The people of Germany, always restless under the yoke of ancient Rome, were rising against the Papal power, which had taken the place of the ancient empire. At the voice of Luther laying bare the festering diseases of the Roman court, the learned of Italy were moved. The Pope comprehended that there was no other means of extirpating the seeds of reform which had already sprung up in Italy but to ally himself with catholic Spain: she was in the zenith of her glory. Such captains as Cortes and Pizzaro sailed away with a galley and returned conquerors of a new world. Who better than the compatriots of Torquemada could suffocate in blood the free voices of the disciples of Huss and Wicliffe? From that moment the compact of Charlemagne was renewed between Charles V. and the Roman theocracy, and through it the Spaniards tightened their grasp on Milan, Naples, Palermo and Cagliari, and established their ascendency over the whole Peninsula. From Charles V. dates our humiliation and slavery. From his time the Peninsula has had no proper history. Its vicissitudes and calamities are only episodes of the great drama enacted by the nations who have fought against each other for our blood. The council of Trent was not an act of national life. It grew out of the philosophic spirit of reform and the scandals of the Roman court, and was initiated by Germany and France while England was separating herself from the catholic church. This celebrated synod shows nothing but the conflict between the church and the empire, between the reformers and the courtiers of Rome struggling to maintain their privileges, between the Popes who fought to maintain their abuses and the secular princes who secretly laboured to shake off the priestly yoke. The Italian people had no part in it. The religious discussions upon divine grace, predestination and justification by faith did not reach us, who were everywhere plotting to recover our independence and freedom. In fact this is the century of popular conspiracies, which were always strangled by degenerate nobles and foreign armies. It is true that the most illustrious Italians sided with the people and died for their righteous cause; but these were vain struggles. From the day that Lorenzino de’Medici, for whom the Spanish power (which Duke Alexander was consolidating in Italy) was too bitter, formed the design of restoring the Republic and then, bought by promises of lascivious embraces, stifled his own purpose, the spark of liberty took fire and in every city the plebeians rose against their foreign oppressors.