So superficially has history been written that it is difficult to gather the effect thus far of the change in the channels of trade; but there seems to be no obscurity as to the effect of papal and Spanish rule. What the arrest of trade began, and the rule of Leo X promoted, the desperate wars of France and Spain for the possession of Italy completed, and the misgovernment of the Spanish crown from 1530 onwards perpetuated. Under sane rule peace might have brought recuperation; but Spanish rule was ruin prolonged. Destructive taxation, and still more destructive monopolies, paralysed commerce in the cities under Spanish sway; while the executive was so weak for good that brigandage abounded in the interior, and the coasts were raided periodically by the fleets of the Turks or the Algerine pirates. The decline of the art of painting in Italy (apart from Venice and Rome) being broadly coincident with this collapse, the induction is pretty clear that the economic demand had been the fundamental force in the artistic development. The Church and the despot remained, but the artistic growth ceased. Always in need of money for his vast outlays, Leo administered his secular power solely with a view to his own immediate revenue, and set up trade monopolies in Florence and the papal estates wherever he could. As to the usual effects of the papal power on commerce, see Napier, _Florentine History_, 1845, ii, 413. "The Court of Rome, since it had ceased to respect the ancient municipal liberties, never extended its authority over a new province without ruining its population and resources" (Sismondi, _Short History_, p. 319). Roscoe (_Life of Leo X_, ed. 1846, ii, 207) speaks of a revival of Florentine commerce under Leo's kinsman, the Cardinal, about 1520; but this is almost the only glance at the subject of trade and administration in Roscoe's work. Under Pope Gregory XIII (1572-84) there was for a time fair prosperity in States that had formerly suffered from more precarious tyrannies; but ere long "the taxes laid upon persons, property, and commerce, to replace the lost revenues of Christendom, dried up these resources"; and many cities fell into poverty. Ancona in particular was so crushed by a tax on imports that her Mediterranean trade was lost once for all. (Zeller, _Histoire d'Italie_, 1853, p. 406.) Sismondi's charge is substantially borne out also by Ranke's account (_History of the Popes_, Eng. trans. 1-vol. ed. 1859, pp. 118-19) of the ruinous impositions of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90), who taxed the poorest trades and the necessaries of life, besides debasing the coinage and raising further revenue from the sale of places at exorbitant prices, leaving the holders to recoup themselves by extortion and corruption. Cp., however, Zeller, pp. 409-10, as to his municipal improvements.