sinations, of
famines produced by iniquitous taxation, and of every kind of diabolical
tyranny, Ferdinand contrived to hold his own, in the teeth of a
rebellious baronage or a maddened population. His political sagacity
amounted almost to a prophetic instinct in the last years of his life,
when he became aware that the old order was breaking up in Italy, and
had cause to dread that Charles VIII. of France would prove his title to
the kingdom of Naples by force of arms.[D]

Such were the component parts of the Italian body politic, with the
addition of numerous petty principalities and powers, adhering more or
less consistently to one or other of the greater states. The whole
complex machine was bound together by no sense of common interest,
animated by no common purpose, amenable to no central authority. Even
such community of feeling as one spoken language gives was lacking. And
yet Italy distinguished herself clearly from the rest of Europe, not
merely as a geographical fact, but also as a people intellectually and
spiritually one. The rapid rise of humanism had aided in producing this
national self-consciousness. Every state 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 civilization. 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 seven hundred
thousand 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 ce