ITALY. 58? 



is the title of counts of the sacred palace of the Lateran. The badge 

 is a star of eight points, white, and between the two bottom points a 

 spur, gold. 



HisTORY....Italy was probably first peopled from Greece, as has 

 been mentioned in the Introduction ; to which we refer the reader for 

 the ancient history of this country, which, for many ages, gave law to 

 the then known world, under the Romans. 



The empire of Charlemagne, who died in 814, soon experienced 

 the same fate with that of Alexander. Under his successors it was 

 in a short time entirely dismembered. His son, Louis the Dobonair, 

 succeeded to his dominions in France and Germany, while Bernards 

 the grandson of Charlemagne, reigned over Italy and the adjacent 

 Islands. But Bernard having lost his life by the cruelty of his uncle, 

 against whom he had levied war, and Louis himself dying in 840, his 

 dominions were divided among his sons Lothario, Louis, and Charles. 

 Lothario, with the title of emperor, retained Italy, Provence, and the 

 fertile countries situated between the Saone and the Rhine ; Louis 

 had Germany ; and France fell to the share of Charles, the youngest 

 of the three brothers. Shortly after this, Italy was ravaged by differ- 

 ent contending tyrants ; but, in 964, Otho the Great re-united Italy to 

 the imperial dominions. Italy afterwards suffered much by the con- 

 tests between the popes and the emperors; it was harassed by wars 

 and internal divisons, and at length various principalities and states 

 were erected under different heads. 



Savoy and Piedmont, in time, fell to the lots of the counts of Mau- 

 rienne, the ancestors of his present Sardinian majesty, Victor Araa* 

 deus II, becoming king of Sardinia in virtue of the quadruple alliance 

 concluded in 1718. 



The great duchy of Tuscany belonged to the emperor of Germany, 

 who governed it by deputies to the year 1240, when the famous dis- 

 tinctions of the Guelphs, who were the partisans of the pope, and the 

 Gibellines, who were in the emperor's interest, took place. The 

 popes then persuaded the imperial governors in Tuscany to put 

 themselves under the protection of the church ; but the Florentines 

 in a short time formed themselves into a free commonwealth, and 

 fcravely defended their liberties against both parties by turns. Fac- 

 tion at last shook their freedom ; and the family of Medici, long be- 

 fore they were declared either princes or dukes, in fact governed 

 Florence, though the rights and privileges of the people seemed 

 still to exist. The Medici, particularly Cosmo, who was deservedly 

 called the Father of his country, being in the secret, shared with the 

 Venetians in the immense profits of the East-India trade, before the 

 discoveries made by the Portuguese. His revenue in ready money, 

 which exceeded that of any sovereign prince in Europe, enabled his 

 successors to rise to sovereign power ; and pope Pius V, gave one 

 of his descendants (Cosmo, the great patron of the arts) the title of 

 great-duke of Tuscany in 1570, which continued in his family to the 

 death of Gaston de Medicis, in 1737, without issue. The great duchy 

 was then claimed by the emperor Charles VI, as a fief of the empire, 

 and given to his son-in-law, the duke of Lorrain (afterwards emperor, 

 and father of Joseph II,) in lieu of the duchy of Lorrain, which was 

 ceded to France by treaty. Leopold, his second son (brother and 

 successor to the emperor Joseph II,) upon the death of his father, 

 became grand duke. When he succeeded to the imperial crown, his 

 son Ferdinand entered upon the sovereignty of the grand duchy of 



