he furtherance of her own selfish ends. We have
furthermore to add the prestige which the Empire preserved for the
Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized, human society whereof
the representative of Caesar should not be the God-appointed head. Though
the material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it still existed as
a dominant idea. Italy was still the Garden of the Empire no less than
the Throne of Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what they
regarded as their reasonable rights and privileges from Frederick, they
laid down their arms, and were content to flourish beneath the imperial
shadow. To raise up a political association as a bulwark against the
Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of this defense to become an
independent and united nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of
scattered townships, would have seemed to their minds little short of
sacrilege. Up to this point the Church and the Empire had been,
theoretically at least, concordant. They were the sun and moon of a
sacred social system which ruled Europe with light and might. But the
Wars of Investiture placed them in antagonism, and the result of that
quarrel was still further to divide the Italians, still further to
remove the hope of national unity into the region of things
unattainable. The great parties accentuated communal jealousies and gave
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 stereot