308

FERDINAND'S DESIGNS ON NAVARRE.

[CHAP. VIL curb the turbulent democracy of Florence; and after the elevation of Cardinal John de' Medici to the Papal throne, he resigned his authority to his nephew Lorenzo, took up his residence at Rome, and was appointed Captain-General of the Church. Under Lorenzo the Florentine government became a perfect despotism.' On the other hand, Genoa recovered her liberty, if the various phases of sedition and anarchy which characterized that Republic deserve the sacred name. The exile Gian Fregoso, being sent thither by the allies, raised an insurrection, drove out the French, and was elected Doge (June 29th).

Both Ferdinand of Aragon and his son-in-law Henry VIII. were very dissatisfied with the Pope's alliance with Maximilian. Ferdinand's attention, however, was at this moment engrossed with his domestic policy, and he was endeavouring to add the Kingdom of Navarre to his dominions. After Eleanor's brief reign, to which we have already adverted, the blood-stained sceptre of Navarre passed to her grandson Francis Phoebus, 1479, who, however, lived only four years, and was succeeded by his sister Catharine. Ferdinand and Isabella endeavoured to effect a marriage between Catharine and their own heir; but this scheme was frustrated by Magdalen, Catharine's mother, a sister of Louis XI. of France, who brought about a match between her daughter and John d'Albret, a Gascon nobleman, who had large possessions on the border of Navarre (1485). Nevertheless the Spanish Sovereigns supported Catharine and her husband against her uncle John of Foix, Viscount of Narbonne, who pretended to the Navarrese Crown on the ground that it was limited to male heirs: and after John's death the alliance with Spain was drawn stil closer by the avowed purpose of Louis XII. to support his nephew, Gaston of Foix, in the claims of his father. After that young hero's fall at Ravenna, his pretensions to the throne of Navarre devolved to his sister, Germaine of Foix, the second wife of King Ferdinand; an event which entirely altered the relations between the Courts of Castile and Navarre.2 Ferdinand had now an interest in supporting the claims of the house of Foix-Narbonne ; and Catharine, who distrusted him, despatched in May, 1512, plenipotentiaries to the French Court to negotiate a treaty of alliance. John d'Albret, Catharine's husband, was a careless, easy Prince, who hated show and ceremony; he heard every day

1 "Hora non sì serva più ordine; quel ch' el vol (Lorenzin) è fatto."-Relazione di S. Marin Zorzi, ap. Ranke, Popes, vol. iii. App. p. 259. (Mrs. Austin's transl.)

2 See Martin, Hist. de France, t. vii. p. 411. This circumstance is totally overlooked by Prescott.

CHAP. VII.]

HIS FRAUD ON THE ENGLISH.

309

two or three Masses, dined with any body who would invite him, attended every village festival, and danced in public with the wives and daughters of his peasantry and citizens. In vain Louis XII. advised him to be on his guard against Ferdinand; John continued his easy course of life, while the storm preparing for him was ready to burst over his devoted head.

We

We have already adverted to the treaty between Ferdinand of Aragon and his son-in-law, Henry VIII., for the avowed purpose of invading Guienne.' Henry communicated that project to his Parliament in February, 1512; and he represented that his views in creating this diversion were also to oblige Louis to dissolve the Council of Pisa, and to restore Bologna to the Holy See. The English Parliament is said to have been seduced by a timely present from the Pope. A vessel laden with Greek wines and southern fruits displayed, for the first time, the Pontifical standard in the Thames, and the English senators, corrupted by the distribution of these delicacies, are represented as voting, in consequence, liberal supplies for an object so foreign to their interests! may with more probability ascribe these grants to the favour which a war with France still found in the minds of the English people. But from this purpose the English forces were diverted by the duplicity of the wily Ferdinand. Having sent his own vessels to convey the English army, near 10,000 strong, for a pretended expedition against Bayonne, Ferdinand caused it to be landed at Pasages, in Guipuzcoa, June 8th; and he then represented to the Marquis of Dorset, the English commander, that it would first of all be necessary to occupy the Kingdom of Navarre, as the inclinations of its Sovereigns could not be trusted. King John, indeed, soon afterwards concluded, at Blois (July 17th), a treaty with Louis XII., one stipulation of which was that neither Power should allow the enemies of the other to pass through its dominions; and the King of Navarre further pledged himself to declare war against the English assembled in Guipuzcoa. Dorset was not slow to perceive the real drift of Ferdinand's policy, the nature of his relations with Navarre, and the reasons why he had carried the English to Spain and dissuaded them from making a direct attack upon France; and he consequently declined to exceed his instructions by entering upon a war with the Navarrese. The mere presence of the English army, however, assisted the designs of the Catholic King, by overawing his opponents. Ferdinand, who was aided by the Navarrese faction of the Beaumonts, 2 Above, p. 298.

310

FERDINAND OBTAINS NAVARRE.

[CHAP. VII. to which his general, the Duke of Alva' belonged, ordered his army to invade Navarre. The pretexts which he alleged for this act were, that Navarrese Sovereigns had refused his demands that they should accede to the Holy League, grant him free passage through their dominions, and guarantee their neutrality by delivering to him six of their principal fortresses. Another ground adduced breathed all the hypocrisy of Ferdinand. In joining Louis the Navarrese Sovereigns had recognized the Council of Pisa, and were therefore comprised in the excommunication fulminated against its adherents, which involved the deprivation of their dominions! In fact, Ferdinand, in letters written during this period, attributes his unjust and ambitious aggression to a desire of extirpating" the accursed schism," and saw in the rapid success which attended his arms the miraculous interposition of Providence. King John retired before the Spaniards to Lumbier, and, after in vain invoking the help of the French, took refuge with his family in the French Kingdom; while Alva, who found but small resistance, subdued nearly the whole of Upper Navarre in less than a fortnight. He even penetrated into Lower Navarre, but, not meeting with the support which he expected from the English, was obliged to retire before the Duke of Longueville and the French troops, the veterans of Italy under La Palisse. Alva threw himself into Pamplona, which he succeeded in defending. The Marquis of Dorset, who loudly complained, and not without reason, that his master had been duped, re-embarked his forces in October, and returned to England without having had an opportunity to strike a single blow. Ferdinand affected to assume that he was the injured party in this transaction, "which," he observes in one of his letters, "touches me most deeply, for the stain it leaves upon the honour of the most serene King, my son-in-law, and the glory of the English nation, so distinguished in times past for high and chivalrous enterprise." The policy of the Catholic King was, however, crowned with substantial success, as we shall here relate by anticipation. In the following year he effected at Orthez a year's truce with Louis XII. (April 1st, 1513), by which Louis sacrificed his ally, the King of Navarre, and afterwards, by renewing the truce, allowed Ferdinand permanently to settle himself in his new conquest. The States of Navarre had previously taken the oath of allegiance to Ferdinand as their

1 Grandfather of the Duke of Alva, notorious for his cruelties in the Netherlands.

2 Prescott, vol. iii. p. 334.

3 Prescott, ibid. p. 337, who, from his way of relating the story, seems to partake the opinion of his hero Ferdinand.

CHAP. VII.]

DEATH OF POPE JULIUS II.

311

King, and on the 15th of June, 1515, Navarre was incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile by the solemn act of the Cortes. The dominions of John d'Albret and Catharine were now reduced to the little territory of Béarn, but they still retained the royal title of Navarre.

Pope Julius II. was dead before Ferdinand consummated his treachery towards the Holy League by the truce of Orthez. Julius was still occupied with his favourite scheme of expelling the "Barbarians" from Italy, as well as with his plans for extending the domains of the Church, when he was attacked by a slow fever and dysentery, which after a few days proved mortal (February 21st, 1513). He was a Pontiff, observes Guicciardini, worthy of imperishable glory had he worn any other crown than the tiara; and certainly the idea of making the Papacy the instrument of Italian liberation was a grand one, however incompatible with the proper vocation of the Holy See. Julius must be regarded as the founder of the States of the Church, which in great part had been acquired by Cæsar Borgia to gratify his own selfish ambition. Macchiavelli has observed that, before the time of Julius, the most insignificant baron despised the Papal power, of which subsequently even the King of France stood in awe. Julius II. was economical, and even miserly, in his way of life, confining the expenses of his household to 1,500 ducats a month,1 so that, in spite of his constant wars, he left a considerable sum in his treasury. Yet, as a ruler, all his ideas were on a gigantic scale. He resumed the building of St. Peter's, in which, and other architectural designs, he found in Michael Angelo Buonarotti a genius of kindred vastness to assist him. One of his last acts was to deprive Louis XII. of the title of "Most Christian," and to transfer it to Henry VIII. by a decree of the Lateran Council; and at the same time he issued a bull laying France, with exception of Brittany, under an Interdict.2

1 Relazione di Domenego Trivixian, ap. Ranke, Popes, vol. iii. App. p. 257.

2 Raynaldus, Ann. Eccl. 1512, t. xi. p. 638. Cf. Guicciardini, lib. xi.

312

MARITIME DISCOVERIES.-THE COMPASS.

[CHAP. VIII.

ΤΗ

CHAPTER VIII.

HE period which we have been hitherto contemplating was marked by the commencement of ocean navigation, which, by the discoveries it effected, had a wonderful effect on the commerce of modern Europe, and on the respective power and resources of its several States. It therefore becomes necessary to give some account of these discoveries, which could not well have been presented, in a connected form, in the preceding chapters.

A knowledge of the properties of the magnet was a necessary antecedent of distant ocean voyages and the discovery of unknown lands. Like gunpowder, however, the magnetic needle was long known before it was applied to its present use. The invention of the compass has been attributed to Flavio Gioja, a native of Amalfi, who flourished about the beginning of the fourteenth century; but though Dr. Robertson laments that Gioja has been defrauded of his just fame,' it is certain that the compass was known nearly two centuries before his time. It is minutely described in a Provençal poem by Guiot of Provins, supposed to have been written towards the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century. The age of Guiot may indeed be disputed; yet that the compass was known at least in the first half of the thirteenth century, appears from the writings of Cardinal Vitry (Jacobus de Vitriaco), Bishop of Acre, in Syria, who died in 1244. Vitry, indeed, in his "History of the East," confounds the magnet with the adamant or diamond, as some of our own writers have also done; yet he describes the polarity of the magnetic needle, and intimates its indispensable necessity to navigation. In 1263 the magnetic needle, fitted in a box, was in common use among the Norwegians. A letter written by Pietro Peregrini in 1269, and preserved among the manuscripts in the University of Leyden, contains a scientific account of the properties of the magnetic needle, and even of the construction of the

3

1 Hist. of America, book i.

Koch, Révol. de l'Europe, t. i. p. 246. 3 The passage of Vitry is in Tiraboschi,

Storia della Letteratura Italiana, t. iv. lib. ii. c. ii. s. 30.