MONARCHISM IN ITALY

I1n Italy, as already noticed, we behold the same spectacle as in Germany--the attainment of an independent position by isolated centres of power. In that country, warfare in the hands of the condottieri became a regular business. The towns were obliged to attend to their trading concerns, and therefore employed mercenary troops, whose leaders often became feudal lords; Francis Sforza even made himself duke of Milan. In Florence, the Medici, a family of merchants, rose to power. On the other hand, the larger cities of Italy reduced under their sway several smaller ones and many feudal chiefs. A papal territory was likewise formed. There, also, a very large number of feudal lords had made themselves independent; by degrees they all became subject to the one sovereignty of the pope.

2How thoroughly equitable in the view of social morality such a subjugation was, is evident from Machiavelli’s celebrated work _The Prince_. This book has often been thrown aside in disgust, as replete with the maxims of the most revolting tyranny; but nothing worse can be urged against it than that the writer, having the profound consciousness of the necessity for the formation of a state, has here exhibited the principles on which alone states could be founded in the circumstances of the times. The chiefs who asserted an isolated independence, and the power they arrogated, must be entirely subdued; and though we cannot reconcile with our idea of freedom the means which he proposes as the only efficient ones, and regards as perfectly justifiable--inasmuch as they involve the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception, assassination, and so forth--we must nevertheless confess that the feudal nobility, whose power was to be subdued, were assailable in no other way, since an indomitable contempt for principle and an utter depravity of morals were thoroughly engrained in them.