prevailed for a period of
nearly fifty years. An equilibrium had been established between the five
great native Powers, which secured the advantages of confederation and
diplomatic interaction.

While using the word confederation, I do not, of course, imply that
anything similar to the federal union of Switzerland or of North America
existed in Italy. The contrary is proved by patent facts. On a miniature
scale, Italy then displayed political conditions analogous to those
which now prevail in Europe. The parcels of the nation adopted different
forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances, and owed no
allegiance to any central legislative or administrative body. I
therefore speak of the Italian confederation only in the same sense as
Europe may now be called a confederation of kindred races.

In the year 1630, when Charles V. (of Austria and Spain) was crowned
Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably
lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was
now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for
subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood.

The history of social, intellectual, and moral conditions in Italy
during the seventy years of the sixteenth century which followed
Charles's coronation at Bologna, forms the subject of this work; but
before entering upon these topics it will be well to devote one chapter
to considering with due brevity the partition of Italy into five States
in 1494, the dislocation of this order by the wars between Spain and
France for supremacy, the position in which the same States found
themselves respectively at the termination of those wars in 1527, and
the new settlement of the peninsula effected by Charles V. in 1529-30.

The five members of the Italian federation in 1494 were the kingdom of
Naples, the Papacy, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republics of Venice and
Florence. Round them, in various relations of amity or hostility, were
grouped these minor Powers: the Republics of Genoa, Lucca, Siena; the
Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio; the Marquisates of Mantua
and Montferrat; and the Duchy of Urbino. For our immediate purpose it is
not worth taking separate account of the Republic of Pisa, which was
practically though not thoroughly enslaved by Florence; or of the
despots in the cities of Romagna, the March. Umbria, and the Patrimony
of S. Peter, who were being gradually absorbed into the Papa