Lombardy had lapsed from Spanish to Austrian
despotism; the Republic of Venice still retained a feeble hold upon
her wide territories of the main-land, and had little trouble in
drugging any intellectual aspiration among her subjects with the
sensual pleasures of her capital. Tuscany was quiet under the
Lorrainese dukes who had succeeded the Medici; the little states of
Modena and Parma enjoyed each its little court and its little Bourbon
prince, apparently without a dream of liberty; the Holy Father ruled
over Bologna, Ferrara, Ancona, and all the great cities and towns of
the Romagna; and Naples was equally divided between the Bourbons and
the bandits. There seemed no reason, for anything that priests or
princes of that day could foresee, why this state of things should not
continue indefinitely; and it would be a long story to say just why it
did not continue. What every one knows is that the French revolution
took place, that armies of French democrats overran all these languid
lordships and drowsy despotisms, and awakened their subjects, more or
less willingly or unwillingly, to a sense of the rights of man, as
Frenchmen understood them, and to the approach of the nineteenth
century. The whole of Italy fell, directly or indirectly, under French
sway; the Piedmontese and Neapolitan kings were driven away, as were
the smaller princes of the other states; the Republic of Venice ceased
to be, and the Pope became very much less a prince, if not more a
priest, than he had been for a great many ages.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25