Still it must be borne in mind that the new German Empire is in no sense a continuation or restoration of the Holy Roman Empire which fell sixty-four years before its creation. But it may be fairly looked on as a restoration of the old German Kingdom, the Kingdom of the East-Franks. Still, as far as geography is concerned, no change can be stranger than the change in the boundaries of Germany between the ninth century and the nineteenth. The new Empire, cut short to the north-west, south-west, and south-east, has grown somewhat to the north, and it has grown prodigiously to the north-east. ♦Name of Prussia.♦ Its ruling state, a state which contains such illustrious cities as Köln, Trier, and Frankfurt, is content to call itself after an extinct heathen people whose name had most likely never reached the ears of Charles the Great. ♦Position of Berlin.♦ The capital of the new Empire, placed far away from any of the antient seats of German kingship, stands in what in his day, and long after, was a Slavonic land. ♦Formation of the new Empire.♦ Germany, with its chief state bearing the name of Prussia, with the place of its national assemblies transferred from Frankfurt to Berlin, presents one of the strangest changes that historical geography can show us. But, strange as is the geographical change, it has come about gradually, by the natural working of historical causes. The Slavonic and Prussian lands have been Germanized, while the western parts of the old kingdom which have fallen away have mostly lost their German character. Those German lands which have formed the kernel of the Swiss Confederation have risen to a higher political state than that of any kingdom or Empire. But the German lands which still remain so strangely united to the lands of the Magyar and the southern Slave await, at however distant a time, their natural and inevitable reunion. So does a Danish population in the extreme north await, with less hope, its no less natural separation from the German body. Posen, still mainly Slavonic, remains unnaturally united to a Teutonic body, but it is not likely to gain by a transfer to any other ruler. The reconstruction of the German realm in its present shape, a shape so novel to the eye, but preserving so much of ancient life and ancient history, has been the greatest historical and geographical change of our times.

§ 3. The Kingdom of Italy.

We parted from the Italian kingdom at the moment of its separation from the Eastern and Western kingdoms of the Franks. Its history, as a kingdom, consists in little more than its reunion with the East-Frankish crown, and in the way in which the royal power gradually died out within its limits. There is but little to say as to any changes of frontier of the kingdom as such. As long as Germany, Italy, and Burgundy acknowledged a single king, any shiftings of the frontiers of his three kingdoms were of secondary importance. When the power of the Emperors in Italy had died out, the land became a system of independent commonwealths and principalities, which had hardly that degree of unity which could enable us to say that a certain territory was added to Italy or taken from it. Even if a certain territory passed from an Italian to a German or Burgundian lord, the change was rather a change in the frontier of this or that Italian state than in the frontier of Italy itself. ♦Changes on the Alpine frontier.♦ The shiftings of frontier along the whole Alpine border have been considerable; but it is only in our own day that we can say that Italy as such has become capable of extending or lessening her borders. ♦Case of Verona.♦ When, in 1866, Venice and Verona were added to the Italian kingdom, that was a distinct change in the frontier of Italy. We can hardly give that name to endless earlier changes on the same marchland. ♦Case of Trieste, 1380.♦ In the fourteenth century, for instance, the town of Trieste, disputed between the patriarchs of Aquileia and the commonwealth of Venice, was acknowledged as an independent state, and it presently gave up its independence by commendation to the Duke of Austria. It is not likely that the question entered into any man’s mind whether the frontiers of the German and Italian kingdoms were affected by such a change. Whether as a free city or as an Austrian lordship, Trieste remained under the superiority, formally undoubted but practically nominal, of the common sovereign of Germany and Italy, the Roman Emperor or King. Whether the nominal allegiance of the city was due to him in his German or in his Italian character most likely no one stopped to think. ♦No eastern or western frontiers.♦ East and west, the Italian kingdom had no frontiers; the only question which could arise was as to the relation of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia to the kingdom itself or to any of the states which arose within it. To the south lay the independent Lombard duchies, and the possessions which still remained to the Eastern Empire. ♦The Norman kingdom of Sicily not an Imperial fief.♦ These changed in time into the Norman duchy of Apulia and kingdom of Sicily; but that kingdom, held as it was as a fief of the see of Rome, was never incorporated with the Italian kingdom of the Emperors, nor did its kings ever become the men of the Emperor. Particular Emperors in the thirteenth century, in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth, were also kings of one or both the Sicilian kingdoms; but at no time before our own day were Sicily and southern Italy ever incorporated with a Kingdom of Italy. When we remember that it was to the southern part of the peninsula that the name of Italy was first given, we see here a curiosity of nomenclature as remarkable as the shiftings of meaning in the names of Saxony and Burgundy.

Naples and Sicily then, the Two Sicilies of later political nomenclature, lie outside our present subject. ♦Venice no part of Italy.♦ So does the commonwealth of Venice, except so far as Venice afterwards won a large subject territory on the Italian mainland. ♦Her Italian dominions.♦ Both these states have to do with Italy as a geographical expression, but neither the Venetian commonwealth nor the Sicilian kingdom is Italian within the meaning of the present section. They formed no part of the Carolingian dominion. ♦Venice and the Sicilies part of the Eastern Empire.♦ They were parts of the Eastern Empire, not of the Western. They remained attached to the New Rome after an Imperial throne had again been set up in the Old. They gradually fell away from their allegiance to the Eastern Empire, but they were never incorporated with the Empire of the West. I shall deal with them here only in their relations to the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, and treat of their special history elsewhere among the states which arose out of the break-up of the Eastern Empire. Again, on the north-western march of Italy a power gradually arose, partly Italian, but for a long time mainly Burgundian, which has in the end, by a strange fate, grown into a new Italian Kingdom. ♦The House of Savoy.♦ This is the House of Savoy. The growth of the dominions of that house, the process by which it gradually lost territory in Burgundy and gained it in Italy, form another distinct subject. ♦Its special history.♦ It will be dealt with here only in its relations to the kingdom of Italy.

The Italian Kingdom of the Karlings, the kingdom which was reunited to Germany under Otto the Great, was, as has been already said, a continuation of the old Lombard kingdom. It consisted of that kingdom, enlarged by the Italian lands which fell off from the Eastern Empire in the eighth century; that is by the Exarchate and the adjoining Pentapolis, and the immediate territory of Rome itself. ♦Austria and Neustria.♦ The Lombard kingdom, in the strictest sense, took in the two provinces north of the Po, in which we again find, as in other lands, an Austria to the east and a Neustria to the west. ♦Æmilia.
Tuscany.♦ It took in Æmilia south of the Po—the district of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Modena—also Tuscany, a name, which, as it no longer reaches to the Tiber, answers pretty nearly to its modern use. ♦Romagna.♦ The Tuscan name has lived on; the Exarchate and Pentapolis, as having been the chief seat of the later Imperial power in Italy, got the name of Romania, Romandiola, or Romagna. This name also lives on; but the Lombard Neustria and Austria soon vanish from the map. Their disappearance was perhaps lucky, as one knows not what arguments might otherwise have been built on the presence of an Austria south of the Alps. ♦Lombardy proper.
Venetia.♦ The Lombard Neustria together with Æmilia got the special name of Lombardy, while the Lombard Austria, after various shiftings of names taken from the principalities which rose and fell within it, came back in the end to its oldest name, that of Venetia. ♦Mark of Ivrea.
Duchy of Friuli.♦ In the north-west corner Iporedia or Ivrea appears as a distinct march; but the Venetian march at the other corner, known at this stage as the duchy of Friuli, is of more importance. It takes in the county of Trent, the special march of Friuli, and the march of Istria. ♦Fluctuation of boundary at the north-west corner.♦ This is the corner in which the German and Italian frontier has so often fluctuated. We have seen that, after the union of the Italian and German crowns, even Verona itself was sometimes counted as German ground.

Under the German kings Italy came under the same influences as the other two Imperial kingdoms. Principalities grew up; free cities grew up; but, while in Germany the principalities were the rule and the cities the exception, in Italy it was the other way. ♦Growth of a system of commonwealths in Italy.♦ The land gradually became a system of practically independent commonwealths. Feudal princes, ecclesiastical or temporal, flourished only in the north-western and north-eastern corners of the kingdom. But, if the range of the German cities was less wide, and their career less brilliant, than those of Italy, their freedom was more lasting. ♦Tyrants grow into princes.♦ The Italian cities gradually fell under tyrants, and the tyrants gradually grew into acknowledged princes. ♦Growth of the dominion of the Popes.♦ The Bishops of Rome too, by a series of claims dexterously pressed at various times, contrived to form the greatest of ecclesiastical principalities, one which stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. ♦Four stages of Italian history.♦ The geographical history of Italy consists of four stages. In the first the kingdom fell asunder into principalities. In the second the principalities vanished before the growth of the free cities. In the third the cities were again massed into principalities, till in the fourth the principalities were at last merged in a kingdom of united Italy.

Under the Saxon and Frankish Emperors the old Lombard names of Neustria and Æmilia pass away. Several small marches lie along the Burgundian frontier, as Savona on the coast, Ivrea among the mountains to the north-west, between them Montferrat, Vasto, and Susa, whose princes, as special guardians of the passage between the two kingdoms, bore the title of Marquess in Italy. It was in this region that the feudal princes were strongest, and that the system of free cities had the smallest developement. ♦The Marquesses of Montferrat, 938-1533.♦ The Savoyard power was already beginning to grow up in the extreme north-west corner; but at this time a greater part in strictly Italian history is played by the Marquesses of Montferrat, who for many centuries kept their position as important feudal princes quite apart from the lords of the cities. In the north-east corner of the kingdom the place of the old Austria is taken by the border principalities where the Italian, the German, and the Slave all come in contact, and which fluctuated more than once between the Italian and the German crowns. We have here the great march of Verona, beyond it that of Friuli, Trent, the marchland of the marchland, between Verona and Bavaria, and the Istrian peninsula on the Slavonic side of the Hadriatic. Between the border districts on either side lay the central land, Lombardy, in the narrower sense, the chosen home of the free cities. ♦Growth of the Lombard cities.♦ Here, by the middle of the twelfth century, every city had practically become a separate commonwealth, owning only the most nominal superiority in the Emperor. Guelfic cities withstood the Emperor; Ghibelin cities welcomed him; but both were practically independent commonwealths. ♦Wars of the Swabian Emperors.♦ Hence came those long wars between the Swabian Emperors and the Italian cities which form the chief feature of Italian history in the second half of the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth. ♦Milan and Pavia.
The other Lombard cities.
Alessandria, 1168.♦ Round the younger and the elder capital, round Guelfic Milan and Ghibelin Pavia, gathered a crowd of famous names, Como, Bergamo, and Brescia, Lodi, Crema, and Cremona, Tortona, Piacenza, and Parma, and Alessandria, the trophy of republican and papal victory over Imperial power. ♦Verona and Padua.♦ The Veronese march was less rich in cities of the same historical importance; but both Verona itself and Padua played a great part, as the seats first of commonwealths, then of tyrants. Further north and east, the civic element was weaker again. ♦Trent.
Aquileia.♦ Trent gradually parted off from Italy to become an ecclesiastical principality of the German kingdom; and the Patriarchs of Aquileia grew into powerful princes at the north-eastern corner of the Hadriatic. ♦The lords of Romano and Este.♦ Within the Veronese or Trevisan march itself, the lords of Romano and the more important marquesses of Este also demand notice. Romano gave the Trevisan march its famous tyrant Eccelino in the days of Frederick the Second, and the Marquesses of Este, kinsmen of the great Saxon dukes, came in time to rank among the chief Italian princes. ♦The north-eastern march falls off from Italy.♦ The extreme north-eastern march so completely fell off from Italy that it will be better treated in tracing the growth of the powers of Venice and Austria.

In the more central lands of the kingdom, in the old exarchate, now known as Romagna, in the march variously called by the names of Camerino, Fermo, or Ancona, and above all in the march of Tuscany on the southern sea, the same developement of city life also took place, but somewhat later. North of the Apennines, along the Hadriatic coast, arose a crowd of small commonwealths which gradually passed into small tyrannies. ♦The Tuscan commonwealths.♦ Tuscany, on the other hand, was parted off into a few commonwealths of illustrious name. For a while one of these ran a course which stood rather apart from the common run of Italian history. ♦Pisa;
her wars with the Saracens 1005-1115.♦ Pisa, then one of the great maritime and commercial states of Europe, became, early in the eleventh century, a power which forestalled the crusades and won back lands from the Saracen. Though she was in every sense a city of the Italian kingdom, Pisa at this time held a position not unlike that which was afterwards held by Venice. Like her, she was a power which colonized and conquered beyond the seas, but which came only gradually to take a share in the main course of Italian affairs. ♦Genoa.♦ Beyond the borders of Tuscany, the same position was held by Genoa on the Ligurian gulf. ♦Occupation of the island of Sardinia by Pisa, and of Corsica by Genoa.♦ Pisa won Sardinia from the Saracen; Genoa, after long disputes with Pisa, obtained a more lasting possession of Corsica. Returning to Tuscany, three great commonwealths here grew up, which gradually divided the land between them. ♦Lucca, Siena, Florence.♦ These were Lucca and Siena, and Florence, the last of Italian cities to rise to greatness, but the one which became in many ways the greatest among her fellows. ♦Perugia.♦ In the centre of Italy, within the bounds of old Etruria but not within those of modern Tuscany, Perugia, both as commonwealth and as tyranny, held a high place among Italian cities. ♦Rome.♦ Of Rome herself it is almost impossible to speak. She has much history, but she has little geography. Emperors were crowned there; Popes sometimes lived there; sometimes Rome appears once more as a single Latin city, waging war against Tusculum or some other of her earliest fellows. ♦Claims of the Popes.♦ The claims of her Bishops to independent temporal power, founded on a succession of real or pretended Imperial and royal grants, lay still in the background; but they were ready to grow into reality as occasion served.

The next stage of Italian political geography may be dated from the death of Frederick the Second, when all practical power of an Imperial kingdom in Italy may be said to have passed away. ♦Growth of tyrannies.♦ Presently begins the gradual change of the commonwealths into tyrannies, and the grouping together of many of them into larger states. We also see the beginning of more definite claims of temporal dominion on behalf of the Popes. ♦Dominion of Spain, 1555-1701.♦ In the course of the three hundred years between Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, these processes gradually changed the face of the Italian kingdom. It became in the end a collection of principalities, broken only by the survival of a few oligarchic commonwealths and by the anomalous dominion of Venice on the mainland. Between Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, we may look on the Empire as practically in abeyance in Italy. The coming of an Emperor always caused a great stir for the time, but it was only for the time. ♦Grant of Rudolf, 1278.♦ After the grant of Rudolf of Habsburg to the Popes, a distinction was drawn between Imperial and papal territory in Italy. ♦Imperial and papal fiefs.♦ While certain princes and commonwealths still acknowledged at least the nominal superiority of the Emperor, others were now held to stand in the same relation of vassalage to the Pope.

We must now trace out the growth of the chief states which were formed by these several processes. Beginning again in the north, it must be remembered that all this while the power of Savoy was advancing in those north-western lands in which the influences which mainly ruled this period had less force than elsewhere. Montferrat too kept its old character of a feudal principality, a state whose rulers had in various ways a singular connexion with the East. ♦Palaiologoi at Montferrat, 1306.♦ As Marquesses of Montferrat had claimed the crown of Jerusalem and had worn the crown of Thessalonica, so, as if to keep even the balance between East and West, in return a branch of the Imperial house of Palaiologos came to reign at Montferrat. To the east of these more ancient principalities, two great powers of quite different kinds grew up in the old Neustria and Austria. ♦Duchy of Milan. Venice.♦ These were the Duchy of Milan and the land power of Venice. Milan, like most other Italian cities, came under the influence of party leaders, who grew first into tyrants and then into acknowledged sovereigns. ♦The Visconti at Milan, 1310-1447.♦ These at Milan, after the shorter domination of the Della Torre, were the more abiding house of the Visconti. Their dominion, after various fluctuations and revolutions, was finally established when the coming of the Emperor Henry the Seventh generally strengthened the rule of the Lords of the cities throughout Italy.

At the end of the fourteenth century their informal lordship passed by a royal grant into an acknowledged duchy of the Empire. The dominion which they had gradually gained, and which was thus in a manner legalized, took in all the great cities of Lombardy, those especially which had formed the Lombard League against the Swabian Emperors. ♦County of Pavia.♦ Pavia indeed, the ancient rival of Milan, kept a kind of separate being, and was formed into a distinct county. ♦Extent of the duchy.♦ But the duchy granted by Wenceslaus to Gian-Galeazzo stretched far on both sides of the lake of Garda. Belluno at one end and Vercelli at the other formed part of it. It took in the mountain lands which afterwards passed to the two Alpine Confederations; it took in Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio south of the Po, and Verona and Vicenza in the old Austrian or Venetian land. Besides all this, Padua, Bologna, even Genoa and Pisa, passed at various times under the lordship of the Visconti. But this great power was not lasting. The Duchy of Milan, under various lords, native and foreign, lasted till the wars of the French Revolution; but, long before that time, it had been cut short on every side. ♦Decrease on the death of Gian Galeazzo, 1402.♦ The death of the first Duke was followed by a separation of the duchy of Milan and the county of Pavia between his sons, and the restored duchy never rose again to its former power. ♦The eastern cities won by Venice, 1406-1447.♦ The eastern parts, Padua, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, were gradually added to the dominion of Venice. By the middle of the fifteenth century, that republic had become the greatest power in northern Italy. ♦House of Sforza, 1450-1535.
Claims of the Kings of France, 1499-1525.♦ In the duchy of Milan the house of Sforza succeeded that of Visconti; but the opposing claims of the Kings of France were one chief cause of the long wars which laid Italy waste in the latter years of the fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth. The duchy was tossed to and fro between the Emperor, the French King, and its own dukes. Meanwhile the dominion which was thus struggled for was cut short at the two ends. ♦Cession to the Alpine Leagues, 1512-1513.♦ It was dismembered to the north in favour of the two Alpine Leagues, as will be hereafter shown more in detail. ♦The Popes obtain Parma and Piacenza, 1515.
Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, 1545.♦ South of the Po, the Popes obtained Parma and Piacenza, which were afterwards granted as papal fiefs to form a duchy for the house of Farnese. Thus the Duchy of Milan which became in the end a possession of Charles the Fifth, and afterwards of his Spanish and Austrian successors, was but a remnant of the great dominion of the first Duke. The duchy underwent still further dismemberments in later times.

With Venice we have here to deal in her somewhat unnatural position as an Italian land power. ♦War of the League of Cambray, 1508-1517.♦ This position she took on herself in the fifteenth century; in the sixteenth it led to the momentary overthrow and wonderful recovery of her dominion in the war of the League of Cambray. This land power of Venice stands quite distinct from the Venetian possessions east of the Hadriatic. ♦Istria.♦ With this last her possession of the coast of the Istrian peninsula must be reckoned, rather than with her Italian dominions. Between these lay Aquileia, Trieste, and the other lands in this quarter which gradually came under the power of Austria. ♦Extent of Venetian dominion.
Ravenna, 1441-1530.♦ The continuous Italian dominion of Venice took in Udine at one end and Bergamo at the other, besides Crema, and for a while Ravenna, as outlying possessions. Thus the Byzantine city which lay anchored off the shore of the Western Empire could for a season call the ancient seat of the Exarchate its own. ♦Two parts of the Venetian territory.♦ But even the continuous land territory of Venice lay in two portions. Brescia and Bergamo were almost cut off from Verona and the other possessions to the east by the Lake of Garda, the bishopric of Trent to the north, and the principality of Mantua to the south.

The mention of this last state leads us back again to the commonwealths which, like Milan, changed, first into tyrannies, and then into acknowledged principalities. It is impossible to mention all of them, and some of those which played for a while the most brilliant part in Italian history had no lasting effect on Italian geography. ♦Rule of the Scala at Verona, 1260-1387; of the Carrara at Padua, 1318-1405;♦ The rule of the house of Scala at Verona, the rule of the house of Carrara at Padua, left no lasting trace on the map. It was otherwise with the two states which bordered on the Venetian possessions to the south. ♦of the Gonzaga at Mantua, 1328-1708. Marquesses, 1433; Dukes, 1530.♦ The house of Gonzaga held sovereign power at Mantua, first as captains, then as marquesses, then as dukes, for nearly four hundred years. ♦House of Este.♦ Of greater fame was the power that grew up in the house of Este, the Italian branch of the house of Welf. Their position is one specially instructive, as illustrating the various tenures by which dominion was held. ♦The lords of Ferrara and Modena, 1264-1288.♦ The marquesses of Este, feudal lords of that small principality, became, after some of the usual fluctuations, permanent lords of the cities of Ferrara and Modena. About the same time they lost their original holding of Este, which passed to Padua, and with Padua to Venice. Thus the nominal marquess of Este and real lord of Ferrara was not uncommonly spoken of as Marquess of Ferrara. In the fifteenth century these princes rose to ducal rank; but by that time the new doctrine of the temporal dominion of the Popes had made great advances. Modena, no man doubted, was a city of the Empire; but Ferrara was now held to be under the supremacy of the Pope. The Marquess Borso had thus to seek his elevation to ducal rank from two separate lords. ♦Duchy of Modena, 1453.
Duchy of Ferrara, 1471.♦ He was created Duke of Modena and Reggio by the Emperor, and afterwards Duke of Ferrara by the Pope. This difference of holding, as we shall presently see, led to the destruction of the power of the house of Este. In the times in which we are now concerned, their dominions lay in two masses. To the west lay the duchy of Modena and Reggio; apart from it to the east lay the duchy of Ferrara. ♦Loss of Rovigo, 1484.♦ Not long after its creation, this last duchy was cut short by the surrender of the border-district of Rovigo to Venice.

Between the two great duchies of the house of Este lay Bologna, gradually changed from Romania in one sense into Romagna in another. Like most other Italian cities, the commonwealths of the Exarchate and the Pentapolis changed into tyrannies, and their petty princes were one by one overthrown by the advancing power of the Popes. ♦Bologna, Perugia, Rimini.♦ Every city had its dynasty; but it was only a few, like the houses of Bentevoglio at Bologna, of Baglioni at Perugia, and Malatesta at Rimini, that rose to any historical importance. One only combined historical importance with acknowledged princely rank. ♦The Duchy of Urbino, 1478-1631.♦ The house of Montefeltro, lords of Urbino, became acknowledged dukes by papal grants. From them the duchy passed to the house of La Rovere, and it flourished under five princes of the two dynasties. ♦Expansion of the papal dominions.♦ Gradually, by successive annexations, the papal dominions, before the middle of the sixteenth century, stretched from the Po to Tarracina. Ferrara and Urbino still remained distinct states, but states which were confessedly held as fiefs of the Holy See.

To the west, in Tuscany, the phænomena are somewhat different. The characteristic of this part of Italy was the grouping together of the smaller cities under the power of the larger. Nearly all the land came in the end under princely rule; but both acknowledged princely rule and the tyrannies out of which it sprang came into importance in Tuscany later than anywhere else. ♦Lucca under Castruccio Castracani, 1320-1338.♦ Lucca had in the fourteenth century a short time of greatness under her illustrious tyrant Castruccio; but, before and after his day, she plays, as a commonwealth, only a secondary part in Italy. Still she remained a commonwealth, though latterly an oligarchic one, through all changes down to the general crash of the French Revolution. ♦Pisa.♦ Pisa kept for a while her maritime greatness, and her rivalry with the Ligurian commonwealth of Genoa. ♦Genoa.♦ Genoa, less famous in the earliest times, proved a far more lasting power. ♦Her rule in Corsica.♦ She established her dominion over the coast on both sides of her, and kept her island of Corsica down to modern times. ♦Sardinia ceded to Aragon, 1428.
Pisa subject to Florence, 1416.♦ Physical causes caused the fall of the maritime power of Pisa; Sardinia passed from her to become a kingdom of the House of Aragon, and she herself passed under the dominion of Florence. ♦Greatness of Florence.♦ This last illustrious city, the greatest of Tuscan and even of Italian commonwealths, begins to stand forth as the foremost of republican states about the time when her forerunner Milan came under the rule of tyrants. She extended her dominion over Volterra, Arezzo, and many smaller places, till she became mistress of all northern Tuscany. ♦Siena.♦ To the south the commonwealth of Siena also formed a large dominion. ♦Rule of the Medici. 1434-1494. 1512-1527.♦ In Florence the rule of the Medici grew step by step into a hereditary tyranny; but it was an intermittent tyranny, one which was supported only by foreign force, and which was overturned whenever Florence had strength to act for herself. ♦Alexander, Duke of Florence, 1530.♦ It was only after her last overthrow by the combined powers of Pope and Cæsar that she became, under Alexander, the first duke of the house of Medici, an acknowledged principality. ♦Cosmo annexes Siena, 1557.
Elba, &c.♦ Cosmo the First, the second duke, annexed Siena, and all the territory of that commonwealth, except the lands known as Stati degli Presidi, that is the isle of Elba and some points on the coast. These became parts of the kingdom of Naples; that is, at that time, parts of the dominion of Spain. The state thus formed by Cosmo was one of the most considerable in Italy, taking in the whole of Tuscany except the territory of Lucca and the lands which became Spanish. ♦Cosmo Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1567.♦ Its ruler presently exchanged by papal authority the title of Duke of Florence for that of Grand Duke of Tuscany.

§ 4. The Later Geography of Italy.

Under Charles the Fifth it might have seemed that both the Roman Empire and the kingdom of Italy had come to life again. A prince who wore both crowns was practically master of Italy. But though the power of the Emperor was restored, the power of the Empire was not. In truth we may look on all notion of a kingdom of Italy in the elder sense as having passed away with the coronation of Charles himself. The thing had passed away long before; after the pageant at Bologna the name was not heard for more than two centuries and a half. ♦Italy a geographical expression.♦ Italy became truly a ‘geographical expression;’ the land consisted of a number of principalities and a few commonwealths, all nominally independent, some more or less practically so, but the more part of which were under foreign influence, and some of them were actually ruled by foreign princes. ♦Changes among the Italian states.♦ The states of Italy were united, divided, handed over from one ruler to another, according to the fluctuations of war and diplomacy, without any regard either to the will of the inhabitants or to the authority of any central power. A practically dominant power there was during the greater part of this period; but it was not the power of even a nominal King of Italy. For a long time that dominant power was held by the House of Austria in its two branches. The supremacy of Charles in Italy passed, not to his Imperial brother, but to his Spanish son. ♦Dominion of Spain, 1555-1701;♦ Then followed the long dominion of the Spanish branch of the Austrian house; then came the less thorough dominion of the German branch. ♦of Austria, 1713-1793.♦ This last was a dominion strictly of the House of Austria as such, not of the Empire or of either of the Imperial kingdoms. And now that the name of Italy means merely a certain surface on the map, we must take some notice, so far as they regard Italian history, at once of Savoy at one end and of the Sicilian kingdoms at the other. From this time both of them have a more direct bearing on Italian history.

By the time of the coronation of Charles the Fifth, or at least within the generation which could remember his coronation, the greater part of Italy had been massed into a few states, which, as compared with the earlier state of things, were of considerable size. ♦Monaco♦ A few smaller principalities and lordships still kept their place, of which one of the smallest, that of Monaco in the extreme south-west, has lived on to our own time. ♦San Marino♦ So has the small commonwealth of San Marino, surrounded, first by the dominions of the Popes and now by the modern kingdom. But such states as these were mere survivals. ♦Dominion of Venice on the mainland, 1406-1797.♦ In the north-east, Venice kept her power on the mainland untouched, from the recovery of her dominions after the league of Cambray down to her final fall. ♦She loses her outlying Italian possessions, 1530.♦ By the treaty of Bologna she lost Ravenna; she lost too the towns of Brindisi and Monopoli which she had gained during the wars of Naples; but her continuous dominion, both properly Venetian and Lombard, remained. ♦Duchy of Milan:
Spanish, 1540-1706;
Austrian, 1706-1796.♦ The duchy of Milan to the west of her was held in succession by the two branches of the House of Austria, first the Spanish and then the German. ♦Advance of Savoy towards Milan.♦ But the duchy, as an Austrian possession, was being constantly cut short towards the west by the growing power of Savoy. For a while the Milanese and Savoyard states were conterminous only during a small part of their frontier. ♦Montferrat.♦ The marquisate of Montferrat, as long as it remained a separate principality, lay between the southern parts of the two states. On the failure of the old line of marquesses, Montferrat was disputed between the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua. ♦United to Mantua 1536, but claimed by Savoy, 1613-1631.♦ Adjudged to Mantua, and raised into a duchy by Imperial authority, it was still claimed, and partly conquered by, Savoy. ♦Mantua forfeited to the Empire, and Montferrat joined to Savoy, 1708-1713.♦ At last, by one of the last exercises of Imperial authority in Italy, the duchy of Mantua itself was held to be forfeited to the Empire; that is, it became an Austrian possession. At the same time the Imperial authority confirmed Montferrat to Savoy. The Austrian dominions in Italy were thus extended to the south-east by the accession of the Mantuan territory; but the whole western frontier of the Milanese now lay open to Savoyard advance. ♦First dismemberment of Milan in favour of Savoy, 1713.♦ The same treaties which confirmed Montferrat to Savoy and Milan to Austria also dismembered Milan in favour of Savoy. A corner of the duchy to the south-west, Alessandria and the neighbouring districts, were now given to Savoy; the Peace of Vienna further cut off Novara to the north and Tortona to the south. ♦Further cessions, 1738.♦ The next peace, that of Aix-la-Chapelle, gave up all west of the Ticino, which river became a permanent frontier.

Among the other states, the duchy of Parma and Piacenza was, on the extinction of the house of Farnese, handed over to princes of the Spanish branch of the Bourbons. ♦Ferrara confiscated to the Popes, 1598.♦ Modena and Ferrara remained united, till Ferrara was annexed as an escheated fief to the dominions of its spiritual overlord. ♦1718.♦ But the house of Este still reigned over Modena with Reggio and Mirandola, while its dominions were extended to the sea by the addition of Massa and other small possessions between Lucca and Genoa. ♦1771-1803.♦ The duchy in the end passed by female succession to the House of Austria. ♦Corsica ceded to France, 1768.♦ Genoa and Lucca remained aristocratic commonwealths; but Genoa lost its island possession of Corsica, which passed to France. ♦Extinction of the Medici, 1737.
Francis of Lorraine Grand Duke of Tuscany.♦ The Grand Duchy of Tuscany remained in the house of Medici, till it was assigned to Duke Francis of Lorraine, afterwards the Emperor Francis the First, and after that it remained in the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. ♦Urbino annexed by the Popes, 1631.♦ The States of the Church, after the annexation of Ferrara, were in the next century further enlarged by the annexation of the duchy of Urbino.

Thus, except on the frontier of Piedmont and Milan, the whole time from Charles the Fifth to the French Revolution was, within the old kingdom of Italy, much less remarkable for changes in the geographical frontiers of the several states than for the way in which they are passed to and fro from one master to another. ♦Kingdom of the Two Sicilies♦ This is yet more remarkable, if we look to the southern part of the peninsula, and to the two great islands which in modern geography we have learned to look on as attached to Italy. ♦The Norman kingdom of Sicily.♦ The Norman kingdom which, by steps which will be told elsewhere, grew up to the south of the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, has hardly ever changed its boundaries, except by the various separations and unions of the insular and the continental kingdom. ♦Benevento.♦ Even the outlying papal possession of Benevento after each war went back to its ecclesiastical master. But the shiftings, divisions, and reunions of the Two Sicilies and of the island of Sardinia have been endless. ♦Charles of Anjou, 1265.♦ The Sicilian kingdom of the Norman and Swabian kings, containing both the island and the provinces on the mainland, passed unchanged to Charles of Anjou. ♦Revolt of the island of Sicily, 1282.
The two kingdoms.♦ The revolt of the island split the kingdom into two, one insular, one continental, each of which called itself the Kingdom of Sicily, though the continental realm was more commonly known as the Kingdom of Naples. The wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries caused endless changes of dynasty in the continental kingdom, but no changes of frontier. ♦Union of Aragon, Sardinia, and continental Sicily under Alfonso, 1442.♦ Under the famous Alfonso in the fifteenth century, Aragon, Sardinia, and the continental Sicily were three kingdoms under one sovereign, while the insular Sicily was ruled by another branch of the same house. ♦Aragonese kings of the island, 1296-1442. 1458-1701.♦ Then continental Sicily passed to an illegitimate branch of the House of Aragon, while Sardinia and insular Sicily were held by the legitimate branch. ♦Wars beginning with Charles the Eighth, 1494-1528.
Spanish, 1556-1701.♦ The French invasion under Charles the Eighth and the long wars that followed, the conquests, the restorations, the schemes of division, all ended in the union of both the Sicilian kingdoms, now known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, along with Sardinia, as part of the great Spanish monarchy. ♦1554-1555.♦ A momentary separation of the insular kingdom, in order to give the husband of Mary of England royal rank while his father yet reigned, is important only as the first formal use of the title of King of Naples. ♦Sardinia and Naples Austrian.
Duke of Savoy king of Sicily, 1713.♦ In the division of the Spanish monarchy, Sardinia and Naples fell to the lot of the Austrian House, while Sicily was given to the Duke of Savoy, who thus gained substantial kingly rank. ♦Exchange of Sicily and Sardinia, 1718.♦ Presently the kings of the two island kingdoms made an exchange; Sardinia passed to Savoy, and the Emperor Charles the Sixth ruled, like Frederick the Second and Charles the Fifth, over both Sicilies. ♦The Spanish Bourbons, 1735-1806. 1817-1860.♦ Lastly, the kingdom was handed over from an Austrian to a new Spanish master, the first of the line of Neapolitan Bourbons. Thus, at the end of the last century, the Two Sicilies formed a distinct and united kingdom, while Sardinia formed the outlying realm of the Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont. His kingdom was of far less value than his principality or his duchy. ♦Use of the name Sardinia.♦ But, as Sardinia gave their common sovereign his highest title, the Sardinian name often came in common speech to be extended to the continental dominions of its king.