_From Visconti to Sforza_
“Una città corrotta che vive sotto un principe ... mai non si può
ridurre libera.”—MACCHIAVELLI.
Gian Galeazzo’s three sons by Isabella of Valois had died in infancy,
leaving him with one daughter only, Valentina, whom in 1387 he had
married to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, an
alliance of immense immediate advantage to the Visconti, but of fatal
issue for Milan and Italy generally, in days beyond even his far vision.
After some years of marriage, his second wife, Caterina Visconte, had
borne him a son, whom he had named Giovanni Maria, decreeing that every
one of his descendants should thenceforth bear the name of Maria, as a
token of his gratitude to the Virgin, to whose intercession he
attributed the birth of his heir. A second son, Filippo Maria, was born
later. At the time of the Duke’s death the elder was only fourteen, and
the younger ten. In addition to their youth, they had the enduring
disadvantage of issuing from parents both of the same stock, which
already, in the ferocity and capriciousness of Bernabò and the physical
timidity and weakness of Gian Galeazzo himself, had shown signs of
vitiation. This taint in the blood became in Giovanni Maria a moral
disease, amounting to mania, and in his brother an exaggerated
misanthropy and timidity.
Giovanni Maria succeeded to the dukedom, and Filippo became by his
father’s will Count of Pavia, which had been erected into an appanage of
the sovereign House. The charge of the young Duke’s person and state
immediately became the object of a wild scramble among the different
parties in the city. The dead man’s will, appointing his widow regent,
was utterly disregarded, and she and her adviser, Francesco Barbavara,
were driven out by Estorre and Carlo Visconte, two of Bernabò’s sons,
who now reappeared after long exile, hoping to recover their heritage.
The Duchess died in 1404, poisoned, it was believed, by her son. But
this unhappy lady, who had seen her father entrapped and murdered and
her whole family ruined by her husband, and whose sons were now helpless
in the hands of robbers and foes—who had been driven hither and thither
in the whirl of faction and was already paralytic—might well sink
beneath her sorrows, without the help of this unnatural crime, which
there seems to have been no better reason than his general wickedness
for laying to the young Duke’s charge.
Meanwhile Bernabò’s sons were swept away by other faction leaders, to
return and be again overthrown, as the fortunes of the struggle surged
backwards and forwards. One after another of Gian Galeazzo’s great
captains snatched and held the city for a time. Now Ottobuono Terzo—now
Carlo Malatesta—now Facino Cane, the most famous of them all, ruled in
the name of the utterly incapable Prince, while out of the ruins of Gian
Galeazzo’s vast State, which Venice, Florence and the Church had
hastened to dismember, each faithless governor seized some remaining
fragment wherewith to create a small independent dominion for himself.
Thus while the great Duke’s conquests, further off, were quickly lost,
cities close to the capital and long subject to the Visconti fell to
these lesser depredators. Pavia and other towns were captured by Facino
Cane, who kept the young Filippo a virtual prisoner, and Monza became
the stronghold of Estorre Visconte and his spirited sister Valentina.
The confusion and struggle in Milan continued throughout the ten years
of Giovanmaria’s reign. The condition of the city was lamentable. Peace
and order were destroyed, and the names of Guelf and Ghibelline were
heard again in the streets, inflaming household against household and
awakening the horrors of civil war. The Duke made no attempt to rule for
himself. His only share in the government was the execution of State
prisoners, whom he caused to be torn to pieces, under his own eyes, by
dogs trained for the purpose. The extraordinary passion for dogs,
together with the hatred of humankind, visible in Bernabò and others of
the Visconti, had become an extravagant ferocity in this degenerate
member of the race. The story of Milan during his reign is like some
dreadful dream, in which, when sleep has fallen on the incessant riots
and fighting, through the darkness of the night stalk the awful figures
of the maniac Prince, gloating in his sport, and his huntsman, Squarcia
Giramo, beside him, with their terrible hounds in leash, on the scent of
human blood.
The Duke’s appetite for blood was rewarded with Dantesque fitness. He
died in 1412, suffocated in his own blood in the precincts of the
palace, under the daggers of three Milanese nobles, who had sworn to rid
the world of a monster, and his body, lying in its blood in the
Cathedral, whither it had been carried and left alone by the general
horror, had for its only pall blood-red roses strewn upon it by a
harlot.
At the moment of Giovanmaria’s murder, Facino Cane, who for some years
had dominated Milan, lay on his death-bed. Filippo Maria Visconte, whose
youth had passed in confinement at Pavia, now found himself at one
stroke free, and in nominal possession at least of the Dukedom. He was
twenty years old. The astute young man’s first step was to marry
Beatrice Tenda, Facino’s widow, through whom he became at once master of
Pavia and the State which the Condottiere had conquered for himself, and
of Facino’s fine army and immense treasure. He then led his troops to
Milan, where his entry was opposed by Estorre Visconte and a strong
faction. The great stronghold of Porta Giovia was, however, held for the
legitimate prince by the Castellan, Vincenzo Marliano, who roused the
citizens against Estorre. That brave soldier, the Hector of his race,
was overthrown, and he and his nephew Giovanni Carlo, with all their
supporters, were compelled to fly after a few days. The young Duke
marched in without opposition and was received with enthusiasm by the
people.
The city felt at once the presence of a master. Order was restored,
factions calmed, peaceful industry protected, and punishment inflicted
on Giovanmaria’s murderers. Filippo proceeded to engage the most
successful Condottieri of the day to defend and restore his State,
seconding their valour and generalship in the field by the most careful
and industrious diplomacy in every Court of Italy and the principal
European kingdoms. The rebel Visconti were subdued by the death of
Estorre and the surrender of Monza (1412), which the brave Valentina
relinquished, making honourable terms for herself and the remaining
descendants of Bernabò. Lodi, Como, Piacenza and Brescia were recovered
in the course of a few years, and in 1422 Genoa was won. Filippo’s rapid
progress awakened the old terror of the Snake once again in Italy. The
third Duke of Milan had indeed many of the successful qualities of his
race, the craft, the patience, the untiring industry. But they were
vitiated by his timidity of mind and body, which made him both
suspicious and superstitious. Supremely perfidious himself, he dared
trust no man, and constantly laid snares for his own agents, and ended
by falling into them himself. Thus in 1424, fearful of the glory of his
great general, Carmagnola, who had been the chief means of restoring his
fortunes, he offended and alienated the Condottiere, with disastrous
consequences. In his fear and dislike of all men he shut himself up in
the innermost recesses of the Castle of Porta Giovia, and maintained as
many precautions as if he dwelt in a city of traitors. He tolerated few
persons around him, except his astrologers, who ruled him through his
fears. He dared take no step without consulting them. He was never seen
by his subjects except upon some rare State occasion, surrounded by
guards, or when some peasant, working in the solitary fields, spied him
slipping hastily in his barge along the canals between Milan and his
favourite country palace of Abbiategrasso.
This dark habit of life made him odious to the sunny-tempered Milanese.
They shuddered at this pale fat man, who increased their horror by
condemning his own wife to death in 1418. To Beatrice Tenda and her vast
dowry Filippo owed almost entirely his possession of the Dukedom. Her
years much exceeded her second husband’s, though the Duke, like his
father, had never been young. Because he was tired of her, or because
she was cross and avaricious, as the chroniclers variously aver, or more
probably because she had served her purpose and was no longer of any use
to him, Filippo accused her of infidelity. She was arrested and carried
to the Castle of Binasco, together with her supposed lover, a handsome
young knight, Michele Orombello, who had solaced her dreary existence
with his skill upon the lute, and after having resisted torture
inflicted to make her confess herself guilty, she was beheaded.
Orombello and two of her ladies shared her fate. Ten years later the
Duke married, for political reasons, the Princess Maria of Savoy. This
poor lady was hardly less to be pitied than Beatrice. The Duke neglected
her himself, yet jealously kept her secluded from all but her own women,
allowing no man to appear in her presence. Meanwhile Agnese del Maino,
the lady who had secured the tyrant’s affections, reigned in the Castle
as his wife in all but name. Filippo’s love for Agnese, a woman of
spirit and culture, and his devotion to the daughter she bore him, his
only child, Bianca Maria, were human traits in his otherwise unamiable
character. Though no lover of learning, Filippo continued, as much as
circumstances allowed, the Viscontean patronage of culture and letters,
the tradition that had descended from his ancestors, the hosts of
Petrarca. He kept up the University of Pavia and called great scholars
to its chairs. The celebrated humanist, Pier Candido Decembrio, was for
many years his secretary. He employed artists of renown, including
Brunelleschi and Pisanello, in various works. To his daughter the Duke
was careful to give the scholarly training which with the revival of
learning had become a necessary ornament for the women as well as the
men of the great Italian Houses, and Bianca Maria added the
accomplishments of Latin and Greek to the beauty and spirit with which
nature had endowed her.
But the Duke had neither means nor leisure amid the struggles of his
ambition and the pressure of his fears for much attention to the
peaceful arts. He was entirely occupied in redeeming his heritage and
preserving it from the greed of Venice, the inveterate hate of Florence,
the envy of the smaller States, and, from what he feared most of all,
the ambition and intrigues of the Condottieri in his own employ. The
fortunes of Italy were now, in fact, in the hands of the great military
adventurers. After a century and a half of physical lassitude, during
which her wars had been carried on by foreign mercenaries, she had bred
a race of warriors who had learnt their craft so well in the camps of
the German and English Condottieri that they had now superseded the
foreigners. With hosts of trained and disciplined soldiers at their
command, who knew no faith except to their leader, they took service now
with one sovereign, now with another, and with their fickle arms and
policy made and unmade States at their will. Facino Cane and Jacopo dal
Verme had already played their parts, to the disruption of the Milanese
State. Carmagnolo, after serving Duke Filippo for many years, went over
to Venice, and for long balanced the two States one against the other,
by his crafty conduct of the war, till he fell a victim to the superior
cunning of the Doge and his councillors in 1432. And now, in the midst
of the noise of battle and the ferment of intrigue, in which all the
years of Duke Filippo were wrapped, the great name of Sforza is first
heard in Milanese story.
With the first Sforza and his son Francesco on the one side, and Braccio
Montone and Niccolò Piccinino on the other, the age of the Condottieri
culminated. The whole of Italy was plunged into strife by these great
leaders, in whom the old faction divisions of the country were revived,
and cities and States split up once again into hostile parties, Guelfs
and Ghibellines reappearing under the new names of Sforzeschi and
Bracceschi. These rival forces were at once the salvation and the
torment of Duke Filippo. The hope of succeeding to the heirless man’s
dominions—an elevation not beyond the attainment of an obscurely born
individual, in an age and country in which men made themselves, and
everything was possible to strength and ability—was a bait which drew
them to his service; and with all his cunning and perfidious diplomacy
he manipulated them for his own advantage, pitting them against each
other, now encouraging one, now compassing his downfall by means of
another. But they, too, were cunning. It was a game of wits, and Filippo
often found himself outdone. Yet to the very end, though plagued,
cajoled and defeated on all sides, he succeeded in circumventing all the
efforts of either party to seat itself securely in Milan, preferring,
with his strange spite towards mankind, to leave his kingdom to anarchy
rather than adopt an heir.
In spite of him, however, destiny had raised up in a rustic race hailing
from Cotignola, in the Romagna, a regenerator for the worn-out tyranny
of the Visconti. Muzio Attendolo, the founder of the Sforza family, is
pictured by legend as a peasant boy, who, when twelve years old, flung
his woodman’s axe into a tree, and ran away to the wars. He appears to
have been really the son of a small landowner, rich only in the
possession of a progeny mighty in number and in strength. The name of
Sforza is said to have attached itself to him, in consequence of some
signal effort of his extraordinary strength and will. These qualities,
joined to his great energy, raised him to the highest military fame. His
life was chiefly spent in the wars of Naples and the Church, but he had
just accepted service with the Duke of Milan, when one day he plunged
into a swollen river, under the arrows of the enemy, to save a drowning
boy, and sank beneath the weight of his armour (1424).
His son, Francesco, though only twenty-two, took command of his army,
and soon showed equal valour and much greater ability. Engaged, in 1425,
by Duke Filippo, he rapidly became a power in Milan, where he struggled
with the rival Condottiere, Niccolò Piccinino, for supremacy in the
councils of the Prince, and in the favour of the people. In 1432,
Filippo gave him the highest mark of favour by promising him the hand of
Bianca Maria, and with all solemnity the little girl of eight years old
was betrothed to the great general. But no sooner had the Duke thus
exalted Sforza, than he hastened to depress and humiliate him in every
way. Niccolò Piccinino was given the chief command of the Visconte’s
forces, and Francesco was fain at the time to abandon Milan, and his
hopes of eventually possessing the Dukedom in his promised wife’s right,
and to accept the standard of Pope Eugenius IV., Filippo’s bitter enemy.
For many years the brilliant genius of Piccinino and the subtlety of the
Duke were victorious over all enemies, and baffled every effort of
Sforza to obtain his little princess and regain his footing in Milan.
The climax of Filippo’s success came in 1435, when his Genoese fleet
defeated the Neapolitans at Gaeta, and brought back captive the Kings of
Naples and Navarre and a great company of lords and gentlemen. The Duke
on this occasion completely belied his usual character and astonished
the whole world by his kingly spirit. He received the two monarchs with
the utmost honour, and immediately granted them their freedom. Moreover,
he entertained them and their trains for a whole month, with great
splendour and a joyous festivity, rare indeed in Milan during his reign.
His generosity was doubtless calculated; in Alfonso of Naples he
disarmed an enemy and made a lasting friend, and by cunningly rousing in
that monarch a hope of succeeding to the Milanese state, he raised up an
aspirant who might be useful as a weapon against the conflicting
pretensions of Piccinino and Sforza.
Before long, however, fortune turned against the Duke. Sforza, at the
head of the League of Venice, Florence and the Church, routed his
generals and captured his provinces and cities. In this predicament,
Filippo appealed to the great Condottiere’s ambition, and allured him
once more by offering him his bride at last with a rich dowry of
territory and gold. Francesco thereupon ceased to press the attack upon
him, and the war became little more than a languid pretence. Having thus
nonplussed his foes, who were completely dependent on the caprice of
their general, the Duke, with his interminable negotiations, continually
delayed the accomplishment of his promise, and meanwhile secretly
endeavoured in every way to entangle and overthrow Francesco. In this he
was only baffled by the almost equal craft and caution of his would-be
son-in-law.
But as time went on, the Duke began to grow old and to weary of the
eternal struggle. He was oppressed with languor and excessive fat. The
fear of total blindness came upon him. Nearly all Italy was armed
against him. The parties in the State grew ever more clamorous, his
captains more unmanageable. Each of the latter seized upon one of his
cities and domineered over it as its Lord. Disasters accumulated upon
him in the field. Piccinino’s daring raid into Florentine territory, in
1439-40, ended in the great defeat of Anghiari, and Sforza, enraged by
the Duke’s duplicity, was capturing his cities for the League and
devastating his territories far and wide. Meanwhile, the peace which all
Italy sighed for was delayed by the great Condottiere, who, having
triumphed over all his rivals, would not sheath his sword till he had
secured Bianca Maria and the enormous dowry which he demanded with her.
At last, yielding to the persuasion of his only friend, Niccolò III. of
Ferrara, the general peacemaker, Filippo agreed to the marriage, and the
maiden of seventeen was conducted to the city of Cremona, which was to
be her rich portion, by the fatherly Marquis Niccolò, and there wedded
to her mature bridegroom.
Sforza’s purpose was, however, only half accomplished. Though the lady
was won, the Dukedom remained to be secured. But he had to reckon with
his father-in-law’s antipathy, doubtless originating in a deep-seated
pride of race, and also with the hostile party—led by Niccolò Piccinino
and his sons—which was all-powerful in Milan and virtually ruled the now
decrepit Filippo. The Milanese armies before long moved once more
against Sforza, who retaliated by accepting the command of the Venetian
forces and carrying fire and sword right up to the walls of Milan. The
terrified Filippo was compelled to seek reconciliation with his offended
son-in-law, and to the chagrin of Venice, Sforza abandoned her side in
the hour of success and rapidly won back for the Visconte the Milanese
territories which he had just conquered for the Republic. At this
juncture the Duke, plagued by the irreconcilable importunities of the
two parties, used the only resource left to him wherewith to baffle them
both. Without confirming his promises to Sforza he fell sick, and,
obstinately refusing all remedies, let himself die (1447), reiterating
with his last breath a wish that after his death everything might fall
to ruin.
And so it did. The city was immediately plunged into confusion and
uproar. Pretenders sprang up on every side, and the old faction trouble
threatened to overwhelm all order. The cities subject to Milan rebelled,
and once more the great State of the Visconti broke up into independent
fragments. Meanwhile, in the midst of the tumult in the capital itself,
the beautiful word Liberty, still remembered from the glorious days of
Milan’s Republican freedom, was breathed by a few noble and
disinterested citizens. It was acclaimed by the people, who thought it
meant relief from taxation, and was accepted by the various factions,
each hoping to make profit out of it. Amid enormous enthusiasm the
Golden Republic of St. Ambrogio was constituted, and the supreme
authority delegated to a few leading men, who were called Captains and
Defenders of the Liberty of Milan.
The first act of the Republic was to sweep away the Castle of Porta
Giovia, stronghold and symbol of hated tyranny. The people exulted to
see it fall, but many thoughtful men, remembering the predatories who
coveted the rich city, were dismayed. Nor did the new Constitution
prosper. The Milanese had lost all capacity for self-government under
the long-continued despotism of the Visconti. ‘Nothing could make Milan
free,’ pronounced Macchiavelli later, ‘being altogether corrupt, as was
seen after the death of Filippo Visconte, when desiring to establish
liberty she neither was able, nor knew how, to maintain it.’ The tyranny
of hostile factions triumphed over the best intentions of the
Republicans, and the thoughtless people arrayed themselves one against
another, behind leaders whose only aim was to subjugate them. Those who
had really pure motives were drawn hopelessly into the whirlpool, and
the Defenders of Liberty oppressed each other, and the citizens
generally, with every cruelty and injustice.
Meanwhile the Duchy was claimed by the Guelf party for Alfonso of
Aragon, on the strength of a will which his supporters had extracted
from the dying Filippo. A pretension—first threat of the misfortune that
was to fall later on Milan—was also advanced by the Duke of Orleans, son
of Filippo’s sister, Valentina Visconte. The Emperor claimed the Duchy
as a vacant fief. More dangerous than any of these pretenders was
Venice, greedy to extend her empire. But strongest of all was the
resolution of Francesco Sforza, who mended the flaw of illegitimacy in
his wife’s claim by the strength of his good sword. General of the
Milanese armies at Filippo’s death, he used his power to defend the
State from the attacks of Venice, and to subdue it gradually to his own
sway. But his enemies were strong. The Piccinini, Francesco and Jacopo,
warred against him with arms and intrigue, in alliance with the old
Guelf faction. They held Milan against him, but their councils were
confused by passion and divisions, and the great general drew steadily
nearer to the city. He defeated the Piccinini in the field, and
outwitted their perfidious diplomacy with an equal craft. He leagued
with Venice and Florence against the new Republic, defeated the Duke of
Savoy, whom Filippo’s widow, Maria of Savoy, had enlisted against him,
and cutting Milan off from all friends or help, laid siege to the
capital itself.
Yet still the citizens clung to their illusion of liberty, and
obstinately refused to submit to a new master. Amid fierce tumult they
appointed fresh magistrates from the lowest ranks, persecuted and
proscribed the nobles, and put an enormous price on the head of the
‘perfidious’ Francesco Sforza, decreeing death to any who breathed his
name without a curse. But their resolution was useless. For some time
they kept the invader at bay with great spirit, aided by his party foes;
but the death of Francesco Piccinino at this juncture was a serious blow
to the defence. All trade was stopped by the siege, and general ruin
threatened this community, long used to wealth and ease. The city was
now reduced to grievous straits by famine. The desperate struggles of
the democratic leaders, Gio. Ossona and Gio. da Appiano, to maintain
their rule by blood and torture in the face of the growing discontent
and the ceaseless intrigues of Sforza’s partisans, made them odious to
all. Tumults broke out, and everywhere, says Corio, were heard
lamentations, weeping and cries. The Captains of Liberty were no longer
feared or obeyed. When in desperation they began to parley with Venice,
the citizens unanimously agreed that submission to Sforza was a lesser
evil than falling into the jaws of San Marco, and a rising of
Ghibellines and friends of the Condottiere succeeded in sweeping away
the Republic of St. Ambrogio, and opening the gates at last to the
victorious Francesco, and to a new era of peace, prosperity and
servitude (1450).
Amid the wild applause of countless thousands, the great warrior rode
in, followed by his soldiers, whose necks and shoulders were hung round
with loaves of bread. _It was a fine thing to see_—in Corio’s
words—_with what eagerness the people snatched off the bread, and with
what voracity they devoured it_. So enormous was the throng, all
shouting Sforza and Duca, that the conqueror and his horse were
literally lifted up and carried on men’s shoulders. But even yet one or
two, among them the high-hearted Ambrogio Trivulzio, opposed his
entrance, demanding of him guarantees for the liberty of the city. They
were overpowered, however, by the multitudes, and Francesco Sforza was
proclaimed Duke by general consent of the citizens.
Milan had immediate consolation for her lost liberty. By the wise
provision of the conqueror, such generous abundance flowed in after the
herald loaves of the soldiers, that in three days it seemed as if there
had been no siege at all. Order was restored with a firm and kindly
hand, and the splendid feasts and tournaments, continuing for nine days,
and drowning the memory of past afflictions, hid no cruel deeds of
vengeance upon the Duke’s political opponents.
Italian historians generally agree in a favourable estimate of Francesco
Sforza. Corio, the historian, whose father was a gentleman in the
service of the Sforza, and he himself from his youth up, attached to the
ducal household, describes the first Duke as _liberalissimo_, full of
kindness, a lover of justice and religion, and declares that none
observed faith better than he. This last, in fifteenth century Italy,
was not saying much. More impartial writers, while praising his courage,
ability and general humanity, recognise that his triumph was due as much
to perfidy and political suppleness as to valour. He was a man of his
time, and his moral standard was that expressed by Macchiavelli later,
who, writing of the Sforza, excuses him on the ground that great men are
ashamed to lose, not to gain, by deception.
As Duke of Milan, Francesco still resorted to the same practices. The
long tyranny of the Visconti, the strange cruelties and mysterious
misanthropic habits of the later princes, the intercourse of the last
Duke with astrologers and necromancers, which had wrapped him in a sort
of diabolical atmosphere, made the idea of a despot repulsive and awful
to the people, apart from their fear of oppression. But the brave,
robust presence, the frank and genial manner of this lord of the
battlefield and camp, _who nothing esteemed astrologers_, did much to
overcome their prejudices, and his rejection of the gorgeous symbols of
sovereignty prepared for his entry as _superstitioni dei Re_, and unfit
for a simple soldier, was carefully calculated to win their confidence.
But he dared not trust them. No sooner was he seated on the throne than
with false assurances that his only motive was the safety and
embellishment of the city, he began to rebuild the castle of Porta
Giovia, and to fortify it with enormous walls, and with two huge round
towers commanding the habitations of his subjects themselves, an ever
visible warning against rebellion. The Milanese, however, made no
attempt to shake off the yoke. The bulk of the people resumed with joy
their industrial occupations, too content with relief from immediate
afflictions to question of the future. They might well, too, recognise
that submission to the successful soldier was Milan’s only hope of
salvation as an independent State.
In Italy, as a whole, the elevation of Francesco Sforza meant the boon
of peace. It enrolled on the side of order and stability the chief
element of disturbance in the country. For more than a century continual
strife had been kept up by the Condottieri in their own interests. But
now that the greatest of them all had attained a solid throne, the era
of their irresponsible energies was over. The splendid title and wealth
of the Visconti, and the immense resources of the Lombard capital,
united with the military skill and renown of the Sforza, could
consolidate and safeguard once again that great empire of the Snake,
whose decrepitude had been the chief opportunity of the Condottieri, and
the provocation of the late wars. On the part chosen by Milan depended
largely the fate of the whole peninsula. The far-eyed ambition of the
Visconti had chosen war. The new dynasty, on the contrary, preferred to
develop the vast wealth of the State which it had won rather than
increase its bounds, and was content to relinquish for the sake of peace
all pretensions to the cities once belonging to the Visconti, and now
usurped by Venice. Neither Francesco nor his successor sought the
aggrandisement of their dominions. And where the Visconti, aggressive
though they were, had studied the peace of Italy in the larger sense,
they were nobly followed by the two first Sforza. Gian Galeazzo’s
national policy—Italy for the Italians—his care to keep those Alpine
gates, whose keys had been committed to Milan’s charge, locked against a
possible invader, was adopted and carried on by the Sforza, through
nearly half a century; and when it was reversed, and the flood of
disaster and ruin let loose upon the country by Francesco’s younger son,
the brilliant prince to whom Fate had denied no gift except just those
two qualities which had made the Visconti great—judgment and knowledge
of men—there is reason to believe that fear rather than ambition was the
motive.
During the last century of the Viscontean domination, Milan, which had
suffered little herself from the wars of Gian Galeazzo and Filippo
Maria, and had never been taxed beyond her strength by those able
tyrants, had grown into an enormous centre of trade. The rich produce of
the East, transmitted from Venice and the other Italian ports, and the
exports of the country itself, passed through the Milanese warehouses to
the marts of the North. The Milanese woollen fabrics clothed all
well-to-do Europe, and her smiths forged the panoply of the knights and
men-at-arms on every battlefield and in every jousting-list of
Christendom and of civilised Heathenesse as well. So great were the
workshops of the master armourers that two of them alone are said to
have armed on one occasion four thousand horsemen and two thousand foot
soldiers for Duke Filippo in the space of a few days. The abundant
products of the fertile plains around flowed into the capital, and with
increasing population and wealth new industries arose, adding to the
general prosperity, so that this city could with ease keep up an army
which would have beggared Venice or Florence. In her almost
inexhaustible resources lay the secret of her power in Italy, and of her
great influence even in the Councils of Europe.
The new Duke laboured to breed, by all the arts of peace, yet greater
wealth, and to secure its full advantage for the State. Especially he
desired that Milan should have a due share in that splendid patrimony of
light and learning which Italy was now inheriting across the chasm of
the Middle Ages from her rediscovered Past. This man of war, bred up
from childhood in the camp, entertained all the liberal ideals of the
day. He particularly honoured virtuous and learned men, Corio tells us,
and to his encouragement of art the city owed many beautiful buildings.
In his patronage of the humanities, as in all his affairs, the Duke was
nobly supported by his wife, Bianca Maria Visconte. This lady—_donna
d’animo virile_—had been from their marriage-day the prop of his
ambition and resolve. Her invincible spirit had never allowed him to
flinch a moment from his task of conquest, had restored his courage
under misfortune, and had even inspired him by donning helmet and
cuirass, and herself leading troops to his succour on the battlefield.
Aided by her clever mother, Agnese del Maino, Bianca Maria had acted for
him in critical moments in his absence, with invariable constancy and
promptitude, so that he was wont to declare that he had more confidence
in her than in his whole army. In the acquisition of Milan she was his
chief councillor, and now that the throne of her ancestors was won, she
claimed her full share of it. One may suspect that this conqueror of
men—not alone in history—was somewhat mastered by the young woman at his
side. Bianca Maria is celebrated by the chroniclers for her goodness.
‘This lady,’ says Cagnola, ‘in piety, compassion, charity, and beauty of
person, as well as every other virtue, surpassed all the women of our
age, and was the splendour and mirror of all Italian women.’
Francesco left the government of his sons entirely to this notable lady.
She herself superintended their Greek and Latin studies. But instruction
in the art of ruling was the chief feature of her training, and that
famous pedant, Filelfo, the Florentine, who was one of their tutors, had
to remember that his task was to form princes, not merely men of
letters. She was careful to have them taught chivalrous exercises,
habits of courtesy, and the good manners proper to princes; and so
rigorous was her discipline that no boys were ever better behaved than
the ‘fantastick’ of after days, Galeazzo Maria, and he who was to betray
Italy, Lodovico il Moro.
With the change from the worn-out domination of the Visconti, rooted in
the Middle Ages, to the rule of the soldier of fortune, who owed his
success to personal genius and character, the Renaissance era, that
opportunity of individual talent, may be said to have opened in Milan.
The aspect of the city soon showed the operation of a new vitality and
enthusiasm, in the splendid buildings which now arose, and in the
activity of all artistic and industrial employments. But Duke
Francesco’s designs for the improvement of his State were hampered by
the last convulsive struggles of the long-continued wars of North Italy.
It was some years before Venice, Savoy, and the rest of Milan’s enemies
were quieted and propitiated by the arms and the prudent diplomacy of
the new ruler, who with time found means of overcoming all the dangers
which threatened him. An alliance with Louis XI. of France protected the
Duke from the pretensions of Orleans. With Cosimo de’ Medici he
maintained a loyal friendship, and thus disarmed Florence, and with
Naples he concluded a treaty of peace, which was sealed by the marriage
of his daughter Ippolita to King Ferdinand’s son, Alfonso of Calabria.
Francesco was well aware, however, of the secret hostility harboured
against him by a strong party in the city, and was ever on his guard.
The death of Jacopo Piccinino, in 1465, rid him of the last survivor of
the great family of Condottieri, who had been his most formidable foes
and rivals. Historians have charged Francesco with a share in the horrid
deception by which this brilliant captain was decoyed to his destruction
at the hands of Ferdinand of Naples.
A year later (1466), when the Duke himself died, his dynasty seemed to
be securely founded in Milan. Yet, in the absence of the heir, the
Duchess and her councillors hastened to put the Castle into a state of
defence, and to take every precaution against rebellion. Galeazzo Maria,
was hurriedly summoned from France, where he was fighting for Louis XI.
in the Barons’ War. His return was accomplished with the utmost speed
and secrecy, and the story of his passage through the dominions of
Savoy, disguised as the servant of a travelling merchant, the attempt to
capture him as he passed by a certain castle in the mountains, his
escape into sanctuary, and thence, after three days’ concealment, into
the fastnesses of the hills, where by difficult ways he was conducted
into his own territory, strikes at once that note of romance and
extravagance which accompanies the strange personality of Galeazzo Maria
Sforza throughout his short course to the grave.
Once in his own dominions the new duke had nothing to fear. The habit of
servitude had become only too confirmed in the Milanese, and they sealed
their submission to the House of Sforza by accepting Francesco’s son
without protest as their Lord. Galeazzo, born too late to remember aught
but the triumphant days of his House, or to have known any interruption
in the flattery, servility and fear which waited on princes in the
fifteenth century, found himself at twenty-two monarch of a great State
and vast riches, lord of the lives and destinies of large populations,
and master, in all the vigour and freshness of his youth and of the
unexhausted Sforza blood, of that incomparable treasure of delight and
varied human experience which the Renaissance of learning, of knowledge,
of beauty, had added to the heritage of power bequeathed to the Italian
tyrants by their immediate ancestors. Is it a wonder that the princes of
that bright new day, in all the pride of the restored faith in human
greatness and possibility, should have believed themselves more than
men, and like the old Roman emperors, whose histories they read and
whose heirs they considered themselves, should have assumed the proud
appellation of _Divi_—Gods? These favourites of Time and Fortune lacked,
however, one thing: that discipline of the will—more rigorous than the
self-mortification of the apostles of asceticism—which the religion of
beauty and joy requires in its followers.
In Galeazzo Maria Sforza the characters of a Renaissance tyrant appear
in an exaggerated light. A strain of the bizarre, inherited from his
Visconte ancestors, working in the strong new blood of the Sforza,
produced in him an extravagance of temperament which ruled all his
thoughts and acts. He had been instructed in the new learning by Filelfo
and other humanists of repute; but from the classic example and precept
thus set before him by men who themselves often abused the ideals which
they taught his unbalanced nature had learnt only licence. His hot
passions, romantically shown in youth by his love for Lucrezia
Landriani, and his adoration of the child she bore him, that famous
Caterina, afterwards Lady of Forlì, developed rapidly into unbridled
lust. His vanity was nothing less than preposterous, and his care for
his tall and splendid person, and in especial for his beautiful white
hands, was a sort of idolatry. His insatiable appetite for gorgeous
surroundings and rich display glutted itself with an orgy of colour and
ornamentation, rioted in costly fabrics and priceless gems and gaudy
equipages. Never before in Italy had such pomp been seen as accompanied
his journey, in 1471, to visit Lorenzo de’ Medici, who, as head of the
Florentine Republic, had been entertained a short time before in Milan.
With him went his consort, the beautiful Bona of Savoy, the princess who
was to have married Edward IV. of England, had not her fickle suitor
fallen in love with Elisabeth Woodville instead. Bona became Galeazzo’s
wife in 1467.
Besides his Duchess, all the great feudatories and ministers of State,
arrayed in cloth of gold and silver, accompanied the Duke, himself a
magnificent figure in royal crimson. The courtiers wore velvet and
finest silk, the dresses of the chamberlains and pages were exquisite
with needlework, the lackeys were in silk and cloth of silver, and the
very cooks and scullions in velvet and satin. An immense train of
horses, with trappings of silver and gold, carried grooms in silken
liveries of the Sforza colours, purple and white. Mules, with housings
of white and purple damask embroidered with the devices of the Sforza in
silver, bore litters hung with gorgeous stuffs, and containing beds of
cloth of gold. Huntsmen leading five hundred couple of dogs, falconers
with highly trained hawks upon their wrists followed, and a host of
trumpeters, pipers, musicians and jesters played their lively part in
the procession. The description of this gallant train, winding out in
all its fresh new bravery into the green Lombard plain from the serrated
walls and gates of the mediæval city, in the radiance of a May morning,
suggests something of what Milan once was and of the lost beauty of
Renaissance pageantry. The luxury and extravagance of the Milanese
visitors greatly impressed the Florentines, and, according to
Macchiavelli, helped to corrupt them and induce them to abandon their
sober habits for pleasures and vanities.
Galeazzo’s love of decoration vented itself in the adornment of his
palaces with paintings and works of art. He employed a host of artists,
and in his impatience and excitement demanded miracles of them. He would
have marble palaces and painted chambers rise as at the stroke of a
magician’s wand; and an oft-told tale relates how he commanded a certain
artist to decorate a whole wall with portraits of the ducal family in a
single night. And woe to those who displeased him. The glittering, gaudy
figure of this prince, with the great black eyes and hawk nose, and the
white effeminate hands, dressed in the motley parti-coloured dress, red
and white, used by the Dukes of Milan, moves through the pages of
history in an alternation of black shadow and garish light. He was
pointed out in whispers as the murderer of his own mother. It is true
that his imperious temper had quickly resented Bianca Maria’s attempt to
share in the government and to retain the power which her influence on
her husband had given her. A short struggle had ensued between the
mother and son, and ended by the defeated Duchess resolving to withdraw
to her dower city of Cremona and there exercise her lawful authority.
But neither did this division of the State suit the new Duke, and he
detained her in the Castle of Melegnano, where, devoured by anger and
grief, she fell sick after a few months and died, poisoned, according to
common belief. But the accusation appears to rest only on Galeazzo’s
general reputation for wickedness, and the ingratitude and want of
filial piety which he had already shown himself capable of towards his
mother. He is not a singular instance, however, of a young sovereign
disagreeing with a dominant queen-mother. With as scant evidence, the
death of his first betrothed, Dorotea Gonzaga, which freed him to make
the more advantageous alliance with Bona, is laid to Galeazzo’s charge.
[Illustration:
GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA, BY PIERO POLLAIUOLO (UFFIZI, FLORENCE)
_To face p. 138_] [_Alinari, Florence_
]
To such a personality as this prince’s, so conspicuous and so frenzied,
legend readily clings, even in his own lifetime, and the imaginations
which peered into the secrets of his dungeons carried, perhaps, some of
their morbid visions with them. We must, however, believe the
contemporary writers, who record hideous deeds committed by the Duke
even in the light of day, grim pranks of punishment and devices of
cruelty inflicted upon offenders, under his own eyes. There was a
strange touch of imagination in his adjustment of torments to offences,
and often a kind of wild justice and sympathy for the oppressed,
horribly manifested, as when he punished a priest, who had refused the
funeral rites to a poor man, by burying him alive in the same grave as
the corpse. Galeazzo Sforza was in fact an embodied paradox—a monster of
vices and virtues, as he has been called, or better still, in his
daughter Caterina’s word, a ‘Fantastick.’ This mad, bad prince had the
theoretic admiration of his age for virtue, and was possessed with a
very rage for cultivating it in his subjects. Abuses, such as bribery of
magistrates, corruption in the public administration, oppressive
restrictions on trade and commerce, were vigorously put down. He allowed
none but himself to take money from petitioners, or to seize other
people’s property. His passion for justice and good government had
planted so many gallows in his realm, that when his young bride came to
Milan she trembled at the spectacle and fell on her knees, imploring
pardon for prisoners and offenders, a boon immediately granted to her
compassionate beauty. Though greedy of treasure and guilty of robbing
his rich subjects, Galeazzo was punctual and exact in paying his
servants—a rare virtue in an Italian prince. So trustworthy was his word
as a sovereign that men regarded it as if it had been money. He had
great personal attractions, was merry, affable and familiar with those
around him, and willingly gave audience to his subjects. The courage
which the populace expect of a prince was conspicuous in him—_a man who
never knew fear_, as his fearless daughter Caterina proudly describes
him.
Better still, Galeazzo Sforza knew men. No one of proved worth and
activity had to fear his caprices. Cecco Simonetta, his father’s
faithful minister, was retained in the highest offices throughout his
reign; and his chief engineer and architect, Bartolommeo Gadio, kept
undisturbed command of the great works of the Castello. Nor did the
Duke’s heated temper affect his political judgment. He reconciled
himself with Savoy, and with Lorenzo de’ Medici and Ferdinand of Naples
formed that triple alliance which gave Italy her most splendid period of
peace. In the cordial relations which he maintained with France he never
forgot Milan’s appointed task of guarding the gate of Italy. Within his
own dominions he held party passions in check, and followed his father’s
prudent policy of employing in the important offices of State foreigners
like the Sicilian Simonetta, and men who owed everything to the House of
Sforza, and of diminishing the influence of the great nobles.
[Illustration: BRIDGE OVER NAVIGLIO NEAR SAN MARCO]
With peace without and order within, the tide of prosperity rose ever
higher in the populous city. The vast lands of the Duchy were everywhere
being brought to full fertility by irrigation works and the draining of
wastes. Palaces surrounded by beautiful gardens and fruitful orchards
and vineyards were springing up where before had been wilderness. Great
schemes for new waterways between the different cities of the State were
in hand, and all the immense increase of the country’s resources,
resulting from improved agriculture and greater facilities of traffic,
flowed by a thousand streams into the coffers of the capital. An
extraordinary vitality seemed to possess all classes in this morning of
the Renaissance. The larger horizons revealed to the spirit by the
revival of ancient literature and thought, the multiplicity of new
interests created by increased knowledge, the joy of the release from
the mediæval sense of guilt and sorrow, gave to this age the vigour and
enthusiasm of a regenerated world. Milan was one vast hive of vivacious
energies, busy in commerce, in art and all kinds of handiwork, in
learning, poetry, music. The Duke’s excited spirit was eager for all
intellectual and artistic novelties. His Court was thronged with
scholars and philosophers. Not content with the magnificent library of
Pavia, he formed a fine collection of books in Milan, and
printing-presses were set up in the city at this time. But above all
else Galeazzo loved music. Milan had been from early times the resort of
troubadours, minstrels and those skilled in ‘divers musicks,’ but never
before had such beautiful singers been heard there as the Duke summoned
from Flanders and all parts of Europe to compose the choir of the ducal
chapel in the Castello. Music and the chase were Galeazzo’s favourite
diversions; and the vast hunting-grounds and deep forests of the Duchy,
full of wild boars and stags and all sorts of beasts and birds, the wide
meres and watery channels crowded with waterfowl, were continually
visited by gallant hunting and hawking trains. The picturesque interest
of that far-off princely life, rich in all the adornments of rarest art,
and fresh with the springing joy of that hopeful age, is enhanced for us
by its dimness. It has all the poetic charm of a half-obliterated
fresco. These historic figures appear to our vision in that stiffness
and innocence and decorative grace, that mingling of mediæval romance
and Renaissance beauty with which they were doubtless represented by the
primitive painters who covered the walls of Galeazzo’s palaces in Milan
and Pavia with scenes of the ducal life—frescoes, alas! long perished.
The picture of the city at this time would be bright indeed but for the
plague-spots of vice and cruelty in the ruler, and of corruption in the
people. Acquiescence in tyranny, and the new luxury of life, had bred
effeminacy and servility in the citizens. But there were some among them
who could not forget their shame. This motley prince, himself an early
and crude product of the still undisciplined spirit of the Renaissance,
was destined to perish by the operation of that same spirit. The very
arrogance of blood and brain which drove him to excess swelled the
indignation of the youths who assembled in the school of the humanist
Cola Montana, and followed the finger of their preceptor as he pointed
with scorn to the spectacle of the Duke passing with extravagant pomp
across the Piazza dell’ Arengo, and to the obsequious train of nobles
and magistrates in gorgeous attire attending him, and contrasted the
degradation and pusillanimity of these courtiers with the noble
simplicity of the Carthaginian and Roman patriots who had won immortal
fame by giving their lives for their country. Cola, who was himself
secretly envenomed against the Duke on account of personal wrongs, never
ceased to hold up before his pupils the example of Brutus and the lofty
ideal of virtue and self-sacrifice which inspired their classic
ancestors. Inflamed by his eloquence and by a mingling of pedantic pride
and youthful enthusiasm, these sons of fathers who remembered the brief
hope of the Ambrosian Republic formed a resolution to rid the State of
the monstrous tyranny which oppressed it. Girolamo Olgiati, Gio. Ant.
Lampugnano and Carlo Visconte were the chief conspirators. The lofty
indignation of the two latter was aggravated by personal grievances, but
the motives of Olgiati, whose sensitive mind had been moulded for years
by Cola Montana, seems to have been pure of all egoism except a
beautiful self-conceit. They communicated their plot to a few trusty
comrades, and went about the city secretly stirring up discontent. In
spite of the general prosperity poverty existed, and it happened that
the season had been bad and scarcity threatened. The populace could not
see beyond this immediate evil, and all groaned together under the
taxation which they supposed went only to provide for the limitless
luxury of the Court. Many citizens were hereditary Guelfs and foes of
the Sforza. The idea of rebellion was familiar enough in every North
Italian city, and the conspirators received so much sympathy and so many
promises of adherence that the excited vision of young Olgiati pictured
the whole city awaiting the signal of the great deed to rise and set him
and his fellows at the head of a Republic as noble as those of
antiquity. Day and night Lampugnano’s house was crowded with enthusiasts
for liberty. All preparations were made for the rising, deputies were
appointed to ensure the safety of the city in the confusion which was
sure to follow the overthrow of the government, and the day and the
particulars of the great act of judgment on the tyrant were carefully
arranged.
On St. Thomas Day (1476), Duke Galeazzo entered early in the morning
into his capital, after a short victorious campaign against the
encroachments of Burgundy in the mountains of Savoy. Let it be
remembered of him that his last deed was thus to beat back invaders of
Italy. As he rode to Milan from his Castle of Abbiategrasso, in the
bitter cold which had numbed the streams and fogged the air, three
ravens slowly rose and flew across his path, one after the other,
uttering hoarse croaks. The Duke seized a gun and fired at these evil
augurs, and was half-minded to turn back. He went forward, however, but
a heavy presentiment of ill had fallen on his soul. As he rode in,
welcomed by the nobles who had thronged the city to do him homage, the
conspirators noted his heavy countenance, and knew that the hour was at
hand. Instead of mirth he carried gloom into the Castle, all prepared
for his coming, and though it was the season of joy, he ordered the
ornaments of the chapel to be draped in black, and bade the Flemish
priest, Cordiero and his thirty fellow-singers from beyond the
mountains, chant every day in the Mass a verse from the Office of the
Dead. Nevertheless the great Christmas festivities took place as usual,
and the tall figure of the Prince, robed to the feet in crimson damask,
and accompanied by the fair Duchess and a crowd of nobles, stalked
gesticulating though the splendid chambers of the Castello, vaunting, in
the midst of a strange and mournful oppression, his own magnificence,
and the glory and enduring strength of his House.
The next day was the Feast of St. Stephen. Very early in the morning,
Gio. Antonio Lampugnano and Girolamo Olgiati knelt and heard Mass
together, like knights entering into battle. A great crowd gathered in
S. Stefano, where the Duke was to attend Mass later. Some of the
conspirators mingled with the people, while the three leaders waited in
a house close by. The slow moments passed. At last the appointed hour
arrived and the procession was at hand. Girolamo, in his confession,
tells the rest in breathless words. _Soon a noise; it is the Prince. We
hide our daggers, and in an instant stand in the church. The Duke
passes, I transfix him, he falls and expires._
Corio, who was one of the Duke’s chamberlains and was present in the
church, describes how Galeazzo entered between the Ferrarese and Pisan
Envoys, preceded by a pompous train of guards and servants. The writer
saw the daggers flash from the little group of conspirators and bury
themselves in the gaudy body of the Prince, and heard his one cry, _O
Nostra Donna!_ as he fell back in a pool of blood. In the uproar which
immediately arose, Lampugnano was killed as he fled through the press of
shrieking women; but Girolamo and Carlo Visconte, with their
accomplices, succeeded in escaping from the church. The mangled body of
the tyrant was carried into the adjoining Canonica, and its gory dress
was exchanged for a robe of white cloth of gold, and all the ducal
ornaments and insignia set upon it. Meanwhile Girolamo, hounded by the
rage and terror of his father out of his home, whither he had fled, took
refuge with a priest and waited in violent agitation, his exalted brain
seething with hopes and fears. The people must be even now rushing to
arms. His friends must be coming to find him and place themselves under
his command. They would sack the palaces of Cecco Simonetta and the
hated ministers, seize the gates, abolish the taxes, proclaim a glorious
Republic. The hours went by and nothing happened. Hearing a great noise,
he looked eagerly out and saw the lacerated remains of his comrade
Lampugnano being dragged along by yelling children with every hideous
insult.
Hope began to desert him. He was sought, not by friends and admirers,
but by officers of justice, and fleeing miserably from one refuge to
another, was soon captured. In his dungeon, the mind of the young man—he
was twenty-three—maintained its exaltation, though it was a wonder, says
Corio, that amid such torments as he underwent, the afflicted spirit did
not abandon the agonised body. He managed to compose a long relation in
Latin of all the circumstances of the plot, a document of poignant human
interest which shows the effect of the prevailing enthusiasm for
antiquity upon a serious and lofty soul. Even at the last frightful
moment, when the iron of the executioner was at his breast, the fainting
youth had courage to animate himself in the tongue of Brutus and Cato
with the words—_Collect thyself, Hieronimo. The memory of thy deed shall
live long. Mors acerba, fama perpetua!_