Critical and Historical Essays, vol 1 | Page 8

May-day dance of the Etrurian virgins. Alas for the beautiful city! Alas
for the wit and the learning, the genius and the love!
"Le donne, e i cavalier, gli affanni, e gli agi, Che ne 'nvogliava amore e
cortesia La dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi."
A time was at hand, when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to
be poured forth and shaken out over those pleasant countries, a time of
slaughter, famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, despair.
In the Italian States, as in many natural bodies, untimely decrepitude
was the penalty of precocious maturity. Their early greatness, and their
early decline, are principally to be attributed to the same cause, the
preponderance which the towns acquired in the political system.
In a community of hunters or of shepherds, every man easily and
necessarily becomes a soldier. His ordinary avocations are perfectly
compatible with all the duties of military service. However remote may
be the expedition on which he is bound, he finds it easy to transport
with him the stock from which he derives his subsistence. The whole
people is an army; the whole year a march. Such was the state of
society which facilitated the gigantic conquests of Attila and

Tamerlane.
But a people which subsists by the cultivation of the earth is in a very
different situation. The husbandman is bound to the soil on which he
labours. A long campaign would be ruinous to him. Still his pursuits
are such as give to his frame both the active and the passive strength
necessary to a soldier. Nor do they, at least in the infancy of
agricultural science, demand his uninterrupted attention. At particular
times of the year he is almost wholly unemployed, and can, without
injury to himself, afford the time necessary for a short expedition. Thus
the legions of Rome were supplied during its earlier wars. The season
during which the fields did not require the presence of the cultivators
sufficed for a short inroad and a battle. These operations, too frequently
interrupted to produce decisive results, yet served to keep up among the
people a degree of discipline and courage which rendered them, not
only secure, but formidable. The archers and billmen of the middle ages,
who, with provisions for forty days at their backs, left the fields for the
camp, were troops of the same description.
But when commerce and manufactures begin to flourish a great change
takes place. The sedentary habits of the desk and the loom render the
exertions and hardships of war insupportable. The business of traders
and artisans requires their constant presence and attention. In such a
community there is little superfluous time; but there is generally much
superfluous money. Some members of the society are, therefore, hired
to relieve the rest from a task inconsistent with their habits and
engagements.
The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other respects, the best
commentary on the history of Italy. Five hundred years before the
Christian era, the citizens of the republics round the Aegean Sea
formed perhaps the finest militia that ever existed. As wealth and
refinement advanced, the system underwent a gradual alteration. The
Ionian States were the first in which commerce and the arts were
cultivated, and the first in which the ancient discipline decayed. Within
eighty years after the battle of Plataea, mercenary troops were
everywhere plying for battles and sieges. In the time of Demosthenes, it
was scarcely possible to persuade or compel the Athenians to enlist for
foreign service. The laws of Lycurgus prohibited trade and
manufactures. The Spartans, therefore, continued to form a national

force long after their neighbours had begun to hire soldiers. But their
military spirit declined with their singular institutions. In the second
century before Christ, Greece contained only one nation of warriors,
the savage highlanders of Aetolia, who were some generations behind
their countrymen in civilisation and intelligence.
All the causes which produced these effects among the Greeks acted
still more strongly on the modern Italians. Instead of a power like
Sparta, in its nature warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical
state, in its nature pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, every
freeman is induced by the strongest motives to familiarise himself with
the use of arms. The commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of
Greece, swarm with thousands of these household enemies. Lastly, the
mode in which military operations were conducted during the
prosperous times of Italy was peculiarly unfavourable to the formation
of an efficient militia. Men covered with iron from head to foot, armed
with ponderous lances, and mounted on horses of the largest breed,
were considered as composing the strength of an army. The infantry
was regarded as comparatively worthless, and was neglected till it
became really so. These tactics