With Maximilian I begins not only the general intervention
of foreign nations, but a new imperial policy with regard to Italy. The first
stepthe investiture of Lodovico il Moro with the duchy of Milan and the
exclusion of his unhappy nephewwas not of a kind to bear good fruits.
According to the modern theory of intervention when two parties are tearing a
country to pieces, a third may step in and take its share, and on this
principle the empire acted. But right and justice could be involved no longer.
When Louis XI was expected in Genoa (1507), and the imperial eagle was removed
from the hall of the ducal palace and replaced by painted lilies, the historian
Senarega asked what, after all, was the meaning of the eagle which so many
revolutions had spared, and what claims the empire had upon Genoa. No one knew
more about the matter than the old phrase that Genoa was a camera imperii.
In fact, nobody in Italy could give a clear answer to any such questions. At
length when Charles V held Spain and the empire together, he was able by means
of Spanish forces to make good imperial claims: but it is notorious that what
he thereby gained turned to the profit, not of the empire, but of the Spanish
monarchy.
