All these miseries were exacerbated by frequent recurrences of plagues and famines.
It is characteristic of the whole tenor of Italian history that, in spite of the virtual hegemony which the Spaniards now exercised in the peninsula, the nation continued to exist in separate parcels, each of which retained a certain individuality.

That Italy could not have been treated as a single province by the Spanish autocrat will be manifest, when we consider the European jealousy to which so summary an exhibition of force would have given rise.

It is also certain that the Papacy, which had to be respected, would have resisted an openly declared Spanish despotism.

But more powerful, I think, than all these considerations together, was the past prestige of the Italian States.
Europe was not prepared to regard that brilliant and hitherto respected constellation of commonwealths, from which all intellectual culture, arts of life, methods of commerce, and theories of political existence had been diffused, as a single province of the Spanish monarchy.

The Spaniards themselves were scarcely in a position to entertain the thought of reducing the peninsula to bondage _vi et armis_.