DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62267#0113
Ch. IV.
THROUGH ITALY.
103
grandfather Amadeus, he would, at the first
menace, have inarched direct to the Alps, gar-
risoned their impregnable fastnesses with his
troops ; and if the enemy appeared, he would
have swept the defiles with his artillery. If vic-
torious, he would have buried half the French
army in the precipices, and stifled the war at its
birth. If defeated, he would have given his
people, and they wanted neither courage nor
inclination, time to assemble and to arm 5 and
had he fallen in the contest be would have fallen,
like Leonidas at Thermopylae, as a hero and a
king, encircled with glory and with renown.
But at that period of infatuation the Roman
Pontiff alone had the sagacity to see the danger,
and the courage to meet it. All the other Italian
powers adopted a temporizing system, an in-
effective neutrality, of all measures the most per-
nicious, because it leaves a state open to attack
without the means of repelling it. Sine gratia,
sine dignitate premium vicloris*. Thus they
were easily overpowered one after the other, and
plundered by the French, who ridiculed their
want of policy while they profited by it. How
different the conduct of the ancient Romans, and
how different the result.
* Liv. xxxv. 49.
THROUGH ITALY.
103
grandfather Amadeus, he would, at the first
menace, have inarched direct to the Alps, gar-
risoned their impregnable fastnesses with his
troops ; and if the enemy appeared, he would
have swept the defiles with his artillery. If vic-
torious, he would have buried half the French
army in the precipices, and stifled the war at its
birth. If defeated, he would have given his
people, and they wanted neither courage nor
inclination, time to assemble and to arm 5 and
had he fallen in the contest be would have fallen,
like Leonidas at Thermopylae, as a hero and a
king, encircled with glory and with renown.
But at that period of infatuation the Roman
Pontiff alone had the sagacity to see the danger,
and the courage to meet it. All the other Italian
powers adopted a temporizing system, an in-
effective neutrality, of all measures the most per-
nicious, because it leaves a state open to attack
without the means of repelling it. Sine gratia,
sine dignitate premium vicloris*. Thus they
were easily overpowered one after the other, and
plundered by the French, who ridiculed their
want of policy while they profited by it. How
different the conduct of the ancient Romans, and
how different the result.
* Liv. xxxv. 49.