Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2

adherents who had placed him on
the throne. But he remained a subservient though not very willing ally
of Spain; and when he expelled Alessandro Vitelli from the fortress that
commanded Florence, he admitted a Spaniard, Don Juan de Luna, in his
stead. During the petty wars of 1552-56 which Henri II. carried on with
Charles V. in Italy, Siena attempted to shake off the yoke of a Spanish
garrison established there in 1547 under the command of Don Hurtado de
Mendoza. The citizens appealed to France, who sent them the great
Marshal, Piero Strozzi, brother of Cosimo's vanquished enemy Filippo.
Cosimo through these years supported the Spanish cause with troops and
money, hoping to guide events in his own interest. At length, by the aid
of Gian Giacomo Medici, sprung from an obscure Milanese family, who had
been trained in the Spanish methods of warfare, he succeeded in subduing
Siena. He now reaped the fruits of his Spanish policy. In 1557 Philip
II. conceded the Sienese territory, reserving only its forts, to the
Duke of Florence, who in 1569 obtained the title of Grand Duke of
Tuscany from Pope Pius V. This title was confirmed by the Empire in 1575
to his son Francesco.

Thus the republics of Florence and Siena were extinguished. The Grand
Duchy of Tuscany was created. It became an Italian power of the first
magnitude, devoted to the absolutist principles of Spanish and Papal
sovereignty. The further changes which took place in Italy after the
year 1530, turned equally to the profit of Spain and Rome. These were
principally the creation of the Duchy of Parma for the Farnesi
(1545-1559), of which I shall have to speak in the next chapter; the
resumption of Ferrara by the Papacy in 1597, which reduced the House of
Este to the smaller fiefs of Modena and Reggio; the acquisition of
Montferrat by Mantua in 1536; the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy in 1598,
and the absorption of Urbino into the Papal domains in 1631.

It was hoped when Charles and Clement proclaimed the pacification of
Italy at

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

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