The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (37 page)

But alas, the Treaty of Granada had left too many questions unanswered. Nothing had been said about the province of the Capitanata, which lies between the Abruzzi and Apulia, nor about the Basilicata, on the instep of Italy between Apulia and Calabria. One might have thought it possible to settle such bones of contention by amicable means, but no: by July France and Spain were at war. The fighting continued on and off for two years, victory finally going to the Spaniards, who in 1503 smashed the French army at Cerignola. On 16 May Gonzalo entered Naples. In the last days of December he fell on the French yet again, by the Garigliano river. This time the battle was decisive, spelling the end of the French presence in Naples. Gaeta, the last French garrison in the kingdom, surrendered to Spanish troops on 1 January 1504. Thenceforth in the mainland kingdom, as well as in Sicily and Spain, the house of Aragon reigned unchallenged.

At this point in the story the spotlight shifts, briefly, to Cyprus. Some two and a half centuries before, the island had been bestowed by Richard Coeur-de-Lion on the hopeless Guy of Lusignan; and although it had from time to time fallen under foreign influences–notably that of Genoa in the fourteenth century and that of Cairo (to which it was still a tributary) in 1426–the house of Lusignan had continued to reign. In 1460, however, James of Lusignan, bastard son of the former king John II, had seized the throne from his sister Queen Charlotte and her husband Louis of Savoy, forcing them to take refuge in the castle of Kyrenia for three years until they could escape to Rome. Once king, James needed allies, and, turning to Venice, he had formally requested the hand in marriage of Caterina, the beautiful young daughter of Marco Cornaro (or Corner, as the Venetians had it), whose family had long been associated with the island. Marco himself had lived there for many years and had become an intimate friend of James, for whom he had accomplished several delicate diplomatic missions, while Caterina’s uncle Andrea was shortly to become Auditor of the Kingdom. On her mother’s side her lineage was still more distinguished: there she could boast as a great-grandfather no less a personage than John Comnenus, Emperor of Trebizond.
¹²⁸

The prospect of a Venetian Queen of Cyprus was more than the government of the Serenissima could resist; lest James should change his mind, it arranged for an immediate marriage by proxy. On 10 July 1468, with all the considerable pomp and magnificence of which the Republic was capable, the fourteen-year-old Caterina was escorted by forty noble matrons from Palazzo Corner at S. Polo to the Doge’s Palace. There Doge Cristoforo Moro handed a ring to the Cypriot ambassador, who placed it on the bride’s finger in the name of his sovereign. She was then given the title of Daughter of St Mark–an unprecedented honour which caused the Bishop of Turin acidly to observe that he never knew that St Mark had been married and that, even if he had, his wife must surely be a little old to have a child of fourteen. Four years later, on 10 November 1472, Caterina sailed away, with an escort of four galleys, to her new realm.

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 regions 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.