THE MURDER OF THE SON OF THE POPE

 

The emperor, having now humbled, and, as he imagined, subdued the independent and stubborn spirit of the Germans by the terror of arms and the rigor of punishment, held a diet at Augsburg, in order to compose finally the controversies with regard to religion, which had so long disturbed the empire.

He durst not, however, trust the determination of a matter so interesting to the free suffrage of the Germans, broken as their minds now were to subjection. He entered the city at the head of his Spanish troops, and assigned them quarters there. The rest of his soldiers he cantoned in the adjacent villages; so that the members of the diet, while they carried on their deliberations, were surrounded by the same army which had overcome their countrymen. Immediately after his public entry, Charles gave a proof of the violence with which he intended to proceed. He took possession by force of the cathedral, together with one of the principal churches; and his priests having, by various ceremonies, purified them from the pollution with which they supposed the unhallowed ministrations of the protestants to have defiled them, they re­established with great pomp the rites of the Romish worship.

The concourse of members to this diet was extraordinary; the importance of the affairs concerning which it was to deliberate, added to the tear of giving offence to the emperor by an absence which lay open to misconstruction, brought together almost all the princes, nobles, and representatives of cities who had a right to sit in that assembly. The emperor, in the speech with which he opened the meeting, called their attention immediately to that point, which seemed chiefly to merit it. Having mentioned the fatal effects of the religious dissensions which had arisen in Germany, and taken notice of his own unwearied endeavors to procure a general council, which alone could provide a remedy adequate to those evils, he exhorted them to recognize its authority, and to acquiesce in the decisions of an assembly to which they had originally appealed, as having the sole right of judgment in the case.

But the council, to which Charles wished them to refer all their controversies, had, by this time, undergone a violent change. The fear and jealousy, with which the emperor's first successes against the confederates of Smalkalde had inspired the pope, continued to increase. Not satisfied with attempting to retard the progress of the Imperial arms, by the sudden recall of his troops, Paul began to consider the emperor as an enemy, the weight of whose power he must soon feel, and against whom he could not be too hasty in taking precautions. He foresaw that the immediate effect of the emperor's acquiring absolute power in Germany, would be to render him entirely master of all the decisions of the council, if it should continue to meet in Trent. It was dangerous to allow a monarch, so ambitious, to get the command of this formidable engine, which he might employ at pleasure to limit or overturn the papal authority. As the only method of preventing this, he determined to remove the council to some city more immediately under his own jurisdiction, and at a greater distance from the terror of the emperor's arms, or the reach of his influence. An incident fortunately occurred, which gave this measure the appearance of being necessary.

One or two of the fathers of the council, together with some of their domestics, happening to die suddenly, the physicians, deceived by the symptoms, or suborned by the pope’s legates, pronounced the distemper to be infectious and pestilential. Some of the prelates, struck with a panic, retired; others were impatient to be gone; and after a short consultation, the council was translated to Bologna [March 11], a city subject to the pope. All the bishops in the Imperial interest warmly opposed this resolution, as taken without necessity, and founded on false or frivolous pretexts.

All the Spanish prelates, and most of the Neapolitan, by the emperor's express command, remained at Trent; the rest, to the number of thirty-four, accompanying the legates to Bologna. Thus a schism commenced in that very assembly, which had been called to heal the divisions of Christendom; the fathers of Bologna inveighed against those who stayed at Trent, as contumacious and regardless of the pope’s authority; while the other accused them of being so far intimidated by the fears of imaginary danger, as to remove to a place where their consultations could prove of no service towards re-establishing peace and order in Germany.

The emperor, at the same time, employed all his interest to procure the return of the council to Trent. But Paul, who highly applauded his own sagacity in having taken a step which put it out of Charles’s power to acquire the direction of that assembly, paid no regard to a request, the object of which was so extremely obvious. The summer was consumed in fruitless negotiations with respect to this point, the importunity of the one and the obstinacy of the other daily increasing. At last, an event happened which widened the breach irreparably, and rendered the pope utterly averse from listening to any proposal that came from the emperor. Charles, as has been already observed, had so violently exasperated Peter Lewis Farnese, the pope’s son, by refusing to grant him the investiture of Parma and Placentia, that he had watched ever since that time with all the vigilance of resentment for an opportunity of revenging that injury. He had endeavored to precipitate the pope into open hostilities against the emperor, and had earnestly solicited the king of France to invade Italy. His hatred and resentment extended to all those whom he knew that the emperor favored, he did every ill office in his power to Gonzaga, governor of Milan, and had encouraged Fiesco in his attempt upon the life of Andrew Doria, because both Gonzaga and Doria possessed a great degree of the emperor’s esteem and confidence. His malevolence and secret intrigues were not unknown to the emperor, who could not be more desirous to take vengeance on him, than Gonzaga and Doria were to be employed as his instruments in inflicting it.

Farnese, by the profligacy of his life, and by enormities of every kind, equal to those committed by the worst tyrants who have disgraced human nature, had rendered himself so odious, that it was thought any violence whatever might be lawfully attempted against him. Gonzaga and Doria soon found among his own subjects, persons who were eager, and even deemed it meritorious, to lend their hands in such a service. As Farnese, animated with the jealousy which usually possesses petty sovereigns, had employed all the cruelty and fraud, whereby they endeavor to supply their defect of power, in order to humble and extirpate the nobility subject to his government, five noblemen of the greatest distinction in Placentia combined to avenge the injuries which they themselves had suffered, as well as those which he had offered to their order.

They formed their plan in conjunction with Gonzaga; but it remains uncertain whether he originally suggested the scheme to them, or only approved of what they proposed, and co-operated in carrying it on. They concerted all the previous steps with such foresight, conducted their intrigues with such secrecy, and displayed such courage in the execution of their design, that it may be ranked among the most audacious deeds of that nature mentioned in history.

One body of the conspirators surprised, at midday [Sept. 101], the gates of the citadel of Placentia where Farnese resided, overpowered his guards, and murdered him. Another party of them made themselves masters of the town, and called upon their fellow-citizens to take arms, in order to recover their liberty. The multitude ran towards the citadel, from which three great guns, a signal concerted with Gonzaga, had been fired; and before they could guess the cause or the authors of the tumult, they saw the lifeless body of the tyrant hanging by the heels from one of the windows of the citadel.

But so universally detestable had he become, that not one expressed any sentiment of concern at such a sad reverse of fortune, or discovered the least indignation at this ignominious treatment of a sovereign prince.The exultation at the success of the conspiracy was general, and all applauded the actors in it as the deliverers of their country. The body was tumbled into the ditch that surrounded the citadel, and exposed to the insults of the rabble; the rest of the citizens returned to their usual occupations, as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

Before next morning, a body of troops arriving from the frontiers of the Milanese, where they had been posted in expectation of the event, took possession of the city in the emperor's name, and reinstated the inhabitants in the possession of their ancient privileges. Parma, which the Imperialists attempted likewise to surprise, was saved by the vigilance and fidelity of the officers whom Farnese had entrusted with the command of the garrison.

The death of a son whom, notwithstanding his infamous vices, Paul loved with an excess of parental tenderness, overwhelmed him with the deepest affliction; and the loss of a city of such consequence as Placentia, greatly embittered his sorrow. He accused Gonzaga, in open consistory, of having committed a cruel murder, in order to prepare the way for an unjust usurpation, and immediately demanded of the emperor satisfaction for both; for the former, by the punishment of Gonzaga; for the latter, by the restitution of Placentia to his grandson, Octavia, its rightful owner. But Charles, who, rather than quit a prize of such value, was willing not only to expose himself to the imputation of being accessary to the crime which had given an opportunity of seizing it, but to bear the infamy of defrauding his own son-in-law of the inheritance which belonged to him, eluded all his solicitations, and determined to keep possession of the city, together with its territories.

This resolution, flowing from an ambition so rapacious, as to be restrained by no consideration either of decency or justice, transported the pope so far beyond his usual moderation and prudence, that he was eager to take arms against the emperor, in order to be avenged on the murderers of his son, and to recover the inheritance wrested from his family. Conscious, however, of his own inability to contend with such an enemy, he warmly solicited the French king and the republic of Venice to join in an offensive league against Charles. But Henry was intent at that time on other objects. His ancient allies, the Scots, having been defeated by the English in one of the greatest battles ever fought between these two rival nations, be was about to send a numerous body of veteran troops into that country, as well to preserve it from being conquered, as to gain the acquisition of a new kingdom to the French monarchy, by marrying his son the dauphin to the young queen of Scotland. An undertaking accompanied with such manifest advantages, the success of which appeared to be so certain, was not to be relinquished for the remote prospect of benefit from an alliance depending upon the precarious life of a pope of fourscore, who had nothing at heart but the gratification of his own private resentment. Instead, therefore, of rushing headlong into the alliance proposed, Henry amused the pope with such general professions and promises, as might keep him from any thoughts of endeavoring to accommodate his differences with the emperor, but at the same time he avoided any such engagement as might occasion an immediate rupture with Charles, or precipitate him into a war for which he was not prepared. The Venetians, though much alarmed at seeing Placentia in the hands of the Imperialists, imitated the wary conduct of the French king, as it nearly resembled the spirit which usually regulated their own conduct.

But though the pope found that it was not in his power to kindle immediately the flames of war, he did not forget the injuries which he was obliged for the present to endure; resentment settled deeper in his mind, and became more rancorous in proportion as he felt the difficulty of gratifying it. It was while these sentiments of enmity were in full force, and the desire of vengeance at its height, that the diet of Augsburg, by the emperor's command, petitioned the pope, in the name of the whole Germanic body, to enjoin the prelates who had retired to Bologna to return again to Trent, and to renew their deliberations in that place.

 

TRENT IN THE WAITING ROOM OF THE STATION OF HISTORY