“E da chi alberga fra Garonna e Reno
  vidi uscir crudelta, che ne dovria
  tutto il mondo d’orror rimaner pieno.”

The League of Cambray had succeeded in breaking the real security and confidence of Venice; the death of Gaston de Foix, “the hero boy who died too soon,” destroyed the energy of her ally, the French army, in Italy; and the battle of Novara, as I have said, in 1513, inducing that ally to withdraw from the peninsula, left the republic to be menaced by Cardona, who failed only to take Venice itself.

Nor was that great government more fortunate in the long struggles which followed between Francis I. and Charles V. In 1523, seeing that the French were failing, Venice came to terms with the emperor, by that time the real arbiter of Italy.  In 1527, though then in alliance with pope Clement VII, she seized once more Ravenna and the Romagna, but the emperor intervened, and by the peace of Cambray in 1529, which on payment of a fine confirmed Venice in her Lombard possessions as far as the Adda, she was compelled to restore Ravenna and the Romagna to the pope.

The treaty of Cambray had so far as Ravenna was concerned a certain finality about it.  Thenceforth the popes ruled the city through a cardinal legate, and an era of a certain social and artistic splendour began; the city was adorned with at least one new church, S. Maria in Porto, with many monuments and palaces, and some great public works were undertaken.

So Ravenna in the arms of the Church slumbered till, in 1797, the great soldier of the Revolution descended upon Italy in that marvellous campaign which so closely recalls the achievement of Caesar.  Ravenna then became a part first of the Cispadan and later of the Cisalpine republic.  Then, as we know, came the Austrians who took Ravenna from the French, but were in their turn expelled in 1800, when the city was incorporated into the short-lived kingdom of Italy.  But it was again attacked by the Austrians, and later restored once again to the pope.  A period of uncertainty and confusion followed in which various provisional governments were established for Ravenna, but at last in 1860 the city and its province were, by a vote of the people, included in the kingdom of United Italy.

[Illustration:  MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX]

XVIII

RENAISSANCE RAVENNA

CHURCHES AND PALACES

The period of the Renaissance which saw the papal government re-established in Ravenna in 1529, has left its mark upon the city in many a fine monument, indelibly stamped with the style of that fruitful period.  Among such monuments we must note the beautiful tombs of Guidarello Guidarelli, by Tullio Lombardi, erected in 1557, now in the Accademia, and of Luffo Numai by Tommaso Flamberti in S. Francesco, erected about fifty years earlier (1509).  Above all, however, must be named the great church of S. Maria in Porto (1553) and the palaces of Minzoni, Graziani, and others, with the Loggia del Giardino at S. Maria in Porto.  And there is, too, the work of the painters Niccolo Rondinelli, Cotignola, Luca Longhi and his sons, Guido Reni, and others.