A pope could no longer declare war but against petty princes. Urban VIII. did so with the duke of Parma, who had refused to the holy father’s relatives the price of services he pretended to have rendered him. The duke is cited, excommunicated, his duchy of Castro taken possession of, which was obliged to be restored him, by treaty, after four years of disputing and fighting. But, this war, badly extinguished, recommended under Innocent X. the successor of Urban: and, because the duke of Parma could not pay soon enough the enormous interests due to the ‘Mont-de-piete,’ Castro was confiscated, sacked, and razed, by order of the head of the church: on the ruins of this city, a column was raised with tills inscription, “Here Castro was.”³²⁰ When a terrible war in which two great states engage, two powerful princes, or two blind and numerous factions, leads to such disasters, humanity must lament it: but, when a pecuniary interest, an obscure and trifling quarrel between two petty rivals, leads to the destruction of a city, the depression of its inhabitants, and the ruin of their families, and that this useless devastation was coolly ordered by one who had conquered without danger, and almost without an effort, we are filled with more astonishment than indignation; and we could not anticipate such gratuitous severity in a prince, if this prince were not a pontiff, and this pontiff not the successor of Boniface VIII. Yet, it is astonishing that the popes could have been so ignorant of their direct interest in husbanding the Italian cities, in attaching them to the Holy See by benefits, and finally, in restoring them that degree of prosperity and influence, which would enable them to contribute to the re-establishment in Europe of the pontifical dominion. Many popes of the sixteenth century acted on this policy; and it is in consequence of its neglect by those of the fifteenth and seventeenth, that the temporal power of the Roman church seems henceforth doomed to languish and become extinct. ³²⁰ Qui fu Castro.