A Short History of the Italians

When the Emperor Diocletian, towards the end of the third century A.D., set himself to reorganize the government of the known world, his stout heart may well have quailed before the magnitude of the task before him. The preceding fourteen years had witnessed a succession of six Emperors, some of them men of exceptional courage and ability, of whom three had been assassinated by their troops, one had been killed by the hardships of campaigning, another by lightning on the borders of Persia, and the last still remained to be dealt with and removed. That task successfully accomplished, Diocletian turned his attention to the greater problem before him, and the conclusion at which he arrived was that in order to save the Empire its constitution must be fundamentally remodelled...

Contents:
Italy in the Century Preceding the Barbarian Invasions [284-395]
The Barbarian Invasions [395-476]
The Kingdom of Theodoric [476-553]
The Lombards, the Popes, and the Franks [553-800]
The Beginning of the Middle Ages [800-1002]
The Normans in Southern Italy; Henry IV. and Hildebrand [1002-1085]
The Rise of the Cities, and their Conflict with Frederick Barbarossa [1100-1183]
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, to the End of the Twelfth Century
Italy and the House of Hohenstaufen [1185-1250]
From the Fall of the Hohenstaufen to the "Babylonish Captivity" of the Papacy [1250-1305]
The Rise of the Tyrannies: the Rise of Florence [1250-1313]
Rome and the Papacy during the Fourteenth Century [1305-1389]
Northern Italy during the Fourteenth Century [1313-1405]
The Age of the Councils: The Rise of Medici and Sforza [1389-1450]
The Balance of Power between the Five Great States of Italy [1450-1478]
Italian Statecraft and the Invasion of Charles VIII [1478-1495]
From the Retreat of Charles VIII. to the Spanish Conquest of Naples [1495-1503]
The Pontificate of Julius II. [1503-1513]
Leo X. and the Struggle for Lombardy: The Battle of Pavia [1513-1525]
The Sack of Rome – The Pacification and Enslavement of Italy – The Siege and Fall of Florence [1525-1530]
Italy in the Sixteenth Century
The Glory and Decline of Venice
The Spanish Provinces of Italy: The Popes of the Seventeenth Century
The Evolution of Savoy: The Political Changes of the Eighteenth Century
Napoleon's First Conquest of Italy [1792-1799]
The Napoleonic Era in Italy [1800-1851]
The Years of Reaction and Repression [1815-1846]
The Years of Revolution [1846-1849]
Cavour and the Making of Italy [1849-1860]
The Completion of Italian Unity [1860-1870]