external form and substance to the struggles of town with town. So far
distant was the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that every
city strove within itself to establish one of two contradictory
principles, and the energies of the people were expended in a struggle
that set neighbor against neighbor on the field of war and in the
market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralization engendered
by these conflicts determined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400
Italy could only have been united under a tyrant's iron rule. At such an
universal despotism Gian Galeazzo Visconti was aiming when the plague
cut short his schemes. Cesare Borgia played his highest stakes for it.
Leo X. dreamed of it for his family. Machiavelli, at the end of the
_Principe_, when the tragedy of Italy was almost accomplished, invoked
it. But even for this last chance of unification it was now too late.
The great nations of Europe were in movement, and the destinies of Italy
depended upon France and Spain. When Charles V. remained victor in the
struggle of the sixteenth century, he stereotyped and petrified the
divisions of Italy in the interest of his own dynastic policy. The only
Italian power that remained unchangeable throughout all changes was the
Papacy--the first to emerge into prominence after the decay of the old
Western Empire, the last to suffer diminution in spite of vicissitudes,
humiliations, schisms, and internal transformation. As the Papacy had
created and maintained a divided Italy, as it had opposed itself to
every successive prospect of unification, so it survived the extinction
of Italian independence, and lent its aid to that imperial tyranny
whereby the disunion of the nation was confirmed and prolongated till
the present century.