CARMAGNOLA, A SOLDIER OF

FORTUNE.

THERE is an observation which is continually forced upon the student of Italian history. That country has experienced an almost insurmountable difficulty in achieving union. The fact that the difficulty is being now overcome only emphasizes the length and labour of the process. The history of Italy is the history of highly organized but conflicting particles. The episodes of her development depend upon the mutual destruction of these particles, no one of which possessed sufficient power to retain its own vitality while absorbing that of its neighbour. We may take this incapacity for unification as a sign that the major force of the Italian nature has been intellectual rather than practical; that Italy's grasp of understanding was complete, swift, and sure upon the centre of each situation; as the note of a character intellectually occupied by the problem of movement; of a temper interested in the formation of many types rather than in the selection of one; of a life always at the red heat of revolution, burning continually in the fires of destruction and re-creation. Her acumen perceived the antithesis too immediately upon the thesis to allow of any pause. This speed of vision con

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tributed to rescue the country from thorough conquest by any foreigner. The invader was dazzled, confused, and repulsed by the rapid changes. While he had just begun to recognize a direction, Italy, the land he supposed himself to be subduing and stamping, had, as it were, altered its identity—was no longer the same Italy; had measured all that the conqueror could do; had reached the furthest point of its helix, and had already commenced the backward sweep. But, though this quality helped to baffle those who attempted to master the country, it exposed her, inside her own. borders, to unrest, to violent change, to warfare among her vital self-asserting members, to torture from her own too active self. She became a land of contradictions; refusing to dwell on any one moment because she saw that it was only a moment. Each statement instantly met its contradiction, based upon that point of falsity which is absolutely inseparable from all human exposition of truth. The very power that enabled the nation to posit the obverse compelled it to a consciousness of the reverse. It was condemned to a perpetual demonstration of instability, as the result of its too ardent desire to find the absolute stability. The dynamics of balance were always potent enough to destroy the statics. Therefore the people who had dogmatized faith for the whole of Europe were themselves deeply sceptical. Those who had formulated law presented a chaos of lawlessness. The Italian epic is no sooner created than it offers its own body as the food for parody and satire. Conviction and calm belief were impossible for Italy. She could formulate what the northern nations accepted with earnestness—

law, art, religion, the idea of freedom; but the creator could not receive its own creation as an article of creed. Seldom before had a people devoted its whole energies, in every department of life, to the illustration of the Heraclitean doctrine that all is in flux.

Among the many particular curses entailed upon Italy by her fatal inability to unite, few were more widely or more bitterly felt than the curse of mercenary troops and wandering armies.* Philosophers and historians, Machiavelli and Villani, are agreed in lamentations over the decline of city militias and the supremacy of hired arms. These wandering bands were in their origin the children of disunion, and to the end they retained the marks of their parentage, They had their birth in that necessity which compelled the despots to use foreign troops in their various wars, either against their brother lords, or against their native town whose tyranny they were usurping. It was imperative that a tyrant's soldiers should be men of no party; purely fighting men, and nothing more; unfettered by any ties of politics or blood. Therefore the Signori called to their service Bretons, Gascons, English, Hungarians, and Germans, Their armies were composed of men and officers who spoke no Italian and whose sole glance was directed to the purse-strings of their employers. But these mercenary warriors, bound together by a common interest which was antagonistic to that of their employers, were not slow to perceive that, in order to make their own position entirely secure, they must choose their leader from among themselves; that he

See "Archivio Storico Italiano," vol. xv.

must be a man whose sympathies and aims were identical with their own; that their head must be structurally and vitally a portion of their organism. In obedience to this instinct, the mercenary army which Mastino della Scala was forced to disband in 1338, when it found itself without a master, elected Werner, duke of Wislingen, as its captain; and the Grand Company, the first fully developed company of mercenaries, was let loose on Italy.

Under Duke Werner the Grand Company learned self-discipline from the necessities of their case. Beyond the circle of their camp the world was all their enemy. But it was a world that had neither unity nor force enough to crush them. So long as the outermost line of their entrenchments remained unbroken, they were as united, as potent, as an undissipated poison germ floating in the blood of the nation. On every hand they were secure. If war failed them, the country lay open for them to pillage. The burghers were wealthy and timorous, the peasants unarmed. The soldier had only to put out his hand and take the harvests of the one and the gold of the other. In fact, the mercenaries discovered how to rifle their masters; and learned, moreover, that they could do so with impunity. After Duke Werner's death and the dispersion of the Grand Company, two other leaders, Fra Moriale, a Provençal, and Count Lando, a German, continued and developed the traditions of the foreign mercenaries. Fra Moriale especially was a born organizer. He attracted to his standard all the evil humours of Italy, the bankrupts in fortune or in fame. The nucleus of his band was

foreign, it is true; but many of his soldiers and most of his camp followers were the ruined outcasts of Italian society. This is a fact of signal importance, for it bore directly on the development of the first company of native as distinguished from foreign mercenaries. Moriale's work was a work of consolidation. His company was governed by one fundamental maxim-absolute liberty outside the camp, rigid discipline and justice within. The whole band was drawn closer together, and taught to look upon the camp as their city and their home. Through his action the mercenary army became self-sustaining, therefore more formidable and longer-lived. Moriale's work had been too thoroughly accomplished to be broken up at his death. The mercenaries elected as their new captain Count Lando, and their life of rapine and of plunder went on as before. They moved freely from territory to territory, sweeping the harvests from the fields, exacting what sums they chose from the prince or the republic whose lands they occupied, wearing the country barer and barer by their depredations. The burden became intolerable, the military occupation showed no signs of coming to an end, and Italy at length prepared to make an effort to suppress the mischief which was eating its way into her very vitals.

The pope, Florence, and Venice joined in a league against the adventurers. Though the curse of disunion, of jealousy and conflicting interests, broke up the league and rendered it inefficient, yet out of this effort came the purely native company of Alberico da Barbiano, the first great Italian condottiere. Blessed