MILAN

MILAN, called by the Italians Milano, and by the Germans Mailand or Mayland, is one of the governments into which the Austrian kingdom of Lombardy is divided. It was known as the duchy of Milan, till it came under the dominion of the imperial family of Austria. In the article ITALY of this work, the history of the ancient realm of the Longobards, with its kings of the iron crown, is noticed, as well as the other remarkable events respecting this country; and here we need only state the dates of the principal occurrences under the independent dukedom.

The first duke was Galleazzo Visconti, who was installed in that dignity by the Emperor Wenzel in the year 1395; and it continued in his family till the male line became extinct in 1447. France made some urgent efforts to obtain the authority, but these were of no avail, as Francesco Sforza, who had married an illegitimate daughter of the last Visconti, succeeded in gaining possession of the supreme power in this beautiful country, and transmitted it to his successors, who ruled till 1499. At that period Louis XII. king of France, and Francis I. emperor of Germany, laid claim to it. It was long the subject of contention between these two great powers, sometimes possessed by one, sometimes by the other, till after the decisive battle of Pavia in 1525, by which the emperor became master of Milan; and, by the treaty of Madrid in 1556, the possession of it was confirmed, when Francis granted it to Maximilian Sforza, to be held as a fief of the Holy Roman empire. The house of Sforza became extinct in 1535, upon which the Emperor Charles V. granted the duchy to his son Philip the Second, king of Spain. It remained under the power of the heirs of that crown till the war of the succession in 1706, when the events of that contest placed it in the hands of the house of Austria; but, by the treaty of Vienna in 1735, and by that of Worms in 1745, several portions of the country were delivered over to the king of Sardinia. The French revolution occasioned a successful invasion and much fighting, which in 1796 produced the ephemeral Cisalpine republic, which was annihilated by the Austrians and Russians in 1799; but the decisive battle of Marengo in 1801 gave the whole country to Bonaparte, who soon erected his kingdom of Italy, with the city of Milan as its capital and the residence of his viceroy. The peace of Paris in 1814 restored it again to the Austrian dominions, under which it has continued to the present day.

Milan is at present divided into the following nine delegations.

By a late return, it appears that the males under seventeen years of age were 390,634, those between seventeen and twenty-four 88,993, those between twenty-four and thirty-four 105,780, those between thirty-four and forty-six 230,405, and those above forty-six were not classed, as the account was taken for military purposes, from which persons above that age are exempt.

The chief occupation of this body of inhabitants consists in the cultivation of the soil. As that subject has been discussed in what appears its most appropriate place in this work under the head of LOMBARDY, our readers are referred to that article. This government contains 462,700 families, who inhabit 279,160 houses, in fifteen cities, ninety-seven market-towns, and 3217 villages. It is bounded on the east by the government of Venice, on the north by the Swiss cantons, on the west by the territory of Sardinia, and on the south by Parma, Modena, and Sardinia. The northern part is mountainous and sterile, comprehending a portion of the Alps and extensive lakes; but the southern and much the larger part is level and highly fertile, being watered by numerous streams issuing from the lakes, all of which, with their various tributary rivulets, are finally emptied into the Po. There are abundance of canals connected with the rivers and with each other, which are made use of both for the purposes of irrigation and for the conveyance of goods; but on these highly interesting topics we must refer the reader, as before, to the general article LOMBARDY.