Lecture IV: From the rule of Andrea Doria in 1528 to the New Democratic Republic in 1797

Luigi Speranza

As I mentioned in my last lecture, the ill feeling between Andrea Doria and Francis I had culminated in the treatment of Doria by Francis, after the battle which had been won by Doria's nephew, Filippino, in the Gulf of Salerno over the Spaniards. On this occasion the French King not only gave to the service rendered him by the Dorias very scant recognition, but he offered them a direct and material insult by claiming from Andrea the prisoners, thus attempting to deprive the Admiral of their ransoms.

This decided Andrea Doria to transfer his allegiance from France to Spain and at the same time, from curiously combined feelings of patriotism and spite, to free Genoa from the rule of Francis I. His fellow countrymen were at that moment well inclined to second his efforts, in consequence of the illadvised policy of Francis in favouring Savona at the expense of Genoa. With a view of obtaining a permanent hold of the State the King had decided not only to raise Savona to the rank of a first class fortress to be the head quarters of his troops, but also to develop the commercial resources of the town so as to impoverish the Genoese, and the double prospect of political humiliation and trade competition irritated the Genoese beyond endurance.

Andrea Doria had therefore an easy task in coming to an understanding with the notabilities of the city as to a combined attack by land and sea on the French garrison, he, Doria, bringing his galleys into the Port, while simultaneous risings of the citizens against the soldiers were to take place in different points of the town. All the arrangements were successfully carried out, and Doria, almost unopposed, effected a landing on the 13th of September, 1528 , and made his way to the Piazza San Matteo, where he made his famous speech on the restoration of liberty. Although, as viewed by the cold light of history, there is little cause for enthusiasm over an event which was practically a mere transfer from French to Spanish masters, yet it is impossible to deny that the . circumstances attending the so-called liberation of Genoa were eminently picturesque; and the Piazza San Matteo, in spite of the mischievous modern disfigurements of brick and plaster, has so little changed in these three centuries and a half, that it is easy even now to imagine the Great Admiral, surrounded by the palaces of his ancestors and the records of their victories, announcing to the jubilant crowd that the days of foreign oppression and internal feuds were passed for ever, and that a new era of peace and prosperity had begun.

All, in fact, went well in the first years of the Doria period. The French were driven out of every portion of the State, including Savona, which, as a punishment for having come forward

as a commercial rival of Genoa, was condemned to have its port filled with stones. This treatment may seem to savour of mediaeval barbarism, but I almost expect that there are at the present day a good many Genoese, especially those connected with coal, who cordially regret that the stones were ever allowed to be removed, Savona having again become a hateful name to commercial ears and a dangerous sharer of trade which people here think belongs to them alone. Charles V, probably out of personal regard for Andrea Doria and in appreciation of the services rendered by him as Commander General of his Fleets, did not interfere with the liberties of Genoa, while Doria himself, so far from taking advantage of his position to seize supreme power, withdrew completely from all political prominence and heartily cooperated with the Senate in their efforts toput the form of government on a better footing and remove as far as possible all causes of internal dissension.

In order to make the Dogeship a less enviable prize, and consequently avoid the struggles and jealousies that had been hitherto connected with the post, it was decided to limit the term of office to two years, but whatever may have been gained in the way of peace by the change it indisputably exercised a disastrous effect on the policy of the State, none of the rulers of Genoa henceforward having time enough before them to undertake any important or far-reaching measure. Another attempt to establish internal tranquility was made in the inscription of new nobles and the rearrangement of the old. The famous Golden Book « II Libro D' Oro » was opened, and on its pages were recorded the names of the privileged citizens who were alone qualified to govern; the Grand Council of Four Hundred, or practically the Parliament of Genoa, being drawn exclusively from their class. The names of all newcomers were to be included in one of the twenty eight families which originally figured on the Golden Book, and the greatest pains were taken to mix up persons of opposite political tendencies so as to weaken and possibly eradicate the old factions. But the Genoese characteristics of personal ambition and mutual distrust completely triumphed over these well-meant efforts to make one large happy family of the State. It is true that the old names of Guelphs and Ghibellines, Adorni and Fregosi, no longer appear after the Doria period, but in the designations of old and new nobles the old feelings of party hatred most fully revive. The Genoese nobles of those days, like the merchants of today, had their regular place of meeting or exchange, and from the very first the old and new parties kept apart, the old going to the Via San Luca, to a portico or loggia which can no longer be traced, and the new to the Piazza Banchi, to the porticos of the Church of San Pietro which has stood there for several centuries although only rebuilt in its present form in 1584. The two parties became very soon identified with their respective meeting places, and the Portico Vecchio di San Luca and the Portico Nuovo di San Pietro play an important part in late Genoese history. Even now in Genoese society you will occasionally, on the part of a Doria or a Spinola, catch a sneer at the Portico Nuovo, or you may hear the Portico Vecchio denounced as impossibly stupid by some more go-ahead member of the new order.

Andrea Doria appears on the whole in such a favourable light in his dealings with his native city after he had acquired, in substance if not in form, absolute power there, that it seems a pity to touch on his faults, but there is no doubt that on several occasions his personal feelings made him fall very far short of the ideal standard of a statesman and a patriot. In 1538, for instance, at the time of the league between Pope Paul III, the Venetians and Charles V against Sultan Soliman who had become a most formidable menace to Christendom, and when the allied fleets met the enemy in the Gulf of Lepanto, Doria, who had been given the supreme command by the Emperor, refused out of mere jealousy of the Venetians, whom he hated more than Turks, to bring his ships to . the attack; and thus the Turks were spared a defeat which would in all probability have been as crushing as the one they experienced in 1571 in the same waters, while the thirty years' respite allowed to them represents an endless series of harassing attacks by sea and of inroads on the Italian coast of which the State of Genoa got its full share. A still more glaring instance of Doria sacrificing public interests to private ends occurred two years later, when his nephew, Giannettino, had captured Dragut, a noted corsair who was the terror of all the inhabitants on the coast and whom it would have been a matter of course to execute so as to put him out of the way of further mischief, but Andrea Doria for the sake of a large ransom actually gave Dragut his liberty, thus letting loose a perfect pest on his own countrymen.

We have at this day an interesting and prominent record of the liberation of Dragut in the Annunziata Church, which owes its somewhat oppressive splendour of marble, gilding and fresco to the fact of the Lomellini family having made a large fortune out of the transaction. In order to raise the money for his ransom Dragut offered in pledge the Island and coral fisheries of Tabarca near Tunis, and he obtained the necessary advance from the Lomellinis, who perhaps acted on this occasion rather as merchants than as patriots , but who undoubtedly did an excellent stroke of business, as the coral fisheries turned out surpassingly well under their management and for more than a century and a half raised the family to the very pinnacle of riches. A large portion of their wealth went to the adornment of the Annunziata Church, whether as conscience money

or as an act of beneficence to their native city we need not enquire, but, whatever the motive, it is hard to deny that the outcome of their lavish expenditure is, from the esthetical point of view, so far from satisfactory that Genoa received no adequate compensation at the hands of the Lomellinis for the mischief caused her in setting Dragut free.

We now come to the celebrated Congiura dei Fieschi, or struggle for supremacy between the Fieschis and the Dorias, which as you are aware forms the subject of one of Schiller's tragedies. It is indeed probably due to the great German poet that this particular episode of domestic Genoese history stands out in such prominence, for it is in itself a mere reproduction of one of those dreary combinations of selfish ambition, hatred and treachery which were so frequent in the Adorno-Fregoso period. The Fieschi plot, like most of its predecessors, had its origin in politics. Francis I of France, since Doria had taken Genoa from him, had not ceased to look about for opportunities of regaining the State, and just at this period he found in Paul III a willing coadjutor to his schemes. Pope Paul had been a great friend of Andrea Doria and had, indeed, ten years before, in 1535, presented him as a mark of affection and esteem with the sword which still hangs in San Matteo Church, but an event had lately occurred which completely changed the nature of his feelings. A brother of Doria, the Abbot of San Fruttuoso at Portofmo, died and left by will to the Admiral considerable estates near Naples which the Pope set up a claim to, alleging that all the property of an ecclesiastic necessarily went to the Church and not to the relations. Andrea Doria, who as we have already seen took things in a very serious light where his pocket was concerned, was so exasperated at the Pope's behaviour that he at once ordered his nephew, Gianettino, to take the Doria fleet to Civitavecchia, seize the Papal galleys there and bring them to Genoa: and the order was promptly executed to the great wonder and indeed dismay of the Genoese who crowded round the Admiral to ask him what such treatment of the Head of the Church meant. We are told that Doria replied that it simply meant that his galleys were stronger than those of the Pope, and in fact the latter took the hint and gave up the estate, hut he naturally hated Doria thenceforward. At Paul's suggestion, Gian Luigi Fieschi, a young man of great capacity and the head of a family who had been distinguished for centuries by their devotion to and splendid connection with the Church, was singled out as the fit instrument for restoring French rule, and Fieschi was called to Rome to be talked over by Paul. This was no difficult matter, as Gian Luigi had been stung to the quick by the arrogance of Giannettino Doria and was ready to go any lengths to get rid of his rival, so it was arranged that Fieschi should organize an insurrection against the Dorias with the object of breaking them down completely and obtaining the rulership of Genoa, under the protection of Francis, as his reward. To further his ends Fieschi made use of the jealousies between old and new nobles which I spoke of just now. His family of course belonged by right to the aristocratic Portico di San Luca, but Gian Luigi went over to the comparatively plebeian Portico di San Pietro, where he industriously fanned the flame of hatred against the old nobles and especially the Dorias. All was got ready to strike a decisive blow on the first of January 1547, without the Dorias having a suspicion that there was anything wrong. Gian Luigi, with a refinement of treachery, on the very day before that appointed for their downfall and murder went to call in the most friendly way on the uncle and nephew, kissing repeatedly the two little boys of Gianettino and overwhelming the old Admiral, who was confined to his bed, with affectionate enquiries as to his health. A few hours later, in the dead of night, the doors of the stately Fieschi Palace were thrown open, and Gian Luigi and his band of conspirators poured into the street and rapidly passed the word to the armed men who were hidden all over the town to seize the gates in Fieschi's name. All went well at first for the Fieschi: Giannettino Doria, waked by the tumult, rushed to the Porta San Tommaso near the Doria Palace in order to gain admittance to the town and organize resistance, but the gate was already in possession of the enemy and he was at once shot down. His fall unnerved his party and the Doria cause seemed hopelessly lost, when, at that critical moment, Gian Luigi, who had gone to the arsenal to superintend the seizure of the Doria galleys, slipped from a plank he was crossing into the water, and being weighed down with his armour never rose again. Deprived of their chief the Fieschi, although victorious, began to waver, while the Dorias rallied and in a short time completely turned the tables upon their adversaries, so that, before day broke, the three surviving brothers of Gian Luigi and their principal colleagues were flying for their lives to the Fieschi castle at Montobbio, an Apennine village fifteen miles off. Here they kept up an obstinate defence for several months against all the troops which the Genoese government could send against them, and, had it not been that the death of Francis in the spring put a stop to the despatch of a corps of French soldiers that had been promised for the relief of the castle, the Fieschi revolt would by no means have been stamped out. As it was, the castle was taken and dismantled, two of the brothers and all the principal conspirators were executed, the third brother succeeding in effecting his escape to France; and the most relentless rigour in the shape of banishment, proscription and ruin was exercised on all who bore the name of Fieschi and on the immense property

of the family. This wholesale destruction of Fieschi palaces and castles comes indeed so painfully home to us at the present day that one cannot help wishing that the Dorias had wreaked their vengeance entirely on the bodies of Fieschis and had spared their houses as ornaments, in our own times, of the city and its neighbourhood. I don't know anything more depressing than to stand at the door of the Fieschi Church of Santa Maria Violata - that plain but elegant fourteenth century Lombard building now turned into a furniture store - and to compare its present surroundings with what they would have been but for the rage of the Dorias. The Fieschi Palace, with its gardens and terraces, was by all accounts even more beautiful than the Doria Palace at the railway station, which deservedly ranks as one of the chief ornaments of Genoa, and not only now is not one stone left upon another, but, worse still, its site is occupied by blocks of cheap houses, conspicuous for their ugliness even among the modern buildings of Genoa and made additionally intolerable by the imitation, in colour, of the aristocratic black and white stripes on their plastered fronts. Over the door of one of these lodging places is a large stone rosette, with the name of the father of Gian Luigi, Sinibaldo, inscribed on it, which was found some twenty years ago while digging the foundations, and this solitary relic of the past Fiesehi grandeur, in its sharp contrast with the surrounding meanness, most fitly completes the picture of the family's ruin.

It is refreshing to turn from this dreary episode to the great development of architecture, in the middle of the sixteenth century, which practically made Genoa the City of Palaces. The sense of security developed by Andrea's rule induced the nobles to follow the spirit of the times and to devote to art a portion of that enormous wealth that the possession of the Black Sea Colonies had brought to Genoa, and which, thanks to the careful habits of the race, had not disappeared with the loss of these colonies a century before. With the usual barrenness of artistic talent that has been a feature of Genoa both in ancient and modern times there was no native architect at hand, so the nobles got over about the year 1550, from Perugia, the celebrated Galeazzo Alessio who has left such a notable individual impress on the town. We have his master-piece before us in the Via Nuova, although the finest palace in the street, the Doria Ttirsi, was built by another hand fifty years later, while his worst piece of work was the mischief done to the Cathedral in adding a dome to it. As an intermediate performance may be classed the Church of Carignano which, although ugly enough when close, undoubtedly makes a fine land-mark. Alessio, besides, studded the town with lordly residences, such as the Sauli at Carignano, the Pallavicini at the Peschiere, the Grimaldi near the Porta Romana and the Giustiniani Cambiaso at San Francesco D' Albaro; and the school of Lombard artists, who after his death and up to the time of the seventeenth century completed the Via Nuova and built the Via Balbi, followed in his footsteps, so that Genoa, as we now see it, is essentially the City of Alessio. It is in fact much to be deplored that, under him, the Renaissance style should have come forward so prominently as completely to overshadow the Lombard architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which Petrarch so much admired in his visit to Genoa in 1347, and which caused Louis XII to say, when he came in 1507, that the houses of the Genoese were finer than his own palaces. The visitor of today to the City of Palaces sees only Renaissance buildings and is 'scarcely aware of the existence of the gems of Lombard art which are to be found in such numbers in the lower and older part of the town. It must be confessed that these earlier buildings lie for the most part in such narrow streets as to be extremely hard to look at properly, and they have besides been made almost unrecognizable by ruthless filling up of arches and application of whitewash, so that the modern tourist must both crane his neck and stretch his imagination to a considerable extent in order to carry away any distinct impression of the architectural glories of Genoa before Galeazzo Alessio. The Piazza San Matteo is perhaps the best point to give an idea of what old Genoa might now be if the barbarians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been restrained from wreaking their stupid will on the graceful arcades, rich stonework and delicate columns of the homes of their forefathers. The finest individual Lombard building is however generally considered to be the Palazzo Dinegro in the Via Luccoli, the last but one on the right before getting to Piazza Soziglia. Its date is 1416, and we read in the chroniclers that in consideration of the exceptional beauty of the fabric the owners were exempted from all taxation for ever. This palace has a small open place before it so that it can be viewed with tolerable comfort, but here also so much mischief has been done in bringing down the building to the level of the modern Genoese dwelling house that the probable impression left on the visitor will be one of disappointment. Returning to Galeazzo Alessio, there is one of his works which I mentioned above, the Church of Carignano, which has a curious story connected with it, strikingly illustrative of that combination of thrift and liberality, of trade sharpness and princely splendour, which is so often found in the Genoese. It appears that in the fifteenth century the Saulis, rich nobles who lived in Carignano, were in the habit of attending mass at the church of Santa Maria Violata of their neighbours the Fieschis, but that on some occasion a petty quarrel sprung up between the ladies about the hours of service, whereupon Bendinelli, the head of the Sauli family, determined to build a church of his own. Instead, however, of

beginning the work at once he took the far more prudent course of lodging a sum of money at interest at the Bank of S. George, only to be touched when the amount had swelled sufficiently to cover all expenses. This was in 1480, and the money was left in the Bank till 1550, say for seventy years, which at five per cent compound interest means a thirtyfold increase of the principal: that is to say, supposing Bendinelli Sauli to have put aside Ioo,ood francs at the time, the amount ultimately available to build the church and give honour to the founder would have been three millions. You may remember that in a former lecture, and when speaking of the benefactors of the bank of S. George whose statues stand in the Great Hall, I gave a similar instance of charity on a large scale conducted with very small original outlay, and there is at this moment a curious instance of this farsighted policy of accumulation going on under our eyes. The Casa Corallo on the bridge of Carignano, which you will most of you know, is a serious obstruction to a good view of the principal front of the Church, and one of the modern Saulis, the Marchese Nicolo, left about twenty years ago a sum of, I believe, thirty thousand francs to be lodged at a Bank at interest until sufficient to buy the house for the purpose of demolition. The Casa Corallo is so ugly that I don't think we should any of us regret its speedy extinction, but, with the present rates of interest and the high value of house property in Genoa, I am afraid we shall have to wait thirty or forty years longer for this eyesore to be removed.

In connection with the Renaissance period in Genoa, although coming rather earlier than Galeazzo Alessio, may be mentioned the palace of Andrea Doria at the Piazza Principe Station (the name of Principe refers to Doria and dates from his time) which he purchased and almost entirely rebuilt about the period of his accession to power. The old palace had been presented by the State to Pietro Fregoso in 1357, as a reward for his victory o^r King Lusignan of Cyprus, and had remained in possession of the family until the early part of the sixteenth century when the Fregosi were definitely worsted by their rivals the Adorni, and their fortunes fell into decay. An interesting episode of the Fregoso Period is the visit in 1483 of the well-known Saint, Francis of Paola, who came through Genoa on his way to Paris where he had been summoned by the dying King Louis XI to soothe the mind and possibly heal the body of the royal sinner. In the old part of the building you may still see the window from which S. Francis used daily to give his blessing to the expectant crowd, and it gives one an idea of the leisurely way in which travelling was conducted in those days that the Saint, although specially called to Paris, should have remained long enough here to be identified with the place. Under Andrea Doria the interior of the palace was splendidly frescoed by Pierino del Vaga, one of the most celebrated of the band of artists whom the savage capture of Rome in 1527 by the troops of the Constable of Bourbon, and the period of misery that followed, drove out of the city to get employment elsewhere. The work done by Pierino for the Dorias, besides being so excellent in itself, served as a model for the local school of fresco painting, so that the misfortune of Rome was, from an artistic point of view, a. positive gain to Genoa.

Andrea Doria died in 1560, full of years ana honours, and with him ended the brief respite which his sagacity and firmness had given to many of the troubles of the State. A few years later, in 1565, Genoa lost, with the capture of Chios by the all powerful Sultan, Soliman, the last remnant of her splendid possessions in the East. This island had been given over more than two hundred years before to the Giustiniani family and governed by them ever since. By judicious tribute to the Court of Costantinople the Giustinianis had managed to survive all the other Genoese Colonies, but with the ever increasing power of the Turks and the utter helplessness of the parent State, their position became naturally untenable, and the only wonder is that they were not driven out sooner. That very fine palace at San Francesco D' Albaro which now belongs to the Marchese Gian Gambiaso was built by Alessio for the Giustinianis just before they lost Chios, and the bare walls and ceilings of the interior tell in very plain language of the effect which the event had on the fortunes of the family. If Chios had not been lost, Luca Cambiaso, or some other of the followers of Pierino del Vaga in fresco, would have been called in to exercise his talent on the spacious surface, and the Cambiaso Palace would be now, inside as well as out, one of the most splendid residences of the city.

Passing over the squabbles between old and new nobles which mainly occupy the remainder of the century, we come about 1600 to the appearance on the scene of a new and formidable enemy who, but for a succession of fortunate accidents, would have shortened the existence of Genoa as an independent state by two hundred years. This enemy was Charles Emanuel 1, Duke of Savoy, the son of Emanuel Filibert, who had inherited all the military genius of his father and who coveted the possession of Genoa with all the eagerness that had characterised the Viscontis of Milan some centuries earlier. After many years of watching and waiting Charles Emanuel, with the view of most effectually obtaining his object, took the side of France against Spain, and an alliance was made in 1624 with Louis- XIII by which it was established that the dominions of Genoa should be taken and divided, Louis appropriating Corsica and one of the Riviere, while the other Riviera and the city itself remained to Charles Emanuel;

and it was also settled that if the combined forces succeeded, in addition to Genoa, in gaining possession of the Duchy of Milan, France should have Milan and Savoy the whole of Genoa. In order to carry out these projects no time was lost on the part of the King and the Duke in collecting adequate forces, and in the spring of 1625 the French and Savoyards inarched on the Ligurian Frontier at Novi. As might have been expected, they carried all before them, but a bitter dissension between the Duke and the Constable Lesdiguieres, who commanded the French, paralyzed the advance of the allied armies just at the moment when victory was in their grasp. Lesdiguieres , who was old and obstinate, was so jealous of the Duke, as the younger and abler General, that he determined to spite him by thwarting his pet scheme of becoming master of Genoa, and consequently, after Voltaggio had been taken and the invading force had reached Savignone, the French General, pleading the want of the necessary equipments for a regular siege, announced his intention of advancing no farther. There is a point near Savignone, on the heights of the Vittoria, from which the suburbs of Genoa on the Sampierdarena side may clearly be seen, and it is related that Charles Emanuel from there gazed on the stately country villas of the nobles with tears of rage in his eyes at the thought of the rich prize escaping him. In consequence of the attitude of Lesdiguieres the campaign was virtually abandoned, all the more that just at that time in France troubles with the Hugunots sprung up which diverted Louis XIII from his Italian schemes, and shortly afterwards peace was concluded between France and Spain, leaving things exactly as they were.

The Republic on this occasion had escaped destruction almost by a miracle, but she ran nearly equal danger only two years later from a conspiracy formed with the object of handing over Genoa to the House of Savoy. The head of the plot was a certain Vacchero, a man of the Gian Luigi Fieschi type, possessed of the sole ambition of becoming the greatest man in the town, in complete disregard of the lives and liberties of his fellow citizens. Vacchero was of low birth but rich, and through his money and great personal daring he had acquired considerable influence in the town and especially among those who, like himself, vainly tried to be inscribed on the Golden Book. The jealousies between nobles and non-nobles were worked upon to form a band of malcontents under Vacchero, and negotiations were opened with Charles Emanuel, whose eagerness to possess Genoa overcame all scruples as to the means. All was got ready for a massacre of the Doge, the Senators and the leading nobles, and for the proclamation of the new Government, but at the last moment one of the conspirators, moved either by fear or compunction, disclosed the plot and Genoa was again saved. Vacchero was put to death and his house near the Porta di Vacca razed to the ground. You will still see on its site, near the fountain to the right as you go down the Via del Campo towards the Porta di Vacca, a pillar bearing a slab with the following emphatic inscription.

« In infamous memory of Julius Caesar Vac« chero, most abandoned of men, who, for having « conspired against the Republic, with his head cut « off, with his goods confiscated, with his sons ba« nished and with his house destroved , expiated his « well earned punishment in the year of Grace 1628.

These stones of infamy, as they are called, are quite a speciality of Genoa and are well worth the attention of visitors, not only from their connection with the history of the time but also as most curious and unconventional specimens of epitaphs, altogether unlike what one is accustomed to read in a churchyard. You will find two of them side by side - unluckily they are, besides Vacchero's, the only ones that have been preservedlet into the wall of the Ducal Palace near the Archbishop's Palace. Both are of the seventeenth century. The earlier in date is dedicated to a Marquis Balbi and runs as follows:

« To John Paul Balbi, worst of men, a vile « assassin, a clipper of good coin and an utterer « of false, a notorious thief and an infamous ex« tortioner of tribute, declared a State traitor for « conspiring against the Republic, his property « confiscated, his sons proscribed, he himself con« demned to the halter, this stone has been raised « to his eternal shame in the year 1650. »

This successor of Vacchero in the paths of treason was a member of the new order of nobles or Portico San Pietro, and his hatred of the more aristocratic Portico San Luca was the main reason for his plotting against the State. He had been sentenced to banishment for contemptuous conduct towards the old nobles, and, out of spite, he made overtures to Mazarin, who was then Regent of France for the young King, Louis XIV, to betray the town, it being proposed that French troops should be sent over from Leghorn and should be admitted within the walls by a secret passage leading from the sea to Balbi's house in Piazza Sarzano. This plot like all the others was discovered in time, but Balbi, more fortunate than most conspirators, managed to escape with his life. You will find a curious proof of the thorough way in which his family were ashamed of him in the picture gallery of the Balbi Palace, where a picture by Vandyk is now shown as the portrait of Philip II of Spain, whereas it is really the portrait of John Paul Balbi, with another head painted in by Velasquez who visited Genoa after the conspiracy. The slab next to Balbi records the memory of Raphael della Torre in these words: « Raphael della Torre, a despoiler by every « artifice of other men's goods, a vile murderer, « an associate of thieves, a pirate in his own « waters, a traitor and an enemy to the State,

« who incurred for plotting the ruin of the Republic « punishments less great than his crimes, was « sentenced twice to be hanged, to have his pro« perty confiscated, his sons banished and his « houses destroyed. Through this lasting monument c of infamy may his name be loathsome. Year of « our Lord, 1672. »

He appears to have been by nature even more of a thief than a conspirator, since he began his career by fitting out a galley and capturing quite close to Genoa a richly laden merchant vessel belonging to his native town. This act of piracy at home (so different from piracy abroad) was in the highest degree irritating to his fellow citizens, and Della Torre was condemned to death, but he escaped to Turin and endeavoured, when there, to act the same part for Charles Emanuel II, who was then Duke of Savoy, as Vacchero had wished to do for Charles Emanuel I, all arrangements being made for handing over the Republic to Savoy. Nothing however came of it except a second sentence of death and a stone of infamy for Della Torre, who seems to have cared remarkably little for the rage of the authorities, and he even sent, as a proof of his being still alive, an infernal machine to the Doge which would have blown up both the Head of the State and the Senate if the packet had been opened, as was intended, during the sitting of the Council.

In connection with the efforts made by the House of Savoy in the seventeenth century to gain possession of Genoa, I will mention here the outer line of walls that forms such a conspicuous feature in the panorama of the town. These walls were commenced in 1630, as a protection against the ambition of Charles Emanuel I, and it is reported that the workmen were urged on by the cry of « The Duke is coming », much as one can imagine five centuries before the name of Barbarossa being used to hasten on the building of those fortifications which were raised in 1157 to repel the German invasion.

The history of Genoa at this period is like the roll of the Prophet; there is written therein only lamentation and mourning and woe. As an interlude to wars and plots we come in 1657 to the great plague, which carried off, it is said, over sixty thousand of the inhabitants. As seen from our point of view, what is perhaps a greater evil even that this enormous mortality was the injury done to art by the extinction of the school of Lombard artists who were continuing the work of Galeazzo Alessio in Genoa. The Via Balbi, that begins in spendour and ends in meanness, records in the clearest manner the ravages of the-pestilence. If it had not been for the plague of 1657, we should now in all probability see the Via Balbi complete with its double line of lordly residences, so ample in dimensions and so princely in appearance that one of them, like the Durazzo, taken almost at hazard, became (without change or enlargement) the King's palace, and looks right royal. As it was, the architects were all swept off and they left no successors, so that only hideosities, like the Pammatone of the eighteenth century or the Carlo Felice Opera house of the nineteenth, meet our eye as specimens of later art.

We have next to speak of the bombardment of Genoa by the French in 1684 which, save for the imperfection of ancient artillery, would have proved a greater calamity for the town than the plague. Louis XIV, le Grand Monarque, had an incredibly small minded spite against the Republic, probably because Spanish ascendency was still acknowledged in Genoa, and, apparently with no other object than to vent his spleen, he sent a fleet against the town with orders to bombard if his demands were not at once complied with. As these were of the most arbitrary nature, including the order to restore the confiscated Fieschi estates to the descendants of the brother of the conspirator who had escaped to France, and as only a few hours were allowed for the answer, it is not to be wondered at if the French commander found an excuse for opening fire, and being apparently as eager as his master to do the Genoese mischief he continued for full three days to bombard the town. The chroniclers write in the most heart-broken strain of the thousands of shots fired and the enormous amount of damage done, but the accounts must be exaggerated, for, as I have just said, every building of any artistic merit in the town is of earlier date than the second half of the seventeenth century and must therefore have survived the bombardment. Presumably only the weaker built houses of the middle and lower classes were destroyed, while the palaces and churches were solid enough to resist the comparatively harmless

projectiles of the period. You can still see two of the cannon balls that have been preserved as records of the bombardment of 1684, one in the interior of the Church of Santa Maria di Castello and the other on the outer wall of the disused Church of San Silvestro near the Piazza Sarzano. After the Genoese had been fired at, as I mentioned above, for three days and nights they saw nothing for it but to promise compliance to all the King asked, but they had to endure a fresh humiliation in the demand that was then made them that the Doge himself should go to Paris to sue for pardon. It was in vain represented to Louis that the laws of the Republic forbad the Head of the State from leaving his dominions, and that the Doge would be no longer Doge if he went into another country. The only answer the King gave was that, if so, a fresh Doge would be named who would learn to govern better, so the unfortunate Doge in office, Francesco Maria Lercaro, accompanied by four Senators, had to go to Paris and make the most fulsome speeches. Lercaro, at all events, had the wit to improve the occasion by a bon mot. When led about by the courtiers to view the wonders of the newly built

Chateau of Versailles and asked what surprised him most, he promptly answered « To find myself here » , and the saying has become historical.

The eighteenth century opened ominously for Europe with the war of the Spanish Succession, but Genoa by judicious trimming suceeded in escaping any political entanglement. Louis was kept in good humour by the ceremonious welcome given in the city to the newly appointed king of Spain, Philip V, while the purchase for a large sum of the Marquisate of Finale from the Emperor of Austria allayed any possible irritation on the part of France's great rival. The Genoese Government were in such nervous dread of any act that might draw them into war that, when in 1703 Andrea Doria, Duke of Tursi, captured two officers of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, who had just declared himself an ally of Austria, it was actually decided to punish the Duke for this breach of neutrality by levelling to the ground the magnificent palace in the Via Nuova that bears his name: and this piece of Vandalism was only averted through the action of one of the Brignole family who undertook to obtain the release of the two officers from King Louis to whom Tursi had sent them. One can scarcely realise how great a disfigurement of one of the finest parts of the town we should now have to endure it, where ihe Doria Tursi Palace now stands, there were either blank space or some vulgar piece of modern architecture, as in the case of the Fieschi site at Carignano.

The Genoese, in spite of the obvious fact that peace was the only chance of salvation for their superannuated and decaying republic, failed to keep neutral in the next great war which some forty years later broke over the Continent, the war of the Pragmatic Succession, caused as you know by the nomination by special edict of Maria Teresa, as successor to the Emperor Charles VI of Austria, in defiance of the stipulations of Salic law. In consequence of the dispute arising over this succession, Austria, England, Holland and Sardinia took the field against France, Spain and Naples, and Genoa in an evil hour consented to enter the lists and take the side of the Bourbons. It must be said that there was some excuse for abandoning the safe course of neutrality, seeing that Maria Teresa, regardless of the fact that the Genoese had purchased the territory from her father, had formally assigned as the price of his alliance the Marquisate of Finale to Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, (the House of Savoy had taken the royal title by the peace of Utrecht in 1713) and the Republic ran therefore equal chance of being despoiled whether remaining quiet or making a struggle; but, whatever may have been the justification of the step taken, the punishment for it came swift and strong. The allied armies of France and Spain, partly from inferiority of numbers, partly from dissensions between their generals, were beaten time after time by the Austrians and Piedmontese and ended by leaving Genoa to her fate, so that the unhappy city, in the autumn of 1746, saw at her gates a formidable Austrian force under the command of Botta Adomo, a general whose Italian birth and Genoese parentage seemed only to make doubly brutal and implacable. A singular accident might at the last moment have changed the aspect of affairs. The Austrians were camping in the dry bed of the Polcevera when, in consequence of heavy rain in the mountains, the stream came down in the night with such suddenness and force that the soldiers would have been drowned almost as completely as the Egyptians in the Red Sea, if a washerwoman had not, with more kindheartedness than patriotism, given the alarm. As it was, the confusion among the troops was so great that a spirited attack on the part of the town might have forced them to retreat, but the Senate was so paralyzed with fear and so hopeful of getting fair terms by submission that strict orders were given to offer no molestation to the disorganized soldiers. Ambassadors were sent next day to the camp to sue for peace, and the nature of the man they had to deal with was soon made apparent. Botta Adorno not only claimed immediate possession of the town but he demanded such enormous sums as indemnity that the unfortunate Genoese assured him that they would all be beggars if they paid the money. « I only mean to leave you your eyes to cry with » he is reported to have said, and he suited the action to the word, for, during the next three months, the process of extortion and pillage was carried on so ruthlessly that it looked as if the whole State of Genoa were going to be reduced to utter ruin. But all at once the turn came. Charles Emanuel who was besieging the French Fort of Antibes applied to Botta Adorno for some artillery, and the General, who was equally unscrupulous as to any form of plunder, gave orders that a number of the heaviest guns in Genoa should be sent out. The sight of the cannons and mortars being dragged through the streets roused the Genoese at last. The money contributions naturally affected only the well-to-do classes, but the carrying away of their means of defence stung the whole population to the quick, and from that moment the Austrian cause was lost. You are no doubt aware of the precise incident that determined the revolt, the stick in a muddy place close to the hospital of one of these guns, and the brutality of the Austrians towards the townspeople who had been forced to drag it. The famous Balilla threw his stone, the crowd rushed on the soldiers, and the struggle for liberty spread like wild-fire. Five days of brave fighting followed, during which the Doge, Senators and nobles kept themselves barred in their houses, and on the tenth of December the Austrians were actually beaten out of the town. A marvellous instance indeed of well-directed popular ener

gy , and showing how the true spirit of the sometime masters of the Mediterranean and conquerors of the Moors had survived the utter debasement of their rulers. As you go up Via Balbi towards the railway station )-ou will see to the right a particularly steep lane, steep even for Genoa, called Petraminuta. Up this hill, during the five days fight, men, women and children, pell mell, pulled up by sheer force of arm a heavy mortar. It is certainly a wonder how they ever did it, and the fact of their succeeding in this instance, while they stuck fast on perfectly level ground with a similar piece of of ordnance, when working for the Austrians, gives a striking illustration of the force of will. One of the popular leaders was a certain Giovanni Carbone, a mere pot boy in a wine shop, who, after the town was freed, was deputed to present to the Senate the keys of the Porta San Tommaso which the citizens under his command had gallantly won back from the enemy; and he is reported to have accompanied the gift with these singularly dignified words: « These are the keys of our « homes which your Seigneuries handed over « with such readiness to our enemies. The people « have recovered them with their blood and hope « that the}r will be better guarded in future. »

It did indeed seem that the example of heroism given by the lower classes was not altogether lost on the upper , for the nobles shook off their apathy and came forward as leaders of the army of defence which was being rapidly organized, as, although the Austrians had retired out of sight, it was expected that they might at any moment attempt another attack. This good feeling between high and low was however only of short duration, since, about a month after the expulsion of the Austrians, the Doge and Senators were very nearly being attacked and massacred by the mob. Some story had been circulated as to the authorities playing into the hands of the enemy, whereupon an infuriated crowd rushed to the gate of the Ducal Palace and, finding it closed, proceeded to bring up a cannon so as to to force admittance. Just as they were going to fire, one of the Senators, Giacomo Lomellino, threw open the door, planted himself at the mouth of the gun and harangued the people to such effect that they quietly dispersed. If you go down the Via San Lorenzo towards the port and look up at the last house but two on the left, you will see on the walls of the loggia on the first floor a basrelief depicting the whole scene, the angry crowd, the frightened Senators, the cannon , and Lomellino stepping through the open door. There is a well-known saying in Genoa « Finalmente Lomellino ha aperto il portico » which is taken by some to refer to this episode.

The ferocious Austrian general Botta Adorno was so mortified at having lost Genoa that he gave up the command, but his successor tried his best to regain the town, and obstinate fighting in the neighourhood was kept up for several months after the Balilla incident. The Genoese, however, fired by their previous success and ably led by the Due de Boufflers, whom Louis XV had sent with a small force to help them, gave a very good account of themselves, and when the peace of Aix la Chapelle at last put a stop to the war Genoa was treated with consideration and got back the disputed territory of Finale. To the sincere grief of the townspeople Boufflers died of smallpox in Genoa in 1747, and you may see his tomb, with a most grateful inscription, in the Annunziata church. This affection of the Genoese for Boufflers is one of the few instances of kindly feeling between France and the Republic in all the long period during which they were connected.

The success over the Austrians of 1746 was the last sign of vitality shown by the State. The last half century of her existence is merely a record of misfortune and decay. We have in 1763 a significant symptom of approaching dissolution in the cession of Corsica to Louis XV of France, although, as I said in my first lecture, the possession of the Island was from first to last a source of poverty and a curse to Genoa. The connection with Corsica began about the year 1000 when the Genoese took some of the sea port towns from the Saracens, and for three centuries the supremacy was disputed by Genoa and Pisa. When Pisa was crushed in 1284 by the defeat of the Meloria, the Genoese became masters, but they utterly failed to establish anything like good government and good feeling in the Island. In the earlier days of Genoese occupation, when Cyprus, Galata and CafFa were real sources of power and wealth, the Genoese had the good sense to leave Corsica pretty much to itself, but when the Turks had stripped them of all their Eastern possessions they clung with desperate energy to the last of their colonies, and the closer was the contact the more bitter became the hatred. The Corsicans, with no ideas beyond their guns and their knives, and with that inborn sense of independence which had made even the old Romans see that they were unfit for slaves, despised and loathed the Genoese as mere grasping traders, while the Genoese, partly from fear of their unruly subjects, partly from the blind wish to hold an important dependency which would keep up the prestige of the decaying Republic, strained their purses to pay foreign troops and quell every attempt at revolt. The long and dreary succession of mutual killings was at last ended, at the time we speak of, by Pasquale Paoli, who put himself at the head of his countrymen and by his rare qualities as a patriot and a general made the position of the Genoese entirely untenable. Acting with most unworthy spite they did not however, even in this extremity, make a virtue of necessity and give the Island its freedom, but preferred handing it over to France, thus fitly closing one of the

darkest pages of the history of the Republic. It is suggestive of the utter sterility of Genoese rule over Corsica, that the only trace of it now left should be the name given to a shabby modern street, the via Corsica, in Carignano.

We come now to the last act of the drama, the disappearance of the independence of Genoa in the flame of the French Revolution.

The Senate had watched with well-founded anxiety the course of events in France, and the usual effort was made to preserve neutrality in the European conflict that broke out after the execution of Louis XVI. In this case the hand of the Government was forced by the very uncompromising attitude taken up by Sir Francis Drake, the English Minister at the Court of Genoa. The English Fleet, acting under orders given by Drake, behaved in such a high-handed manner with respect to some French vessels that had sought the shelter of the port, that the name of England grew hated in Genoa, and the French alliance was clamorously demanded. Apart from any political considerations, the general feeling was all for the new order of things represented by France. In the Balilla episode of fifty years before the people had felt their own strength and measured the weakness of their superiors, and now, with the example of France before them, the desire to assert their rights and break down the privileges of the nobles became uncontrollable. The French alliance was concluded in 1797 and was followed almost immediately by a demand from Paris for a change in the form of government, the Directory stating that an oligarchy was incompatible with friendship for a free State. The Senate did their best, while yielding to the necessities of the situation, to preserve for the nobles some part of their old ascendency, but the wave of popular feeling was too strong, and all the privileges and traditions of the past were swept away like a whirlwind. The Ligurian democratic Republic, beginning like its French model with the year one, was proclaimed to the citizens, who put up trees of liberty all over the town and danced and sung round them in honour of the new constitution, whilst the nobles shut themselves up in their houses and trembled as to what might happen next. In fact, the popular excitement very soon got beyond mere shouting, and, although there were no lives taken, an amount of mischief was done which from an historical and esthetical point of view is almost more to be regretted than mere bloodshed. The famous Golden Book, with its two hundred and seventy years of stately record, was carried away from its place of deposit in the Ducal Palace and publicly burnt at the foot of the Tree of Liberty in the Piazza dell'Arquaverde, renamed for the occasion Piazza della Liberta. Worse still, the statues of Andrea and his nephew Gian Andrea Doria which stood before the great door of the Ducal Palace on the pedestals still existing, were thrown down and mutilated. What remains of them is preserved in the cloister of San Matteo close to the Church.

There was also a wholesale destruction of the statues that used to line the walls of the great hall of the Ducal Palace, the hall of the Grand Council or Parliament of the old Republic. It is really surprising that the statues of the benefactors of the Bank of S. George did not go too, but, if the ornaments were spared, the Bank itself fell a victim to the new order of things, for, as I already mentioned in my second lecture, the new Republic took away from the Bank all the public funds, thus depriving it of available resources when most wanted, and causing it to be overwhelmed by the claims of the general creditors whom the unsettled state of affairs made nervous as to their money. Finally, by edict of the Doge President, as the head of the New Republic was styled, all crests and coronets, whereever visible, whether in marble, wood or colour, were ordered, as relics of a hateful past, to be effaced. If, as you walk in the old part of the town, you will examine the sculptured portals that are such a graceful feature of so many of the palaces you will notice almost everywhere a blank in the medallion reserved for the crest. In some few instances however the crest - generally an eagle - still appears, the whole carving having been swathed in plaster so as to save it.

It must not be understood, from what I have been relating, that the Democratic Republic only destroyed works of art without making any effort to embellish the town by contributions of her own. There is a monument of the Ligurian regeneration still to be seen in Genoa on which I will venture to say that no descendant of the injured patricians will ever think it worth while to make reprisals. It is a washing place, almost under the Bridge of Carignano in the Via dei Servi beyond the Teatro Apollo, which is fashioned into the most hideous caricature of the facade of a Greek temple, and which sets forth in large letters that it was raised in the name of Liberty and Equality to the Sovereign People by the Ediles in the first year of the Ligurian Democratic Republic.