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 aut