The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean

by John Julius Norwich

  The following year, however, King James died suddenly at the age of thirty-three, leaving his wife heavily pregnant. The inevitable suspicions of poison were probably unfounded, but Venice, fearing a coup to topple Caterina and reinstate Charlotte, was taking no chances. The Captain-General Pietro Mocenigo was sent at once to Cyprus with a fleet, ostensibly to protect the young Queen but in fact to watch over Venetian interests, with orders to remove all persons of uncertain loyalty from positions of power and influence. The fact that Cyprus was an independent sovereign state troubled the Republic not at all; Mocenigo was instructed to act through the Queen as far as possible, but was specifically empowered to use force if necessary.

  Unfortunately, the measures he took served only to increase the resentment already felt by the Cypriot nobility at the continued interference by Venice in their affairs. A conspiracy soon took shape under the leadership of the Archbishop of Nicosia, and three hours before dawn on 13 November 1473 a small group–including the Archbishop himself–forced its way into the palace at Famagusta and cut down the Queen’s chamberlain and her doctor before her eyes. Next it hunted out her uncle Andrea Corner and her cousin Marco Bembo. Both suffered a similar fate, their naked bodies being thrown into the dry moat beneath her window, where they remained until they had been half eaten by the dogs of the town. Finally Caterina was forced to give her consent to the betrothal of a natural daughter of her late husband to Alfonso, the bastard son of the King of Naples, and to recognise the latter as heir to the throne of Cyprus–despite the fact that James had specifically bequeathed his kingdom to her and that she had by this time given birth to a son of her own.

  Mocenigo soon managed to lay hands on most of those responsible. One or two, including the Archbishop, had fled; of the others the ringleaders were hanged, the remainder imprisoned. The new arrangements for the succession were countermanded and the Venetian Senate sent out two trusted patricians who, under the title of Councillors, took over the effective government of the island in Caterina’s name. The unhappy Queen remained on the throne, but now shorn of all her powers. Her baby son, James III, died in 1474, almost exactly a year after his birth; thenceforth she had to contend with the intrigues of her sister-in-law Charlotte on the one hand and young Alfonso of Naples on the other, while at home the great nobles of the island, seeing her less as their queen than as a Venetian puppet, hatched plot after plot against her. Her survival, as she well knew, was due only to Venetian protection, but even that was becoming intolerable; every important post at court or in the administration was in Venetian hands. At one period she and her father had to complain that her protectors had become more like jailers; she was forbidden to leave the palace, her servants were withdrawn and she was even compelled to take her meals alone, at a little wooden table. Daughter of St Mark or not, it was now plain to her that she was nothing but an inconvenience both to her subjects and to the Republic, which would not hesitate to get rid of her when the moment came.

  The Venetian government bided its time. Since 1426 Cyprus had been held in vassalage to the Sultan of Egypt, to whom it was bound to pay an annual tribute of 8,000 ducats; its direct annexation might well cause diplomatic complications which Venice could ill afford. But then in 1487 the Sultan sent warning to Caterina that the Ottoman Sultan Bayezit was planning a massive expedition against him, and was likely to make an attempt at Cyprus en route. This development, offering as it did the prospect of Venice and Egypt allied against a common enemy, may well have encouraged the Senate to take the plunge; what certainly did so was the discovery, in the summer of 1488, of a further plot, this time with the object of securing the marriage of Caterina to Alfonso of Naples. Here was a possibility which could clearly not be contemplated. In October 1488 the decision was taken: Cyprus was to be formally incorporated into the Venetian Empire and its queen brought back–in state if possible, by force if necessary–to the land of her birth.

  Anticipating some reluctance on Caterina’s part–for marriage to Alfonso might well have seemed to her a welcome alternative to her present situation–the Venetian Council of Ten had secretly briefed her brother Giorgio to persuade her that a voluntary abdication would be for the good of all concerned. Cyprus, still dangerously exposed, could then be properly protected from Turkish cupidity, while she herself would acquire glory and honour for bestowing such a gift upon her motherland. In return for this she would be received in state, endowed with a rich fief and a generous annual income, and enabled to live in peace and luxury as the queen that she would always be. Her family, too, would gain immeasurably in power and prestige, whereas if she were to refuse they would be ruined.

  Caterina protested bitterly, but she yielded at last. Early in 1489, at Famagusta, she formally charged the Captain-General to fly the standard of St Mark from every corner of the island; and in the first week of June she arrived in Venice. The Doge sailed out in his state barge to the Lido to greet her, accompanied by a train of noble ladies. Unfortunately a sudden storm arose; the barge was forced to ride it out for several hours, and when Caterina was able to embark its passengers were no longer at their best. But they nevertheless managed a stately progress up the Grand Canal while the trumpets sounded, the church bells rang, and the people of Venice–who probably cared little for Caterina but who dearly loved a parade–raised all the cheers that were expected of them.

  Later the Queen went through a solemn ceremony of abdication in St Mark’s, where she formally ceded her kingdom to Venice. In October she took possession of the little hill town of Asolo, where for the next twenty years she was to remain at the centre of a cultivated if vapid court, enjoying a life of music, dancing and the polite conversation of learned men–a life which, after her earlier tribulations, she richly deserved. Only in 1509, threatened by the advancing army of the Emperor Maximilian, was she obliged to return to her native city. There in July 1510, at the age of fifty-six, she died.

  In February 1508 the Emperor Maximilian entered the territory of Venice at the head of a sizable army, ostensibly on his way to Rome for his imperial coronation. He had given the Republic advance notice of his intention the year before, requesting safe conduct and provisions for his army along the way, but Venetian agents in and around his court had left their masters in no doubt that his primary objective was to expel the French from Genoa and Milan and themselves from Verona and Vicenza, reasserting the old imperial claim to all four cities. The Doge had therefore politely replied that His Imperial Majesty would be welcomed with all the honour and consideration due to him if he came ‘without warlike tumult and the clangour of arms’; if, on the other hand, he was to be accompanied by a military force, the Republic’s treaty obligations and its policy of neutrality unfortunately made it impossible to grant his request.

  Furious at this response, Maximilian had marched regardless on Vicenza–and found the opposition a good deal stiffer than he had expected. With French help, the Venetians not only turned him back but occupied three important imperial cities at the head of the Adriatic: Gorizia, Trieste and Fiume (now the Croatian port of Rijeka). By April, with his army’s six-month contract expired and no money with which to extend it, the Emperor was obliged to agree to a three-year truce, allowing Venice to keep the territory she had gained. For him it was a salutary lesson; for Pope Julius II, on the other hand, who detested Venice and was hell-bent on her destruction, it was a piece of intolerable arrogance, and when within a few weeks the Republic refused to surrender some Bolognese refugees and appointed its own bishop rather than the papal nominee to the vacant see of Vicenza, he decided to act. A stream of emissaries was despatched from Rome: to the Emperor, to France and Spain, to Milan, Hungary and the Netherlands. All bore the same message: a call for a joint expedition by Western Christendom against the Republic and the subsequent dismemberment of her Empire. Maximilian would regain all the lands beyond the Mincio river that had ever been imperial or subject to the house of Habsburg, including the cities of Verona, Vicenza, Padua and Treviso and the r
egions of Istria and Friuli. To France would go Bergamo and Brescia, Crema and Cremona and all the lands, towns and castles east of the river Adda and as far south as its confluence with the Po. In the south, Trani, Brindisi and Otranto would revert to the house of Aragon; Hungary could have back Dalmatia; Cyprus would go to Savoy. Ferrara and Mantua would have their former lands restored to them. There would, in short, be something for everyone–except for Venice, which would be stripped bare.

  The Pope himself intended to take back Cervia, Rimini and Faenza, but his long-term aim went far beyond any question of territorial boundaries. Italy as he saw it was now divided into three. In the north was French Milan, in the south Spanish Naples. Between the two, there was room for one–and only one–powerful and prosperous state; and that state, Julius was determined, must be the Papacy. Venice might survive as a city; as an empire she must be destroyed.

  The princes of Europe had no interest in this theory. They were, however, well aware that Venice had a perfect legal right to the territories they planned to seize, a right enshrined in treaties freely entered into by both France and Spain and, more recently still, by Maximilian himself. However much they might try to present their action as a blow struck on behalf of righteousness by which a rapacious aggressor was to be brought to justice, they were all fully conscious of the fact that their own conduct was more reprehensible than Venice’s had ever been. But the temptation was too great, the promised rewards too high. They accepted. So it was that on 10 December 1508, at Cambrai in the Netherlands, there was signed what appeared to be the death-warrant of the Venetian Empire. Venice was now confronted with an array of European powers more formidable than any Italian state had ever faced in history. Allies she had none. On 27 April 1509 the Pope announced a sentence of solemn excommunication and interdict over all Venetian territory.

  Worse was to come. On 9 May, just outside the village of Agnadello, the Venetian army suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of King Louis. The whole mainland was as good as lost. What was left of it lay defenceless. Most of the objectives agreed upon by the League of Cambrai had been achieved at a single stroke. Had it not been for those treacherously shallow waters by which she was surrounded, Venice would have stood little chance of survival. A century earlier, she could have done without the terra firma, but times had changed. Her Levantine trade had never recovered from the fall of Constantinople in 1453. No longer was she mistress of the eastern Mediterranean; her colonial empire had now been reduced to a few tenuous and uncertain toeholds in an Ottoman world. No longer, if the Turks closed their harbours to her, could she trust to the more distant eastern markets for her salvation; the Portuguese had seen to that. No longer, in short, could she live by the sea alone. Nowadays Venetians tended to look west rather than east, to the fertile plains of Lombardy and the Veneto, to the thriving industries of Padua and Vicenza, Verona and Brescia, and to the network of roads and waterways that linked them to the rich merchant cities of Europe. It was on the mainland, now, that they had invested their wealth and reposed their hopes, and already Maximilian’s specially empowered representatives were receiving the submission of one city after another–Verona, Vicenza and Padua, Rovereto, Riva and Cittadella–until the Venetians had fallen back on Mestre. All Lombardy and the Veneto were lost.

  Or so, at least, it seemed; but already by July things were looking up. Many of the cities and towns that had surrendered had been perfectly content to live under Venetian rule, and were beginning to resent the heavier and far less sympathetic hand of their new masters. Less than two months after Agnadello came the first reports of spontaneous uprisings in favour of Venice. After just forty-two days as an imperial city, Padua returned beneath the sheltering wing of the lion of St Mark; many smaller towns in the region followed its example. Meanwhile, a condottiere named Lucio Malvezzo, temporarily in Venetian pay, had seized Legnago, a key town on the Adige, from which he was threatening Verona and Vicenza. Perhaps the situation was not quite so desperate after all.

  Until now the Emperor Maximilian, after lending it his name, had not lifted a finger on behalf of the League. He had as yet sent no army, and indeed had not explicitly declared war until 29 May, three weeks after Agnadello. The news of the reconquest of Padua, however, stirred him into action. By August a heterogeneous and unwieldy army had started on its way to the city, to be joined at various stages of its journey by a force of several thousand French, a body of Spaniards and smaller contingents from Mantua, Ferrara and the Pope. Maximilian himself, meanwhile, decided to set up temporary headquarters at Asolo, in the palace of the Queen of Cyprus–who, with her numerous entourage, had wisely fled to Venice at the first news of his approach.

  It was a good month before the imperial army was collected and ready, during which time the Paduans had plenty of time to strengthen their fortifications and to lay in plentiful stocks of food, water and ammunition. When on 15 September the siege at last began in earnest, they were well able to defend themselves. For a fortnight the German and French heavy artillery pounded away at the northern walls, reducing them to rubble, and yet somehow every assault was beaten back. At last the Emperor gave up the attempt. Making hurried arrangements to leave part of his army in Italy under the Duke of Anhalt for the garrisoning of other, less spirited cities and to provide an emergency force should the need arise, he led his shambling army back across the Alps whence it had come.

  The Venetians were jubilant. To have recaptured Padua had been in itself a victory, but to have held it successfully against an army of some 40,000–that was a triumph. And there was more to come. In November Anhalt surrendered Vicenza without any serious struggle, and in the weeks following more and more other towns voluntarily declared themselves for Venice. When Pope Julius heard of the reconquest of Padua he flew into a towering rage, and when after the failure of Maximilian’s siege he learned that Verona too was likely to defect and that the Marquis of Mantua had been taken prisoner by the Venetians he is said to have hurled his cap to the ground and blasphemed St Peter. But he remained implacable, and the Venetians began to realise that despite their recent successes the situation had not fundamentally changed. The League was still in force; the imperial army remained intact. The French in Milan were also sharpening their swords. Meanwhile, Venice continued to stand alone, her army defeated, her treasury empty, most of her income from the mainland cut off, and without a single ally. When she sought help from England the new king, Henry VIII, expressed sympathy but offered no material support. Finally, in despair, she swallowed her pride and even appealed to the Sultan, but received no reply.

  By the end of the year she was at the end of her tether, and was obliged to accept Pope Julius’s conditions for peace. They were predictably savage. The Republic might no longer appoint its own bishops and clergy. It must compensate the Pope for all his expenses in recovering his territories and for all the revenues he had lost. The Adriatic would in future be open to all, free of the customs dues which Venice had always levied on foreign shipping. Finally, in the event of war against the Turks the Republic would provide not less than fifteen galleys at its own expense. On 24 February 1510, in the course of a long and deliberately humiliating ceremony outside the central doors of St Peter’s, five Venetian envoys were made to kneel for a full hour while the agreement was read out in full, and were then handed twelve symbolic scourging rods from the twelve cardinals present. (The scourging itself was mercifully omitted.) Only when they had kissed the Pope’s feet and received absolution were the great doors opened; the assembled company then proceeded in state to the high altar for prayers before going to Mass in the Sistine Chapel–all except the Pope, who, as one of the Venetians explained in his report, ‘never attended these long services’.

  The news of Pope Julius’s reconciliation with Venice had not been well received by his fellow members of the League. The French in particular had done all they could to dissuade him from taking such a step, and at the ceremony of absolution their ambassador, together with his
imperial and Spanish colleagues–all of whom were in Rome at the time–was conspicuous by his absence. Had he known just what that ceremony portended, his disapproval would have given way to horrified alarm. The Pope’s scores with Venice had been settled; now it was the turn of France.

  By all objective standards, the papal volte-face was contemptible. Having encouraged the French to take up arms against Venice, Julius now refused to allow them the rewards which he himself had promised, turning against them with all the violence and venom that he had previously displayed towards the Venetians. Conversely, just as he had previously been the chief architect of Venice’s impoverishment and humiliation, so now he suddenly became her saviour. Not only did he step forth as the powerful champion she had so desperately sought; he took the principal initiative. The Republic could now withdraw from the centre of the stage. Henceforth the war would primarily be between the Pope and King Louis–together with Louis’s chief Italian ally, the Duke of Ferrara. The Duke’s salt-works at Comaccio were in direct competition with the papal ones at Cervia; moreover, as the husband of Lucrezia Borgia he was the son-in-law of Pope Alexander VI–a fact which, in Julius’s eyes, was more than enough to condemn him.

  As always, the Pope fought against his new enemies with all the means at his disposal: the military, the diplomatic and the spiritual. His first military action against the French–an attempt in July 1510 to drive them out of Genoa–ended in failure, but diplomatically he struck a more telling blow when, a few weeks later, he recognised Ferdinand of Aragon as King of Naples, passing over the old Angevin claims of King Louis. Shortly after that, in a bull couched in language that St Peter Martyr said made his hair stand on end, he anathematised and excommunicated the Duke of Ferrara. By this time he was approaching seventy. In October, lying with a high fever in Bologna, he narrowly escaped capture by the French, who took the city a few months later.129 Another bout of sickness followed in the summer of 1511, during which his life was despaired of. But the energy with which he continued to pursue his vindictive policies was undiminished, and in the autumn he had recovered sufficiently to proclaim a new Holy League, this time against France.