XI. 1555. BOOK and partly by his authority, prevailed on him to accept of a cardinal's hat, to reassume the benefices which he had resigned, and to return again into the usual path of ecclesiastical ambition, which he seemed to have relinquished. But, during two successive pontificates, under the first of which the court of Rome was the most artful and interested, and under the second the most dissolute, of any in Europe, Caraffa retained his monastic austerity. He was an avowed and bitter enemy not only of all innovation in opinion, but of every irregularity in practice; he was the chief instrument in establishing the formidable and odious tribunal of the inquisition in the papal territories; he appeared a violent advocate on all occasions for the jurisdiction and discipline of the church, and a severe censurer of every measure which seemed to flow from motives of policy or interest, rather than from zeal for the honour of the ecclesiastical order and the dignity of the holy see. Under a prelate of such a character, the Roman courtiers expected a severe and violent pontificate, during which the principles of sound policy would be sacrificed to the narrow prejudices of priestly zeal; while the people of Rome were apprehensive of seeing the sordid and forbidding rigour of monastic manners substituted in place of the magnificence to which they had long been accustomed in the papal court. These apprehensions Paul was extremely solicitous to remove. The first At his first entrance upon the administration, he laid administra aside that austerity which had hitherto distinguished his steps of his tion. He person and family; and when the master of his household inquired in what manner he would choose to live, he haughtily replied, as becomes a great prince.' ordered the ceremony of his coronation to be conducted with more than usual pomp, and endeavoured to render himself popular by several acts of liberality and indulgence towards the inhabitants of Rome. His natural severity of temper, however, would have soon returned upon him, and would have justified the con 4 Platina, p. 327, Castaldo Vita di Paolo IV. Rom. 1615, p. 70. BOOK XI. 4555 tachment bitious jectures of the courtiers, as well as the fears of the people, if he had not, immediately after his election, called to Rome two of his nephews, the sons of his brother the count The excess of Montorio. The eldest he promoted to be governor of of his atRome. The youngest, who had hitherto served as a sol-to his ne dier of fortune in the armies of Spain or France, and whose phews. disposition as well as manners were still more foreign from the clerical character than his profession, he created a cardinal, and appointed him legate of Bologna, the second office in power and dignity which a pope can bestow. These marks of favour, no less sudden than extravagant, he accompanied with the most unbounded confidence and attachment; and, forgetting all his former severe maxims, he seemed to have no other object than the aggrandizing of his nephews. Their ambition, unfortunately for Paul, Their amwas too aspiring to be satisfied with any moderate acqui-projects. sition. They had seen the family of Medici raised, by the interest of the popes of that house, to supreme power in Tuscany. Paul III. had, by his abilities and address, secured the duchies of Parma and Placentia to the family of Farnese. They aimed at some establishment for themselves, no less considerable and independent; and as they could not expect that the pope would carry his indulgence towards them so far as to secularize any part of the patrimony of the church, they had no prospect of attaining what they wished, but by dismembering the imperial dominions in Italy, in hopes of seizing some portion of them. This alone they would have deemed a sufficient reason for sowing the seeds of discord between their uncle and the emperor. gust with But Cardinal Caraffa had, besides, private reasons which Reasons of filled him with hatred and enmity to the emperor. While their dis he served in the Spanish troops, he had not received such the empemaiks of honour and distinction as he thought due to his ror. birth and merit. Disgusted with this ill usage, he had abruptly quitted the imperial service; and entering into that of France, he had not only met with such a reception as soothed his vanity, and attached him to the French in XI. 1555 states. BOOK terest, but, by contracting an intimate friendship with Strozzi, who commanded the French army in Tuscany, he had imbibed a mortal antipathy to the emperor, as the great enemy to the liberty and independence of the Italian Nor was the pope himself indisposed to receive impressions unfavourable to the emperor. The opposition given to his election by the cardinals of the imperial faction, left in his mind deep resentment, which was heightened by the remembrance of ancient injuries from Charles or his ministers. They endeavour to Of this his nephews took advantage, and employed vaalienate the rious devices in order to exasperate him beyond a possipope from bility of reconciliation. They aggravated every circumthe empe- stance which could be deemed any indication of the em ror. Induce him to court the king of France. peror's dissatisfaction with his promotion; they read to him an intercepted letter, in which Charles taxed the cardinals of his party with negligence or incapacity, in not having defeated Paul's election; they pretended at one time to have discovered a conspiracy formed by the imperial minister and Cosmo di Medici against the pope's life; they alarmed him, at another, with accounts of a plot for assassinating themselves. By these artifices, they kept his mind, which was naturally violent, and become suspicious from old age, in such perpetual agitation, as precipitated him into measures which otherwise he would have been the first person to condemn. He seized some of the cardinals who were most attached to the emperor, and confined them in the castle of St Angelo; he persecuted the Colonnas and other Roman barons, the ancient retainers to the imperial faction, with the utmost severity; and, discovering on all occasions his distrust, fear, or hatred of the emperor, he began at last to court the friendship of the French king, and seemed willing to throw himself absolutely upon him for support and protection. This was the very point to which his nephews wished to bring him, as most favourable to their ambitious schemes; * Ripamontii Hist. Patriæ, lib. iii, 1146, ap. Græv. Thes. vol. ii. Mem. de Ribier, ii, 615. Adriani Istor. i, 906,, XI. 1555. and as the accomplishment of these depended on their BOOK uncle's life, whose advanced age did not admit of losing a moment unnecessarily in negociations, instead of treating at second-hand with the French ambassador at Rome, they prevailed on the pope to dispach a person of confidence directly to the court of France, with such overtures on his part as they hoped would not be rejected. He proposed an alliance, offensive and defensive, between Henry and the pope; that they should attack the duchy of Tuscany and the kingdom of Naples with their united forces; and if their arms should prove successful, that the ancient republican form of government should be re-established in the former, and the investiture of the latter should be granted to one of the French king's sons, after reserving a certain territory which should be annexed to the patrimony of the church, together with an independent and princely establishment for each of the pope's nephews. rency op alliance The king, allured by these specious projects, gave a Constable most favourable audience to the envoy. But when the Montmo matter was proposed in council, the constable Montmo-poses the rency, whose natural caution and aversion to daring en- with the terprises increased with age and experience, remonstrated pope. with great vehemence against the alliance. He put Henry in mind how fatal to France every expedition into Italy had been during three successive reigns; and if such an enterprise had proved too great for the nation even when its strength and finances were entire, there was no reason to hope for success if it should be attempted now, when both were exhausted by extraordinary efforts, during wars which had lasted, with little interruption, almost half a century. He represented the manifest imprudence of entering into engagements with a pope of fourscore; as any system which rested on no better foundation than his life must be extremely precarious; and upon the event of his death, which could not be distant, the face of things, together with the inclination of the Italian states, must instantly change, and the whole weight of the war be left upon the king alone. To these considerations he adddd LAT 3H 2 ·REE LIEKARY, NEW Y XI. 4555. BOOK the near prospect which they now had of a final accommodation with the emperor, who, having taken the resolution of retiring from the world, wished to transmit his kingdoms in peace to his son; and he concluded with representing the absolute certainty of drawing the arms of England upon France, if it should appear that the reestablishment of tranquillity in Europe was prevented by the ambition of its monarch. The duke of Guise favours it. Cardinal of Lorrain sent to ne gociate with the pope. These arguments, weighty in themselves, and urged by a minister of great authority, would probably have determined the king to decline any connection with the pope; but the duke of Guise, and his brother the cardinal of Lorrain, who delighted no less in bold and dangerous undertakings than Montmorency shunned them, declared warmly for an alliance with the pope. The cardinal expected to be entrusted with the conduct of the negociations in the court of Rome to which this alliance would give rise; the duke hoped to obtain the command of the army which would be appointed to invade Naples ; and considering themselves as already in these stations, vast projects opened to their aspiring and unbounded ambition. Their credit, together with the influence of the king's mistress, the famous Diana of Poitiers, who was at that time entirely devoted to the interest of the family of Guise, more than counterbalanced all Montmorency's prudent remonstrances, and prevailed on an inconsiderate prince to listen to the overtures of the pope's envoy. The cardinal of Lorrain, as he had expected, was immediately sent to Rome, with full powers to conclude the treaty, and to concert measures for carrying it into execution. Before he could reach that city, the pope, either from reflecting on the danger and uncertain issue of all military operations, or through the address of the imperial ambassador, who had been at great pains to sooth him, had not only begun to lose much of the ardour with which he had commenced the negociation with France, but even discovered great unwillingness to continue it. In order to rouse him from this fit of despondency, and to rekindle |
