and every city was absorbed in the recovery of culture and in the development of art and literature.  Far in advance of the other European nations, the Italians regarded the rest of the world as barbarous, priding themselves the while, in spite of mutual jealousies and hatreds, on their Italic civilisation.  They were enormously wealthy.  The resources of the Papal treasury, the private fortunes of the Florentine bankers, the riches of the Venetian merchants might have purchased all that France or Germany possessed of value.  The single Duchy of Milan yielded to its masters 700,000 golden florins of revenue, according to the computation of De Comines.  In default of a confederative system, the several States were held in equilibrium by diplomacy.  By far the most important people, next to the despots and the captains of adventure, were ambassadors and orators.  War itself had become a matter of arrangement, bargain, and diplomacy.  The game of stratagem was played by generals who had been friends yesterday and might be friends again to-morrow, with troops who felt no loyalty whatever for the standards under which they listed.  To avoid slaughter and to achieve the ends of warfare by parade and demonstration was the interest of every one concerned.  Looking back upon Italy of the fifteenth century, taking account of her religious deadness and moral corruption, estimating the absence of political vigour in the republics and the noxious tyranny of the despots, analysing her lack of national spirit, and comparing her splendid life of cultivated ease with the want of martial energy, we can see but too plainly that contact with a simpler and stronger people could not but produce a terrible catastrophe.  The Italians themselves, however, were far from comprehending this.  Centuries of undisturbed internal intrigue had accustomed them to play the game of forfeits with each other, and nothing warned them that the time was come at which diplomacy, finesse, and craft would stand them in ill stead against rapacious conquerors.

The storm which began to gather over Italy in the year 1492 had its first beginning in the North.  Lodovico Sforza’s position in the Duchy of Milan was becoming every day more difficult, when a slight and to all appearances insignificant incident converted his apprehension of danger into panic.  It was customary for the States of Italy to congratulate a new Pope on his election by their ambassadors; and this ceremony had now to be performed for Roderigo Borgia.  Lodovico proposed that his envoys should go to Rome together with those of Venice, Naples, and Florence; but Piero de’ Medici, whose vanity made him wish to send an embassy in his own name, contrived that Lodovico’s proposal should be rejected both by Florence and the King of Naples.  So strained was the situation of Italian affairs that Lodovico saw in this repulse a menace to his own usurped authority.  Feeling himself isolated among the princes of his country, rebuffed by the Medici, and