble blood alone opened the paths to eminence, and this was carried to such extremes that our patricians refused to have for archbishop Belmosto, only because his name was not in the book of gold. They were at once proud and ridiculous. In 1576, a NicolÒ Doria became Doge and first took the title of Serenissimo and severe penalties forbade even the notaries to call other persons than nobles—however illustrious and wealthy they might be—by the title Magnifico. The notarial profession[54] itself was pronounced in certain cases ignoble and mechanical. In the smaller towns the same folly prevailed. In Ventimiglia and Finale, there were streets, porches and walks to which the plebeians were not admitted. Genoa was only a shadow, a pretence of a Republic.

Our wars and intestine struggles, our magnanimous enterprises abroad, were succeeded by a servile tranquility. Our masters preferred their gilded saloons to the dust of honourable fields; they lent their money at usurious interest, and got titles and degrading premiums for their baseness. There were, it is true, some naval engagements, but there were no real wars. And this was the supreme misfortune; for long peace wastes the strength of peoples and destroys both the habit and the courage of noble enterprises. There lingered among us arts, letters, wealth and trade; but the manly virtues were extinct.

The foreign leprosy gradually changed the character of our plebeians; they began to tremble before the powerful from whom they were separated by an immense interval. The two classes had nothing in common but vices and the habit of servility. Universal corruption produced great crimes and long catalogues of malefactors were often published. Nor was this in Liguria alone; all the provinces of the Peninsula were involved in a common demoralization. Assassins and robbers collected, not merely in bands, but in armies, and desolated the country and even the cities. They were led by trained warriors such as Alfonso Piccolomini, Corsietto del Sambuco—who ventured to the very gates of Rome—and Marco Sciarra who in Calabria took the title of king. Let no one suppose that the numerous altars, crucifixes and images of Mary prove the piety of our ancestors. They are witnesses for quite the contrary; in the midst of innumerable crimes perpetrated in open day, these religious emblems protected the citizen from the knife of the assassin who was too superstitious to smite him at the foot of the altar.

Religion was then only a superstition and a terror. A multitude of books appeared full of the wildest vagaries that fanaticism ever produced. For example, there were the prophecies of S. Brigida threatening the city with destruction! and through such follies the cunning generation of men, who live upon hypocrisy, mystery and the dead, amassed large fortunes. Their instructions were idle speculations and appeals to human fears. In those days, patrician and jesuit intrigues collected their followers in a little church situated in the Corsa del Diavolo and bound themselves by an oath to support for public offices only those of their own faction. An opposite faction organized, and from their standard—a black crucifix—were called Moro delle Fucine. This was the origin of those pagan saturnalia which survive in our times under the name of Casaccie.

Duplicity, fraud and treachery took the place of frank and fearless honesty. Entire towns were infected with these vices like a species of leprosy. The inhabitants of Borsonasca acquired a wide reputation for shrewd frauds and deceptions. They understood every sleight of hand, learned foreign tongues and imitated them with admirable skill; they had cunning artifices for getting other people’s purses, and they travelled in every country in Europe. Though born in the woods, they entered boldly the palaces of nobles and even of princes, dressed as physicians, merchants, bishops and cardinals. They sold charms, medicines, false titles and privileges with such perfect art that they often acquired extravagant wealth and high rank.[55]

Italy, sore wounded, did not die at once. Latin virtue and civilization were so tenacious of life, that whereas nations usually grow barbarous with the loss of liberty, Italy, trodden by foreign and domestic tyrannies, preserved a remnant of her culture, and, though barren of political genius, adorned her sunset with the splendours of science and art.

It was then that speculative philosophy achieved its greatest triumphs among us. Pomponaceo, Telesio, Cardano, Bruno and Campanella, precursors of Cartheusius and Bacon, opened new roads for the progress of the sciences. Strange, too, but true, when Italy was perishing, she produced her greatest soldiers—soldiers who led every other people but their own to victory. The age of our prostration and servitude produced Trivulzio, Medici, Gonzaga, Farnese, Colonna, Doria, Spinola, Strozzi, and Orsini.

But Genoa, perhaps the last to die, was the first to rise; the day came when, purified by suffering, she found strength to avenge in a tempestuous uprising of her people the shame of her long humiliation.[56]