THE CONCERT OF EUROPE IN THE CINQUE CENTO.* "Fr is
a fine thing," says Pliny, treating of history, "to rescue from oblivion those who have deserved immortality, and thus to advance their fame with our own." That pleasant Roman would hardly have applied his remark to the "Epochs," "Heroes of the Natious," "Periods," and other abbreviations which appear to be more in favour with us decadents than the great classics of the historic art. Mr. Johnson's lucid " Period " is an excellent example of the shorthand species ; but there is nothing like "the longest way round," and neither the Revolutions of Italy in the age of her French invader Charles V11.1., nor the Revolt of the Netherlands from the tyranny of Spain, nor the Civil Wars of France, can be adequately written to the miniature scale of four pages per annum. This measure may suffice for a Civil Service or diplomatic competitive examinee, or for the refreshment of the recollections of previous study; but things and persons cannot be stamped on the memory with their proper outlines and colour except by study of the original scripts, or, at least, of histories of longue haleine. Depicting the interview between Charles VIII., after his passage of the Alps, and the Governors of Florence, Mr. Johnson tells how, on the presentation of the French ultimatum, the Magistrate Capponi replied; " Well ! sound your trumpets, we can ring our bells." The superb Gnicciardini has given a lifelike description of this incident (beautified, it is true, with his customary speeches, after the fashion of Livy and Thucydides), which once read, may be remembered for years, while Mr. Johnson's version will be forgotten in a week. Further, the pregnancy of Capponi's answer is lost when the famous " Voi suonate vostre trompete e noi snonaremo nostre campane " is improved by the interpolated "Well," and by the adoption of the style of an Urban District Council. This incident is a pitfall to Mr. Johnson, who has borrowed from Gnicciardini—at first or at second hand—without further investigation. Yet a work no lees known than the history of Florence by Capponi's recent descendant and homonym shows by reference to "the document" that Gnicciardini's antithetical oratory is mythical, being a judicious mixture of the remarks separately made by Charles VIII. and the Italian Magistrate. Strange to say, the modern Capponi's version of the affair is fully stated and expounded in Villari's biography of the monk
• Europe in the Sirteenth Century (14941698). By A. H. Johnson, MA. Vol. 1V., "Periods of European History." London: Rivington, Percival, and
Savonarola, which the present book quotes. Then take the author's recital of an important page of the reign of that superstitious, debauched lover of mignons and lap-dogs, Henry III. of France :—
"Forced for the moment to submit to the League, the feeble monarch next tried to outbid the Guises with the deputies of the States-General, which assembled at Blois on September 16, 1588. But so extreme were the views adopted by the League at this moment that this proved impossible. Accordingly the King turned to the last expedient of the coward, and ordered the assassination of Henry of Guise in his royal palace of Blois. The Cardinal of Guise, the brother of the Duke, was executed the next day, and the Cardinal of Bourbon was held a prisoner. 'Now at last I am King,' said Henry."
Here, if we want to know and remember the actualities of the case, we must read Davila's noble account of the murder of the Duke on the King's staircase, while for a knowledge of the doings of the Estates we must turn to some such special summary as that lately given by M. Hanotaux in his biography of Richelieu-.
A laudable point in this volume is the physical objectivity of its portraits. Mindful of Carlyle's teaching in this con- nection, he says that the Emperor Maximilian was pale and snub-nosed, and had a grey beard : that the fatness, colouring, eyes, and tall frame of our Henry VIII. were " moments " or factors of the European situation : that Francis I. was also corpulent, but was dark and had thin legs ; that Charles V. was shorter than his rivals, of slouching gait, and with a Hapsburg lower lip, and bad teeth, which ruined his lofty forehead and aquiline nose. We see how the destinies of England and Europe were affected by the outer man of the Duke of Anjou, whose puny stature, big head, and nose pitted by smallpox largely contributed to the final rejection of his suit to our Elizabeth, who called him "her frog." While thus discharging his function as photographer, Mr. Johnson gives a fair quantum of reflection, and makes luminous remarks on the " dynamics " of his dramatis personx; for instance :—
"In this fact, then, and in his Imperial position, lies the best answer to Napoleon's taunt that Charles was a fool not to have adopted Protestantism and founded a strong monarchy on that basis. Whether such a policy on Charles's part would have succeeded may well be doubted. He would have found arrayed against him the majority of the Electors and Princes, who, what- ever their religious views, dreaded above all things a strong monarchical rule; and our doubt will be intensified if we remember the future policy of the Catholic League during the Thirty Years' War. But, however that may be, Napoleon did not appreciate Charles's character. As well might a leopard be bidden change its spots, as Charles be asked to lead a national German move- ment against all that Emperors, and Kings of Spain, held dear."
In the opinion of our author, Francis I. was at first favour- ably disposed towards the reform movement in his dominions. On this matter, however, there is a controversy as old as the days of Davila. According to Brantinne, the King thought that the new theology tended to subvert the human, as well as the divine, sovereignty, and seeing in " heresy " and " rebellion " different words for the same thing, was ready, early in his reign, to take the road which led to the massacre of the Vaudois and the Chambre Ardente. M. Hanotaux, again, calls the young ruler's tolerant temper a fiction of the Protestant historians, who have desired to shift from the Kings to the Guises the responsibility for the bloody Wars of Religion. We should say that the model " Oppor- tunist " was Henri IV., whose cynical "Paris vant bien sine messe," as well as his Grallican Constitution, like the peasant's ideal "fowl in the Sunday's pot," our author drops. But he rightly remarks that the vaunted Edict of Nantes was only a temporary compromise which, as appeared on Richelieu's accession to office, left the Huguenots to the mercies of Louis XIV.: a verdict nearly equivalent to that of M.
Hanotaux, who contends that under the religions peace of the "bon Henri" both the litigant parties abandoned to the Crown all that was essential in their respective pretensions (but here the Minister for Foreign Affairs collides with Guizot).
For many of his secondary figures Mr. Johnson cannot, in the nature of things, find sufficient room on his canvas. If we want to visualise Cmsar Borgia and his sister Lucrezia, we must study Giulio Romano's mysterious portrait of Cmsar, and glance at old Burchard's Diary, and then descending to Gregorovins and M. Yriarte, revive, if we can, reminiscences of the opera stage of a past epoch. As to the "unmention- able crimes" for which Luorezia has been arraigned, we say with this historian, "Non liquet ; " her presence at a certain
supper (vide Burchard) given in the Vatican by her father, Pope Alexander VI., and the lock of hair sent to the poet Bembo, do not substantiate the charges of the indictment, which, as " Periods " are not published pueris virginibusque, Mr. Johnson might have specified without giving offence. No wonder the author of the Principe held up Cmsar Borgia as "pattern in all but his ill-fortune" "to him who would attempt to found an united kingdom of Italy." He was Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi in one, with, moreover, a slice of Cavour ; for after his annexation of the territories of the Romagna, previously under the nominal suzerainty of the Pope, the country appears to have been well governed. Regarding Czesar's conquests, we agree that "it may be questioned whether the independence of those petty princi- palities was worth preserving, their history, except in the case of trrbino, being one tangled tale of faction, murder, and intrigue." For some of the more obscure dominions this language may pass, but it does not snit the Italian despots as a body. Ludovico Sforza was the efficient cause of Lionardo; Mantua was the nursing mother of Mantegna and Giulio Romagna ; but for Ferrara there had been neither Axiosto nor Tam; the Lord of Mirandola was the virtual founder of the Aldine Press ; and so on. Even the Condottiere Colleoni contributed, after his manner, to the movement of the Renaissance; he was sculptor and architect without knowing it,—witness his matchless equestrian statue by Verrochio, and the chapel where he lies buried in Bergamo. As regards those humanists, one thing at least is certain. If London were subjected for a season to the rule of a Gonzaga or a d'Este, the " sheds " of South Kensington would be replaced by a handsome museum, while the dirt, litters, yells, art-placards, and other nuisances:which befoul our capital would vanish quickly, and for its government men would forthwith be found as capable and energetic as the municipal administrators of Paris and Berlin.
We have noted the limitations imposed on the author by his restricted room. Account must also be taken of the gaps imposed by his programme, which does not embrace the annals of the cinguecento as a whole, but restricts him to the struggle for supremacy between the Great Powers of Western Europe. The affairs of England, and of certain other countries, are thus excluded from his province, except when they affect the course of Continental diplomacy and war. At times he deviates from his scheme,—e.g., when the reforming friar Savonarola gets a carefully composed section to him- self. A Pontiff said : "The thing I shall be most anxious to know when I get into heaven is whether Savonarola was a righteous man or no." The politics and disobedience of the Dominican could not fail to be a conundrum to a Pope. They offer no crux to us, for whom doubts of this reformer's honesty cannot exist.
Epitomes ought to be provided with a complete apparatus of pedigrees, dynastic lists, chapter and page headings, besides a catena of the leading authorities of the subject. In this department Mr. Johnson might condescend to follow the example set by Gibbon and Gardiner. His headings are quite inadequate : we only get two stunted genealogical trees, references being as good as excluded, except in the case of the long appendixes on the Constitutions of France, Florence, and Venice, which might have been spared to make room for more urgent topics.
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