THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS.
Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in
Italy--Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church--The
Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates--The Free Emergence of
Personality--Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example--Ezzelino
da Romano--Six Sorts of Italian Despots--Feudal Seigneurs--Vicars of the
Empire--Captains of the People--Condottieri--Nephews and Sons of
Popes--Eminent Burghers--Italian Incapacity for Self-Government in
Commonwealths--Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability--The
Condition of the Despot's Life--Instances of Domestic Crime in the
Ruling Houses--Macaulay's Description of the Italian Tyrant--
Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Description of a Tyrant--The
Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth
Century--History of the Visconti--Francesco Sforza--The Part played in
Italian Politics by Military Leaders--Mercenary Warfare--Alberico da
Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo--History of the Sforza
Dynasty--The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza--The Ethics of Tyrannicide
in Italy--Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters--Sigismondo
Pandolfo Malatesta--Duke Federigo of Urbino--The School of Vittorino
and the Court of Urbino--The Cortegiano of Castiglione--The Ideals of
the Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman--General Retrospect.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be called the Age of the
Despots in Italian history, as the twelfth and thirteenth are the Age of
the Free Burghs, and as the sixteenth and seventeenth are the Age of
Foreign Enslavement. It was during the age of the Despots that the
conditions of the Renaissance were evolved, and that the Renaissance
itself assumed a definite character in Italy. Under tyrannies, in the
midst of intrigues, wars, and revolutions, the peculiar individuality of
the Italians obtained its ultimate development. This individuality, as
remarkable for salient genius and diffused talent as for self-conscious
and deliberate vice, determined the qualities of the Renaissance and
affected by example the whole of Europe. Italy led the way in the
education of the Western races, and was the first to realize the type of
modern as distinguished from classical and mediæval life.
During this age of the despots, Italy presents the spectacle of a nation
devoid of central government and comparatively uninfluenced by
feudalism. The right of the Emperor had become nominal, and served as a
pretext for usurpers rather than as a source of order. The visits, for
instance, of Charles IV. and Frederick III. were either begging
expeditions or holiday excursions, in the course of which ambitious
adventurers bought titles to the government of towns, and meaningless
honors were showered upon vain courtiers. It was not till the reign of
Maximilian that Germany adopted a more serious policy with regard to
Italy, which by that time had become the central point of European
intrigue. Charles V. afterwards used force to reassert imperial rights
over the Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the
Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. At the same
time the Papacy, which had done so much to undermine the authority of
the Empire, exercised a power at once anomalous and ill-recognized
except in the immediate States of the Church. By the extinction of the
House of Hohenstauffen and by the assumed right to grant the investiture
of the kingdom of Naples to foreigners, the Popes not only struck a
death-blow at imperial influence, but also prepared the way for their
own exile to Avignon. This involved the loss of the second great
authority to which Italy had been accustomed to look for the maintenance
of some sort of national coherence. Moreover, the Church, though
impotent to unite all Italy beneath her own sway, had power enough to
prevent the formation either by Milan or Venice or Naples of a
substantial kingdom. The result was a perpetually recurring process of
composition, dismemberment, and recomposition, under different forms, of
the scattered elements of Italian life. The Guelf and Ghibelline
parties, inherited from the wars of the thirteenth century, survived the
political interests which had given them birth, and proved an
insurmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to have any real
significance, to the pacification of the country.[1] The only important
state which maintained an unbroken dynastic succession of however
disputed a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
The only great republics were Venice, Genoa, and Florence. Of these,
Genoa, after being reduced in power and prosperity by Venice, was
overshadowed by the successive lords of Milan; while Florence was
destined at the end of a long struggle to fall beneath a family of
despots. All the rest of Italy, especially to the north of the
Apennines, was the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was
illegitimate--based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived in
no regular manner from the Empire, but generally held as a gift or
extorted as a prize from the predominant parties in the great towns.
[1] So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo exclaiming
(_Orlandino_, ii. 59)--
Chè se non fusser le gran parti in quella,
Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella.
If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, we find abundant
proofs of their despotic nature. The succession from father to son was
always uncertain. Legitimacy of birth was hardly respected. The last La
Scalas were bastards. The house of Aragon in Naples descended from a
bastard. Gabriello Visconti shared with his half-brothers the heritage
of Gian Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by princes of
more than doubtful origin. Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of
Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the
same degree as their lawful progeny. The great family of the Bentivogli
at Bologna owed their importance at the end of the fifteenth century to
an obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged from the
wool-factories of Florence by the policy of Cosimo de' Medici. The sons
of popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was
less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal ability. Power
once acquired was maintained by force, and the history of the ruling
families is one long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus governed
were orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were carefully
established and maintained by governors whose interest it was to rule a
quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank or
wealth. Public edifices of colossal grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile
the people at large were being fashioned to that self-conscious and
intelligent activity which is fostered by the modes of life peculiar to
political and social centers in a condition of continued rivalry and
change.
Under the Italian despotisms we observe nearly the opposite of all the
influences brought to bear in the same period upon the nations of the
North. There is no gradual absorption of the great vassals in
monarchies, no fixed allegiance to a reigning dynasty, no feudal aid or
military service attached to the tenure of the land, no tendency to
centralize the whole intellectual activity of the race in any capital,
no suppression of individual character by strongly biased public
feeling, by immutable law, or by the superincumbent weight of a social
hierarchy. Everything, on the contrary, tends to the free emergence of
personal passions and personal aims. Though the vassals of the despot
are neither his soldiers nor his loyal lieges, but his courtiers and
taxpayers, the continual object of his cruelty and fear, yet each
subject has the chance of becoming a prince like Sforza or a companion
of princes like Petrarch. Equality of servitude goes far to democratize
a nation, and common hatred of the tyrant leads to the combination of
all classes against him. Thence follows the fermentation of arrogant and
self-reliant passions in the breasts of the lowest as well as the
highest.[1] The rapid mutations of government teach men to care for
themselves and to depend upon themselves alone in the battle of the
world; while the necessity of craft and policy in the conduct of
complicated affairs sharpens intelligence. The sanction of all means
that may secure an end under conditions of social violence encourages
versatility unprejudiced by moral considerations. At the same time the
freely indulged vices of the sovereign are an example of self-indulgence
to the subject, and his need of lawless instruments is a practical
sanction of force in all its forms. Thus to the play of personality,
whether in combat with society and rivals, or in the gratification of
individual caprice, every liberty is allowed. Might is substituted for
right, and the sense of law is supplanted by a mere dread of coercion.
What is the wonder if a Benvenuto Cellini should be the outcome of the
same society as that which formed a Cesare Borgia? What is the miracle
if Italy under these circumstances produced original characters and
many-sided intellects in greater profusion than any other nation at any
other period, with the single exception of Greece on her emergence from
the age of her despots? It was the misfortune of Italy that the age of
the despots was succeeded not by an age of free political existence, but
by one of foreign servitude.
[1] See Guicciardini, 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' _Op.
Ined._ vol. ii. p. 53, for a critique of the motives of tyrannicide
in Italy.
Frederick II. was at the same time the last emperor who maintained
imperial sway in Italy in person, and also the beginner of a new system
of government which the despots afterwards pursued. His establishment of
the Saracen colony at Nocera, as the nucleus of an army ready to fulfill
his orders with scrupulous disregard for Italian sympathies and customs,
taught all future rulers to reduce their subjects to a state of unarmed
passivity, and to carry on their wars by the aid of German, English,
Swiss, Gascon, Breton, or Hungarian mercenaries, as the case might be.
Frederick, again, derived from his Mussulman predecessors in Sicily the
arts of taxation to the utmost limits of the national capacity, and
founded a precedent for the levying of tolls by a Catasto or schedule of
the properties attributed to each individual in the state. He also
destroyed the self-government of burghs and districts, by retaining for
himself the right to nominate officers, and by establishing a system of
judicial jurisdiction which derived authority from the throne. Again, he
introduced the example of a prince making profit out of the industries
of his subjects by monopolies and protective duties. In this path he was
followed by illustrious successors--especially by Sixtus IV. and Alfonso
II. of Aragon, who enriched themselves by trafficking in the corn and
olive-oil of their famished provinces. Lastly, Frederick established the
precedent of a court formed upon the model of that of Oriental Sultans,
in which chamberlains and secretaries took the rank of hereditary
nobles, and functions of state were confided to the body-servants of the
monarch. This court gave currency to those habits of polite culture,
magnificent living, and personal luxury which played so prominent a part
in all subsequent Italian despotism. It is tempting to overstrain a
point in estimating the direct influence of Frederick's example. In many
respects doubtless he was merely somewhat in advance of his age; and
what we may be inclined to ascribe to him personally, would have
followed in the natural evolution of events. Yet it remains a fact that
he first realized the type of cultivated despotism which prevailed
throughout Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Italian
literature began in his court, and many Saracenic customs of statecraft
were transmitted through him from Palermo to Lombardy.
While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively modern tyrants of the
coming age, his Vicar in the North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano,
represented the atrocities towards which they always tended to
degenerate. Regarding himself with a sort of awful veneration as the
divinely appointed scourge of humanity, this monster in his lifetime was
execrated as an aberration from 'the kindly race of men,' and after his
death he became the hero of a fiendish mythus. But in the succeeding
centuries of Italian history his kind was only too common; the
immorality with which he worked out his selfish aims was systematically
adopted by princes like the Visconti, and reduced to rule by theorists
like Machiavelli. Ezzelino, a small, pale, wiry man, with terror in his
face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold
to the pathos of children, dead to the enchantment of women. His one
passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust for blood.
Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches, he founded his illegal
authority upon the captaincy of the Imperial party delegated to him by
Frederick. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno made him their
captain in the Ghibelline interest, conferring on him judicial as well
as military supremacy. How he fearfully abused his power, how a crusade
was preached against him,[1] and how he died in silence, like a boar at
bay, rending from his wounds the dressings that his foes had placed to
keep him alive, are notorious matters of history. At Padua alone he
erected eight prisons, two of which contained as many as three hundred
captives each; and though the executioner never ceased to ply his trade
there, they were always full. These dungeons were designed to torture by
their noisomeness, their want of air and light and space. Ezzelino made
himself terrible not merely by executions and imprisonments but also by
mutilations and torments. When he captured Friola he caused the
population, of all ages, sexes, occupations, to be deprived of their
eyes, noses, and legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the
elements. On another occasion he walled up a family of princes in a
castle and left them to die of famine. Wealth, eminence, and beauty
attracted his displeasure no less than insubordination or disobedience.
Nor was he less crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed their fathers, friends
their comrades, under the fallacious safeguard of his promises. A
gigantic instance of his scheming was the coup-de-main by which he
succeeded in entrapping 11,000 Paduan soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped
the miseries of his prisons. Thus by his absolute contempt of law, his
inordinate cruelty, his prolonged massacres, and his infliction of
plagues upon whole peoples, Ezzelino established the ideal in Italy of a
tyrant marching to his end by any means whatever. In vain was the
humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle. Vainly did the
monks assemble pity-stricken multitudes upon the plain of Paquara to
atone with tears and penitence for the insults offered to the saints in
heaven by Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian
imagination, and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to
fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are apt to ask ourselves
whether such men are mad--whether in the case of a Nero or a Maréchal
de Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst for blood are not
a monomaniacal perversion of barbarous passions which even in a cannibal
are morbid.[2] Is there in fact such a thing as Hæmatomania,
Bloodmadness? But if we answer this question in the affirmative, we
shall have to place how many Visconti, Sforzeschi, Malatesti, Borgias,
Farnesi, and princes of the houses of Anjou and Aragon in the list of
these maniacs? Ezzelino was indeed only the first of a long and horrible
procession, the most terror-striking because the earliest, prefiguring
all the rest.
[1] Alexander IV. issued letters for this crusade in 1255. It was
preached next year by the Archbishop of Ravenna.
[2] See Appendix, No. I.
Ezzelino's cruelty was no mere Berserkir fury or Lycanthropia coming
over him in gusts and leaving him exhausted. It was steady and
continuous. In his madness, if such we may call this inhumanity, there
was method; he used it to the end of the consolidation of his tyranny.
Yet, inasmuch as it passed all limits and prepared his downfall, it may
be said to have obtained over his nature the mastery of an insane
appetite. While applying the nomenclature of disease to these
exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at
first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing
more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion--lust, violence,
cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less
influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a
greed for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions
in his nature. He then is not unjustly termed a monomaniac. Within the
circle of his vitiated appetite he proves himself irrational. He becomes
the puppet of passions which the sane man cannot so much as picture to
his fancy, the victim of desire, ever recurring and ever destined to
remain unsatisfied; nor is any hallucination more akin to lunacy than
the mirage of a joy that leaves the soul thirstier than it was before,
the paroxysm of unnatural pleasure which wearies the nerves that crave
for it.
In Frederick, the modern autocrat, and Ezzelino, the legendary tyrant,
we obtain the earliest specimens of two types of despotism in Italy.
Their fame long after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the
people, worked itself into the literature of the Italians, and created a
consciousness of tyranny in the minds of irresponsible rulers.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find, roughly speaking,
six sorts of despots in Italian cities.[1] Of these the _first_ class,
which is a very small one, had a dynastic or hereditary right accruing
from long seignioral possession of their several districts. The most
eminent are the houses of Montferrat and Savoy, the Marquises of
Ferrara, the Princes of Urbino. At the same time it is difficult to know
where to draw the line between such hereditary lordship as that of the
Este family, and tyranny based on popular favor. The Malatesti of
Rimini, Polentani of Ravenna, Manfredi of Faenza, Ordelaffi of Forli,
Chiavelli of Fabriano, Varani of Camerino, and others, might claim to
rank among the former, since their cities submitted to them without a
long period of republican independence like that which preceded
despotism in the cases to be next mentioned. Yet these families styled
themselves Captains of the burghs they ruled; and in many instances they
obtained the additional title of Vicars of the Church.[2] Even the
Estensi were made hereditary captains of Ferrara at the end of the
thirteenth century, while they also acknowledged the supremacy of the
Papacy. There was in fact no right outside the Empire in Italy; and
despots of whatever origin or complexion gladly accepted the support
which a title derived from the Empire, the Church, or the People might
give. Brought to the front amid the tumults of the civil wars, and
accepted as pacificators of the factions by the multitude, they gained
the confirmation of their anomalous authority by representing themselves
to be lieutenants or vicegerents of the three great powers. The _second_
class comprise those nobles who obtained the title of Vicars of the
Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of imperial right in
Lombardy. Of these, the Della Scala and Visconti families are
illustrious instances. Finding in their official capacity a ready-made
foundation, they extended it beyond its just limits, and in defiance of
the Empire constituted dynasties. The _third_ class is important. Nobles
charged with military or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestàs, by the
free burghs, used their authority to enslave the cities they were chosen
to administer. It was thus that almost all the numerous tyrants of
Lombardy, Carraresi at Padua, Gonzaghi at Mantua, Rossi and Correggi at
Parma, Torrensi and Visconti at Milan, Scotti at Piacenza, and so forth,
first erected their despotic dynasties. This fact in the history of
Italian tyranny is noticeable. The font of honor, so to speak, was in
the citizens of these great burghs. Therefore, when the limits of
authority delegated to their captains by the people were overstepped,
the sway of the princes became confessedly illegal. Illegality carried
with it all the consequences of an evil conscience, all the insecurities
of usurped dominion all the danger from without and from within to which
an arbitrary governor is exposed. In the _fourth_ class we find the
principle of force still more openly at work. To it may be assigned
those Condottieri who made a prey of cities at their pleasure. The
illustrious Uguccione della Faggiuola, who neglected to follow up his
victory over the Guelfs at Monte Catini, in order that he might cement
his power in Lucca and Pisa, is an early instance of this kind of
tyrant. His successor, Castruccio Castracane, the hero of Machiavelli's
romance, is another. But it was not until the first half of the
fifteenth century that professional Condottieri became powerful enough
to found such kingdoms as that, for example, of Francesco Sforza at
Milan.[3] The _fifth_ class includes the nephews or sons of Popes. The
Riario principality of Forli, the Della Rovere of Urbino, the Borgia of
Romagna, the Farnese of Parma, form a distinct species of despotisms;
but all these are of a comparatively late origin. Until the Papacies of
Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. the Popes had not bethought them of
providing in this way for their relatives. Also, it may be remarked,
there was an essential weakness in these tyrannies. Since they had to be
carved out of the States of the Church, the Pope who had established his
son, say in Romagna, died before he could see him well confirmed in a
province which the next Pope sought to wrest from his hands, in order to
bestow it on his own favorite. The fabric of the Church could not long
have stood this disgraceful wrangling between Papal families for the
dynastic possession of Church property. Luckily for the continuance of
the Papacy, the tide of counter-reformation which set in after the sack
of Rome and the great Northern Schism, put a stop to nepotism in its
most barefaced form.
[1] This classification must of necessity be imperfect, since many
of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which I
have mentioned.
[2] See Guicc. _Ist._ end of Book 4.
[3] John Hawkwood (died 1393), the English adventurer, held
Cotignola and Bagnacavallo from Gregory XI. In the second half of
the fifteenth century the efforts of the Condottieri to erect
tyrannies were most frequent. Braccio da Montone established himself
in Perugia in 1416, and aspired, not without good grounds for hope,
to acquiring the kingdom of Italy. Francesco Sforza, before gaining
Milan, had begun to form a despotism at Ancona. Sforza's rival,
Giacomo Piccinino, would probably have succeeded in his own attempt,
had not Ferdinand of Aragon treacherously murdered him at Naples in
1465. In the disorganization caused by Charles VIII., Vidovero of
Brescia in 1495 established himself at Cesena and Castelnuovo, and
had to be assassinated by Pandolfo Malatesta at the instigation of
Venice. After the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 1402, the
generals whom he had employed in the consolidation of his vast
dominions attempted to divide the spoil among themselves. Naples,
Venice, Milan, Rome, and Florence were in course of time made keenly
alive to the risk of suffering a captain of adventure to run his
course unchecked.
There remains the _sixth_ and last class of despots to be mentioned.
This again is large and of the first importance. Citizens of eminence,
like the Medici at Florence, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Baglioni of
Perugia, the Vitelli of Città di Castello, the Gambacorti of Pisa, like
Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena (1502), Roméo Pepoli, the usurer of Bologna
(1323), the plebeian, Alticlinio, and Agolanti of Padua (1313), Giovanni
Vignate, the millionaire of Lodi (1402), acquired more than their due
weight in the conduct of affairs, and gradually tended to tyranny. In
most of these cases great wealth was the original source of despotic
ascendency. It was not uncommon to buy cities together with their
Signory. Thus the Rossi bought Parma for 35,000 florins in 1333; the
Appiani sold Pisa; Astorre Manfredi sold Faenza and Imola in 1377. In
1444 Galeazzo Malatesta sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza, and
Fossombrone to Urbino; in 1461 Cervia was sold to Venice by the same
family. Franceschetto Cibo purchased the County of Anguillara. Towns at
last came to have their market value. It was known that Bologna was
worth 200,000 florins, Parma 60,000, Arezzo 40,000 Lucca 30,000, and so
forth. But personal qualities and nobility of blood might also produce
despots of the sixth class. Thus the Bentivogli claimed descent from a
bastard of King Enzo, son of Frederick II., who was for a long time an
honorable prisoner in Bologna. The Baglioni, after a protracted struggle
with the rival family of Oddi, owed their supremacy to ability and vigor
in the last years of the fifteenth century. But the neighborhood of the
Papal power, and their own internal dissensions, rendered the hold of
this family upon Perugia precarious. As in the case of the Medici and
the Bentivogli, many generations might elapse before such burgher
families assumed dynastic authority. But to this end they were always
advancing.
The history of the bourgeois despots proves that Italy in the fifteenth
century was undergoing a natural process of determination toward
tyranny. Sismondi may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was 'not
answerable for the crimes with which she was sullied by her tyrants.'
But the facts show that she was answerable for choosing despots instead
of remaining free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of
social evolution by which princes had to be substituted for
municipalities at the end of those fierce internal conflicts and
exhausting wars of jealousy which closed the Middle Ages. Machiavelli,
with all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his day the
most powerful provinces of Italy had become incapable of freedom. 'No
accident, however weighty and violent, could ever restore Milan or
Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption. This is clear from
the fact that after the death of Filippo Visconti, when Milan tried to
regain freedom, she was unable to preserve it.'[1] Whether Machiavelli
is right in referring this incapacity for self-government to the
corruption of morals and religion may be questioned. But it is certain
that throughout the states of Italy, with the one exception of Venice,
causes were at work inimical to republics and favorable to despotisms.
[1] _Discorsi_, i. 17. The Florentine philosopher remarks in the
same passage, 'Cities, once corrupt, and accustomed to the rule of a
prince, can never acquire their freedom even though the prince with
all his kith and kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to
extinguish another; and the city has no rest except by the creation
of a new lord, unless one burgher by his goodness and his great
qualities may chance to preserve its independence during his
lifetime.'
It will be observed in this classification of Italian tyrants that the
tenure of their power was almost uniformly forcible. They generally
acquired it through the people in the first instance, and maintained it
by the exercise of violence. Rank had nothing to do with their claims.
The bastards of Popes, who like Sixtus IV. had no pedigree, merchants
like the Medici, the son of a peasant like Francesco Sforza, a rich
usurer like Pepoli, had almost equal chances with nobles of the ancient
houses of Este, Visconti, or Malatesta. The chief point in favor of the
latter was the familiarity which through long years of authority had
accustomed the people to their rule. When exiled, they had a better
chance of return to power than parvenus, whose party-cry and ensigns
were comparatively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty--if indeed
the word loyalty can be applied to that preference for the established
and the customary which made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of
doctrinaires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or a Malatesta.
Despotism in Italy as in ancient Greece was democratic. It recruited its
ranks from all classes and erected its thrones upon the sovereignty of
the peoples it oppressed. The impulse to the free play of ambitious
individuality which this state of things communicated was enormous.
Capacity might raise the meanest monk to the chair of S. Peter's, the
meanest soldier to the duchy of Milan. Audacity, vigor, unscrupulous
crime were the chief requisites for success. It was not till Cesare
Borgia displayed his magnificence at the French Court, till the Italian
adventurer matched himself with royalty in its legitimate splendor, that
the lowness of his origin and the frivolity of his pretensions appeared
in any glaring light.[1] In Italy itself, where there existed no
time-honored hierarchy of classes and no fountain of nobility in the
person of a sovereign, one man was a match for another, provided he knew
how to assert himself. To the conditions of a society based on these
principles we may ascribe the unrivaled emergence of great
personalities among the tyrants, as well as the extraordinary tenacity
and vigor of such races as the Visconti. In the contest for power, and
in the maintenance of an illegal authority, the picked athletes came to
the front. The struggle by which they established their tyranny, the
efforts by which they defended it against foreign foes and domestic
adversaries, trained them to endurance and to daring. They lived
habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies.
Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their
vehement vitality. About such men there could be nothing on a small or
mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his
brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only
gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and
moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy,
scientific in the use of cruelty and terror, employing first-rate
faculties of brain and will and bodily powers in the service of
transcendent egotism, only the _virtuosi_ of political craft as
theorized by Machiavelli, could survive and hold their own upon this
perilous arena.
[1] Brantôme _Capitaines Etrangers_, Discours 48, gives an account
of the entrance of the Borgia into Chinon in 1498, and adds: 'The
king being at the window saw him arrive, and there can be no doubt
how he and his courtiers ridiculed all this state, as unbecoming the
petty Duke of Valentinois.'
The life of the despot was usually one of prolonged terror. Immured in
strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like the
Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with foreign troops,
protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and
drink lest they should be poisoned. His chief associates were artists,
men of letters, astrologers, buffoons, and exiles. He had no real
friends or equals, and against his own family he adopted an attitude of
fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues to which he was
exposed.[1] His timidity verged on monomania. Like Alfonso II. of
Naples, he was tortured with the ghosts of starved or strangled victims;
like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious fascination of astrology; like
Filippo Maria Visconti, he trembled at the sound of thunder, and set one
band of body-guards to watch another next his person. He dared not hope
for a quiet end. No one believed in the natural death of a prince:
princes must be poisoned or poignarded.[2] Out of thirteen of the
Carrara family, in little more than a century (1318-1435), three were
deposed or murdered by near relatives, one was expelled by a rival from
his state, four were executed by the Venetians. Out of five of the La
Scala family, three were killed by their brothers, and a fourth was
poisoned in exile.
[1] See what Guicciardini in his _History of Florence_ says about
the suspicious temper of even such a tyrant as the cultivated and
philosophical Lorenzo de' Medici. See too the incomparably eloquent
and penetrating allegory of _Sospetto_, and its application to the
tyrants of Italy in Ariosto's _Cinque Canti_ (C. 2. St. 1-9).
[2] Our dramatist Webster, whose genius was fascinated by
the crimes of Italian despotism, makes the Duke of Bracciano exclaim
on his death-bed:--
'O thou soft natural Death, thou art joint-twin
To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.'
Instances of domestic crime might be multiplied by the hundred.
Besides those which will follow in these pages, it is enough to
notice the murder of Giovanni Francesco Pico, by his nephew, at
Mirandola (1533); the murder of his uncle by Oliverotto da Fermo;
the assassination of Giovanni Varano by his brothers at Camerino
(1434); Ostasio da Polenta's fratricide (1322); Obizzo da Polenta's
fratricide in the next generation, and the murder of Ugolino Gonzaga
by his brothers; Gian Francesco Gonzaga's murder of his wife; the
poisoning of Francesco Sforza's first wife, Polissena, Countess of
Montalto, with her little girl, by her aunt; and the murder of
Galeotto Manfredi, by his wife, at Faenza (1488).
To enumerate all the catastrophes of reigning families, occurring in the
fifteenth century alone, would be quite impossible within the limits of
this chapter. Yet it is only by dwelling on the more important that any
adequate notion of the perils of Italian despotism can be formed. Thus
Girolamo Riario was murdered by his subjects at Forli (1488), and
Francesco Vico dei Prefetti in the Church of S. Sisto at Viterbo[1]
(1387). At Lodi in 1402 Antonio Fisiraga burned the chief members of the
ruling house of Vistarini on the public square, and died himself of
poison after a few months. His successor in the tyranny, Giovanni
Vignate, was imprisoned by Filippo Maria Visconti in a wooden cage at
Pavia, and beat his brains out in despair against its bars. At the same
epoch Gabrino Fondulo slaughtered seventy of the Cavalcabò family
together in his castle of Macastormo, with the purpose of acquiring
their tyranny over Cremona. He was afterwards beheaded as a traitor at
Milan (1425). Ottobon Terzi was assassinated at Parma (1408), Nicola
Borghese at Siena (1499). Altobello Dattiri at Todi (about 1500),
Raimondo and Pandolfo Malatesta at Rimini, and Oddo Antonio di
Montefeltro at Urbino (1444).[2] The Varani were massacred to a man in
the Church of S. Dominic at Camerino (1434), the Trinci at Foligno
(1434), and the Chiavelli of Fabriano in church upon Ascension Day
(1435). This wholesale extirpation of three reigning families introduces
one of the most romantic episodes in the history of Italian despotism.
From the slaughter of the Varani one only child, Giulio Cesare, a boy of
two years old, was saved by his aunt Tora. She concealed him in a truss
of hay and carried him to the Trinci at Foligno. Hardly had she gained
this refuge, when the Trinci were destroyed, and she had to fly with her
burden to the Chiavelli at Fabriano. There the same scenes of bloodshed
awaited her. A third time she took to flight, and now concealed her
precious charge in a nunnery. The boy was afterwards stolen from the
town on horseback by a soldier of adventure. After surviving three
massacres of kith and kin, he returned as despot at the age of twelve to
Camerino, and became a general of distinction. But he was not destined
to end his life in peace. Cesare Borgia finally murdered him, together
with three of his sons, when he had reached the age of sixty. Less
romantic but not less significant in the annals of tyranny is the story
of the Trinci. A rival noble of Foligno, Pietro Rasiglia, had been
injured in his honor by the chief of the ruling house. He contrived to
assassinate two brothers, Nicolà and Bartolommeo, in his castle of
Nocera; but the third, Corrado Trinci, escaped, and took a fearful
vengeance on his enemy. By the help of Braccio da Montone he possessed
himself of Nocera and all its inhabitants, with the exception of Pietro
Rasiglia's wife, whom her husband flung from the battlements. Corrado
then butchered the men, women, and children of the Rasiglia clan, to the
number of three hundred persons, accomplishing his vengeance with
details of atrocity too infernal to be dwelt on in these pages. It is
recorded that thirty-six asses laden with their mangled limbs paraded
the streets of Foligno as a terror-striking spectacle for the
inhabitants. He then ruled the city by violence, until the warlike
Cardinal dei Vitelleschi avenged society of so much mischief by
destroying the tyrant and five of his sons, in the same year. Equally
fantastic are the annals of the great house of the Baglioni at Perugia.
Raised in 1389 upon the ruins of the bourgeois faction called Raspanti,
they founded their tyranny in the person of Pandolfo Baglioni, who was
murdered together with sixty of his clan and followers by the party
they had dispossessed. The new despot, Biordo Michelotti, was stabbed in
the shoulders with a poisoned dagger by his relative, the abbot of S.
Pietro. Then the city, in 1416, submitted to Braccio da Montone, who
raised it to unprecedented power and glory. On his death it fell back
into new discords, from which it was rescued again by the Baglioni in
1466, now finally successful in their prolonged warfare with the rival
family of Oddi. But they did not hold their despotism in tranquillity.
In 1500 one of the members of the house, Grifonetto degli Baglioni,
conspired against his kinsmen and slew them in their palaces at night.
As told by Matarazzo, this tragedy offers an epitome of all that is
most, brilliant and terrible in the domestic feuds of the Italian
tyrants.[3] The vicissitudes of the Bentivogli at Bologna present
another series of catastrophes, due less to their personal crimes than
to the fury of the civil strife that raged around them. Giovanni
Bentivoglio began the dynasty in 1400. The next year he was stabbed to
death and pounded in a wine-vat by the infuriated populace, who thought
he had betrayed their interests in battle. His son, Antonio, was
beheaded by a Papal Legate, and numerous members of the family on their
return from exile suffered the same fate. In course of time the
Bentivogli made themselves adored by the people; and when Piccinino
imprisoned the heir of their house, Annibale, in the castle of Varano,
four youths of the Marescotti family undertook his rescue at the peril
of their lives, and raised him to the Signory of Bologna. In 1445 the
Canetoli, powerful nobles, who hated the popular dynasty, invited
Annibale and all his clan to a christening feast, where they
exterminated every member of the reigning house. Not one Bentivoglio was
left alive. In revenge for this massacre, the Marescotti, aided by the
populace, hunted down the Canetoli for three whole days in Bologna, and
nailed their smoking hearts to the doors of the Bentivoglio palace. They
then drew from his obscurity in Florence the bastard Santi Bentivoglio,
who found himself suddenly lifted from a wool-factory to a throne.
Whether he was a genuine Bentivoglio or not, mattered little. The house
had become necessary to Bologna, and its popularity had been baptized in
the bloodshed of four massacres. What remains of its story can be
briefly told. When Cesare Borgia besieged Bologna, the Marescotti
intrigued with him, and eight of their number were sacrificed by the
Bentivogli in spite of their old services to the dynasty. The survivors,
by the help of Julius II., returned from exile in 1536, to witness the
final banishment of the Bentivogli and to take part in the destruction
of the palace, where their ancestors had nailed the hearts of the
Canetoli upon the walls.
[1] The family of the Prefetti fed up the murderer in their castle
and then gave him alive to be eaten by their hounds.
[2] Sforza Attendolo killed Terzi by a spear-thrust in the back.
Pandolfo Petrucci murdered Borghese, who was his father-in-law.
Raimondo Malatesta was stabbed by his two nephews disguised as
hermits. Dattiri was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal by
the people, who bit his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate
it--distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament
among themselves.
[3] See the article 'Perugia' in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_.
To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime, of force repelled
by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud,
would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing
nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic
and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable
by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting
through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the
spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough
however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the
tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever
capable of finding freedom. Even a princely house so well based in its
dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi
offers a long list of terrific tragedies. One princess is executed for
adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard's bastard tries to seize the
throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned
by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal
against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life
(1506). Such was the labyrinth of plot and counterplot, of force
repelled by violence, in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by
Tasso lived.
Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and
timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a fine art for his
amusement, and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended to
extravagance. Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable
and jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in his soul, and fed his dogs
with living men, or spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures.
From the game of politics again he won a feverish pleasure, playing for
states and cities as a man plays chess, and endeavoring to extract the
utmost excitement from the varying turns of skill and chance. It would
be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes of Italy were of this
sort. The saner, better, and nobler among them--men of the stamp of Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco and Lodovico
Sforza, found a more humane enjoyment in the consolidation of their
empire, the cementing of their alliances, the society of learned men,
the friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, the
building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of
conquest. Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively
innocent taste for magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a
scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo de' Medici and Frederick of Urbino,
exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of
culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic
houses. The strain of tyranny proved too strong. Crime, illegality, and
the sense of peril, descending from father to son, produced monsters in
the shape of men. The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last
Sforzas, the last Malatestas, the last Farnesi, the last Medici are
among the worst specimens of human nature.
Macaulay's brilliant description of the Italian tyrant in his essay on
Machiavelli deserves careful study. It may, however, be remarked that
the picture is too favorable. Macaulay omits the darker crimes of the
despots, and draws his portrait almost exclusively from such men as Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, Frederick of Urbino,
and Lorenzo de' Medici. The point he is seeking to establish--that
political immorality in Italy was the national correlative to Northern
brutality--leads him to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined
passions, the firm and astute policy, the power over men, and the
excellent government which distinguished the noblest Italian princes.
When he says 'Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the contrary,
where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and
humane'; he seems to have forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci,
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia. When he writes, 'His
passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their
most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been
accustomed,' he leaves Francesco Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria
Sforza, Pier Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning. If all
the despots had been what Macaulay describes, the revolutions and
conspiracies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have
taken place. It is, however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth
century the conduct of the tyrant toward his subjects assumed an
external form of mildness. As Italy mixed with the European nations, and
as tyranny came to be legalized in the Italian states, the despots
developed a policy not of terrorism but of enervation (Lorenzo de'
Medici is the great example), and aspired to be paternal governors.
What I have said about Italian despotism is no mere fancy picture. The
actual details of Milanese history, the innumerable tragedies of
Lombardy, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona, during the ascendency of
despotic families, are far more terrible than any fiction; nor would it
be easy for the imagination to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage
barbarism with modern refinement. Savonarola's denunciations[1] and
Villani's descriptions of a despot read like passages from Plato's
Republic, like the most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny.
The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's Chronicle may be
cited as a fair specimen of the judgment passed by contemporary Italian
thinkers upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap. i.): 'The crimes of
despots always hinder and often neutralize the virtues of good men.
Their pleasures are at variance with morality. By them the riches of
their subjects are swallowed up. They are foes to men who grow in
wisdom and in greatness of soul in their dominions. They diminish by
their imposts the wealth of the peoples ruled by them. Their unbridled
lust is never satiated, but their subjects have to suffer such outrages
and insults as their fancy may from time to time suggest. But inasmuch
as the violence of tyranny is manifested to all eyes by these and many
other atrocities, we need not enumerate them afresh. It is enough to
select one feature, strange in appearance but familiar in fact; for what
can be more extraordinary than to see princes of ancient and illustrious
lineage bowing to the service of despots, men of high descent and
time-honored nobility frequenting their tables and accepting their
bounties? Yet if we consider the end of all this, the glory of tyrants
often turns to misery and ruin. Who can exaggerate their wretchedness?
They know not where to place their confidence; and their courtiers are
always on the lookout for the despot's fall, gladly lending their
influence and best endeavors to undo him in spite of previous servility.
This does not happen to hereditary kings, because their conduct toward
their subjects, as well as their good qualities and all their
circumstances, are of a nature contrary to that of tyrants. Therefore
the very causes which produce and fortify and augment tyrannies, conceal
and nourish in themselves the sources of their overthrow and ruin. This
indeed is the greatest wretchedness of tyrants.'
[1] See the passage condensed from his Sermons in Villari's Life of
Savonarola (Eng. Tr. vol. ii. p. 62). The most thorough-going
analysis of despotic criminality is contained in Savonarola's
_Tractato circa el Reggimento e Governo della Città di Firenze_,
Trattato ii. cap. 2. _Della Malitia e pessime Conditioni del
Tyranno_.
It may be objected that this sweeping criticism, from the pen of a
Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an
invective. Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of
burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the
censure of Villani. Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the
house of Baglioni is so striking, and who exults in the distinction they
conferred upon Perugia, writes no less bitterly concerning the
pernicious effects of their misgovernment.[1] It is to be noticed that
Villani and Matarazzo agree about the special evils brought upon the
populations by their tyrants. Lust and violence take the first place.
Next comes extortion; then the protection of the lawless and the
criminal against the better sort of citizens. But the Florentine, with
intellectual acumen, lays his finger on one of the chief vices of their
rule. They retard the development of mental greatness in their states,
and check the growth of men of genius. Ariosto, in the comparative calm
of the sixteenth century, when tyrannies had yielded to the protectorate
of Spain, sums up the records of the past in the following memorable
passage:[2] 'Happy the kingdoms where an open-hearted and blameless man
gives law! Wretched indeed and pitiable are those where injustice and
cruelty hold sway, where burdens ever greater and more grievous are laid
upon the people by tyrants like those who now abound in Italy, whose
infamy will be recorded through years to come as no less black than
Caligula's or Nero's.' Guicciardini, with pregnant brevity, observes:[3]
'The mortar with which the states of the tyrants are cemented is the
blood of the citizens.'
[1] Arch. Stor. xvi. 102. See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, p.
84.
[2] Cinque Canti, ii. 5.
[3] Ricordi Politici, ccxlii.
In the history of Italian despotism two points of first-rate importance
will demand attention. The first is the process by which the greater
tyrannies absorbed the smaller during the fourteenth century. The second
is the relation of the chief Condottieri to the tyrants of the fifteenth
century. The evolution of these two phenomena cannot be traced more
clearly than by a study of the history of Milan, which at the same time
presents a detailed picture of the policy and character of the Italian
despot during this period. The dynasties of Visconti and Sforza from
1300 to 1500 bridged over the years that intervened between the Middle
Age and the Renaissance, between the period of the free burghs and the
period during which Italy was destined to become the theater of the
action of more powerful nations. Their alliances and diplomatic
relations prepared the way for the interference of foreigners in Italian
affairs. Their pedigree illustrates the power acquired by military
adventurers in the peninsula. The magnitude of their political schemes
displays the most soaring ambition which it was ever granted to Italian
princes to indulge. The splendor of their court and the intelligence of
their culture bear witness to the high state of civilization which the
Italians had reached.
The power of the Visconti in Milan was founded upon that of the Della
Torre family, who preceded them as Captains General of the people at the
end of the thirteenth century. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, first laid a
substantial basis for the dominion of his house by imprisoning Napoleone
Della Torre and five of his relatives in three iron cages in 1277, and
by causing his nephew Matteo Visconti to be nominated both by the
Emperor and by the people of Milan as imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed
the Ghibelline party in Lombardy, was the model of a prudent Italian
despot. From the date 1311, when he finally succeeded in his attempts
upon the sovereignty of Milan, to 1322, when he abdicated in favor of
his son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by force of character, craft, and
insight, more than by violence or cruelty. Excellent as a general, he
was still better as a diplomatist, winning more cities by money than by
the sword. All through his life, as became a Ghibelline chief at that
time, he persisted in fierce enmity against the Church. But just before
his death a change came over him. He showed signs of superstitious
terror, and began to fear the ban of excommunication which lay upon him.
This weakness alarmed the suspicions of his sons, terrible and wolf-like
men, whom Matteo had hitherto controlled with bit and bridle. They
therefore induced him to abdicate in 1322, and when in the same year he
died, they buried his body in a secret place, lest it should be exhumed,
and scattered to the winds in accordance with the Papal edict against
him.[1] Galeazzo, his son, was less fortunate than Matteo, surnamed Il
Grande by the Lombards. The Emperor Louis of Bavaria threw him into
prison on the occasion of his visit to Milan in 1327, and only released
him at the intercession of his friend Castruccio Castracane. To such an
extent was the growing tyranny of the Visconti still dependent upon
their office delegated from the Empire. This Galeazzo married Beatrice
d' Este, the widow of Nino di Gallura, of whom Dante speaks in the
eighth canto of the Purgatory, and had by her a son named Azzo. Azzo
bought the city, together with the title of Imperial Vicar, from the
same Louis who had imprisoned his father.[2] When he was thus seated in
the tyranny of his grandfather, he proceeded to fortify it further by
the addition of ten Lombard towns, which he reduced beneath the
supremacy of Milan. At the same time he consolidated his own power by
the murder of his uncle Marco in 1329, who had grown too mighty as a
general. Giovio describes him as fair of complexion, blue-eyed,
curly-haired, and subject to the hereditary disease of gout.[3] Azzo
died in 1339, and was succeeded by his uncle Lucchino. In Lucchino the
darker side of the Visconti character appears for the first time. Cruel,
moody, and jealous, he passed his life in perpetual terror. His nephews,
Galeazzo and Barnabas, conspired against him, and were exiled to
Flanders. His wife, Isabella Fieschi, intrigued with Galeazzo and
disgraced him by her amours with Ugolino Gonzaga and Dandolo the Doge of
Venice. Finally suspicion rose to such a pitch between this ill-assorted
couple, that, while Lucchino was plotting how to murder Isabella, she
succeeded in poisoning him in 1349. In spite of these domestic
calamities, Lucchino was potent as a general and governor. He bought
Parma from Obizzo d' Este, and made the town of Pisa dependent upon
Milan. Already in his policy we can trace the encroachment which
characterized the schemes of the Milanese despots, who were always
plotting to advance their foot beyond the Apennines as a prelude to the
complete subjugation of Italy. Lucchino left sons, but none of proved
legitimacy.[4] Consequently he was succeeded by his brother Giovanni,
son of old Matteo il Grande, and Archbishop of Milan. This man, the
friend of Petrarch, was one of the most notable characters of the
fourteenth century. Finding himself at the head of sixteen cities, he
added Bologna to the tyranny of the Visconti in 1350, and made himself
strong enough to defy the Pope. Clement VI., resenting his encroachments
on Papal territory, summoned him to Avignon. Giovanni Visconti replied
that he would march thither at the head of 12,000 cavalry and 6,000
infantry. In the Duomo of Milan he ascended his throne with the crosier
in his left hand and a drawn sword in his right; and thus he is always
represented in pictures. The story of Giovanni's answer to the Papal
Legate is well told by Corio:[5] 'After Mass in the Cathedral the
great-hearted Archbishop unsheathed a flashing sword, which he had
girded on his thigh, and with his left hand seized the cross, saying,
"This is my spiritual scepter, and I will wield the sword as my
temporal, in defense of all my empire."' Afterwards he sent couriers to
engage lodgings for his soldiers and his train for six months. Visitors
to Avignon found no room in the city, and the Pope was fain to decline
so terrible a guest. In 1353 Giovanni annexed Genoa to the Milanese
principality, and died in 1354, having established the rule of the
Visconti over the whole of the North of Italy, with the exception of
Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice.
[1] We may compare what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in the
'Purgatory' (canto iii.). The great Ghibelline poet here protests
against the use of excommunication as a political weapon. His sense
of justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the
sentence of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of
partisans; yet the examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo
Visconti prove how terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences
continued to be. Few had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di
Mirandola, who expired in 1499 under the ban of the Church, which he
had borne for sixteen years.
[2] This was in 1328. Azzo agreed to pay 25,000 florins. The vast
wealth of the Visconti amassed during their years of peaceful
occupation always stood them in good stead when bad times came, and
when the Emperor was short of cash. Azzo deserves special
commendation from the student of art for the exquisite octagonal
tower of S. Gottardo, which he built of terra cotta with marble
pilasters, in Milan. It is quite one of the loveliest monuments of
mediæval Italian architecture.
[3] Lucchino and Galeazzo Visconti were both afflicted with gout,
the latter to such an extent as to be almost crippled.
[4] This would not have been by itself a bar to succession in an
Italian tyranny. But Lucchino's bastards were not of the proper
stuff to continue their father's government, while their fiery uncle
was precisely the man to sustain the honor and extend the power of
the Visconti.
[5] Storia di Milano, 1554, p. 223.
The reign of the archbishop Giovanni marks a new epoch in the despotism
of the Visconti. They are now no longer the successful rivals of the
Della Torre family or dependents on imperial caprice, but self-made
sovereigns, with a well-established power in Milan and a wide extent of
subject territory. Their dynasty, though based on force and maintained
by violence, has come to be acknowledged; and we shall soon see them
allying themselves with the royal houses of Europe. After the death of
Giovanni, Matteo's sons were extinct. But Stefano, the last of his
family, had left three children, who now succeeded to the lands and
cities of the house. They were named Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo.
Between these three princes a partition of the heritage of Giovanni
Visconti was effected. Matteo took Bologna, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma,
Bobbio, and some other towns of less importance. Bernabo received
Cremona, Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo. Galeazzo held Como, Novara,
Vercelli, Asti, Tortona, and Alessandria. Milan and Genoa were to be
ruled by the three in common. It may here be noticed that the
dismemberment of Italian despotisms among joint-heirs was a not
unfrequent source of disturbance and a cause of weakness to their
dynasties. At the same time the practice followed naturally upon the
illegal nature of the tyrant's title. He dealt with his cities as so
many pieces of personal property, which he could distribute as he chose,
not as a coherent whole to be bequeathed to one ruler for the common
benefit of all his subjects. In consequence of such partition, it became
the interest of brother to murder brother, so as to effect a
reconsolidation of the family estates. Something of the sort happened on
this occasion. Matteo abandoned himself to bestial sensuality; and his
two brothers, finding him both feeble and likely to bring discredit on
their rule, caused him to be assassinated in 1355.[1] They then jointly
swayed the Milanese, with unanimity remarkable in despots. Galeazzo was
distinguished as the handsomest man of his age. He was tall and
graceful, with golden hair, which he wore in long plaits, or tied up in
a net, or else loose and crowned with flowers. Fond of display and
magnificence, he spent much of his vast wealth in shows and festivals,
and in the building of palaces and churches. The same taste for splendor
led him to seek royal marriages for his children. His daughter Violante
was wedded to the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of England, who
received with her for dowry the sum of 200,000 golden florins, as well
as five cities bordering on Piedmont.[2] It must have been a strange
experience for this brother of the Black Prince, leaving London, where
the streets were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the beds laid on
straw, and where wine was sold as medicine, to pass into the luxurious
palaces of Lombardy, walled with marble, and raised high above smooth
streets of stone. Of his marriage with Violante Giovio gives some
curious details. He says that Galeazzo on this occasion made splendid
presents to more than 200 Englishmen, so that he was reckoned to have
outdone the greatest kings in generosity. At the banquet Gian Galeazzo,
the bride's brother, leading a choice company of well-born youths,
brought to the table with each course fresh gifts.[3] 'At one time it
was a matter of sixty most beautiful horses with trappings of silk and
silver; at another, plate, hawks, hounds, horse-gear, fine cuirasses,
suits of armor fashioned of wrought steel, helmets adorned with crests,
surcoats embroidered with pearls, belts, precious jewels set in gold,
and great quantities of cloth of gold and crimson stuff for making
raiment. Such was the profusion of this banquet that the remnants taken
from the table were enough and to spare for 10,000 men.' Petrarch, we
may remember, assisted at this festival and sat among the princes. It
was thus that Galeazzo displayed his wealth before the feudal nobles of
the North, and at the same time stretched the hand of friendly patronage
to the greatest literary man of Europe. Meanwhile he also married his
son Gian Galeazzo to Isabella, daughter of King John of France, spending
on this occasion, it is said, a similar sum of money for the honor of a
royal alliance.[4]
[1] M. Villani, v. 81. Compare Corio, p. 230. Corio gives the date
1356.
[2] Namely, Alba, Cuneo, Carastro, Mondovico, Braida. See Corio, p.
238, who adds sententiously, 'il che quasi fu l' ultima roina del
suo stato.'
[3] Corio (pp. 239, 240) gives the bill of fare of the banquet.
[4] Sismondi says he gave 600,000 florins to Charles, the brother of
Isabella, but authorities differ about the actual amount.
Galeazzo held his court at Pavia. His brother reigned at Milan. Bernabo
displayed all the worst vices of the Visconti. His system of taxation
was most oppressive, and at the same time so lucrative that he was able,
according to Giovio's estimate, to settle nine of his daughters at an
expense of something like two millions of gold pieces. A curious
instance of his tyranny relates to his hunting establishment. Having
saddled his subjects with the keep of 5,000 boar-hounds, he appointed
officers to go round and see whether these brutes were either too lean
or too well-fed to be in good condition for the chase. If anything
appeared defective in their management, the peasants on whom they were
quartered had to suffer in their persons and their property.[1] This
Bernabo was also remarkable for his cold-blooded cruelty. Together with
his brother, he devised and caused to be publicly announced by edict
that State criminals would be subjected to a series of tortures
extending over the space of forty days. In this infernal programme
every variety of torment found a place, and days of respite were so
calculated as to prolong the lives of the victims for further suffering,
till at last there was little left of them that had not been hacked and
hewed and flayed away.[2] To such extremities of terrorism were the
despots driven in the maintenance of their illegal power.
[1] 'Per cagione di questa caccia continoamente teneva cinque mila
cani; e la maggior parte di quelle distribuiva alla custodia de i
cittadini, e anche a i contadini, i quali niun altro cane che quelli
potevano tenere. Questi due volte il mese erano tenuti a far la
mostra. Onde trovandoli macri in gran somma di danari erano
condannati, e se grossi erano, incolpandoli del troppo, erano
multati; se morivano, li pigliava il tutto.--Corio, p. 247.
Read M. Villani, vii. 48, for the story of a peasant who was given
to Bernabo's dogs to be devoured for having killed a hare. Corio (p.
247) describes the punishments which he inflicted on his subjects
who were convicted of poaching--eyes put out, houses burned, etc. A
young man who dreamed of killing a boar had an eye put out and a
hand cut off because he imprudently recounted his vision of sport in
sleep. On one occasion he burned two friars who ventured to
remonstrate. We may compare Pontanus, 'De Immanitate,' vol. i. pp.
318, 320, for similar cruelty in Ferdinand, King of Naples.
[2] This programme may be read in Sismondi, iv. 282.
Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his own portion of the
Visconti domain by his son Gian Galleazzo. Now began one of those long,
slow, internecine struggles which were so common between the members of
the ruling families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons schemed to get
possession of the young prince's estate. He, on the other hand,
determined to supplant his uncle, and to reunite the whole Visconti
principality beneath his own sway. Craft was the weapon which he chose
in this encounter. Shutting himself up in Pavia, he made no disguise of
his physical cowardice, which was real, while he simulated a timidity of
spirit wholly alien to his temperament. He pretended to be absorbed in
religious observances, and gradually induced his uncle and cousins to
despise him as a poor creature whom they could make short work of when
occasion served. In 1385, having thus prepared the way for treason, he
avowed his intention of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of
Varese. Starting from Pavia with a body guard of Germans, he passed near
Milan, where his uncle and cousins came forth to meet him. Gian
Galeazzo feigned a courteous greeting; but when he saw his relatives
within his grasp, he gave a watchword in German to his troops, who
surrounded Bernabo and took him prisoner with his sons. Gian Galeazzo
marched immediately into Milan, poisoned his uncle in a dungeon, and
proclaimed himself sole lord of the Visconti heirship.[1]
[1] The narrative of this coup-de-main may be read with advantage in
Corio, p. 258.
The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with this coup-de-main
(1385-1402), forms a very important chapter in Italian history. We may
first see what sort of man he was, and then proceed to trace his aims
and achievements. Giovio describes him as having been a remarkably
sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond his years that his friends
feared he would not grow to man's estate. No pleasures in after-life
drew him away from business. Hunting, hawking, women, had alike no
charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the preservation of his
health, read and meditated much, and relaxed himself in conversation
with men of letters. Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect
independence in this prince, who was far above the boisterous pleasures
and violent activities of the age in which he lived. In the erection of
public buildings he was magnificent. The Certosa of Pavia and the Duomo
of Milan owed their foundation to his sense of splendor. At the same
time he completed the palace of Pavia, which his father had begun, and
which he made the noblest dwelling-house in Europe. The University of
Pavia was raised by him from a state of decadence to one of great
prosperity, partly by munificent endowments and partly by a wise choice
of professors. In his military undertakings he displayed a kindred taste
for vast engineering projects. He contemplated and partly carried out a
scheme for turning the Mincio and the Brenta from their channels, and
for drying up the lagoons of Venice. In this way he purposed to attack
his last great enemy, the Republic of S. Mark, upon her strongest point.
Yet in the midst of these huge designs he was able to attend to the most
trifling details of economy. His love of order was so precise that he
may be said to have applied the method of a banker's office to the
conduct of a state. It was he who invented Bureaucracy by creating a
special class of paid clerks and secretaries of departments. Their duty
consisted in committing to books and ledgers the minutest items of his
private expenditure and the outgoings of his public purse; in noting the
details of the several taxes, so as to be able to present a survey of
the whole state revenue; and in recording the names and qualities and
claims of his generals, captains, and officials. A separate office was
devoted to his correspondence, of all of which he kept accurate
copies.[1] By applying this mercantile machinery to the management of
his vast dominions, at a time when public economy was but little
understood in Europe, Gian Galeazzo raised his wealth enormously above
that of his neighbors. His income in a single year is said to have
amounted to 1,200,000 golden florins, with the addition of 800,000
golden florins levied by extraordinary calls.[2] The personal timidity
of this formidable prince prevented him from leading his armies in the
field. He therefore found it necessary to employ paid generals, and took
into his service all the chief Condottieri of the day, thus giving an
impulse to the custom which was destined to corrupt the whole military
system of Italy. Of these men, whom he well knew how to choose, he was
himself the brain and moving principle. He might have boasted that he
never took a step without calculating the cost, carefully considering
the object, and proportioning the means to his end. How mad to such a
man must have seemed the Crusaders of previous centuries, or the
chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their
force upon such unprofitable and impossible undertakings as the
subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his
character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said
to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI.
Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the
following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity:
'False and pitiless, he joined to immeasurable ambition a genius for
enterprise, and to immovable constancy a personal timidity which he did
not endeavor to conceal. The least unexpected motion near him threw him
into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince employed so many soldiers
to guard his palace, or took such multiplied precautions of distrust. He
seemed to acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. But the
vices of tyranny had not weakened his ability. He employed his immense
wealth without prodigality; his finances were always flourishing; his
cities well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; all the
captains of adventure scattered throughout Italy received pensions from
him, and were ready to return to his service whenever called upon. He
encouraged the warriors of the new Italian school; he knew well how to
distinguish, reward, and win their attachment.'[3] Such was the tyrant
who aimed at nothing less than the reduction of the whole of Italy
beneath the sway of the Visconti, and who might have achieved his
purpose had not his career of conquest been checked by the Republic of
Florence, and afterwards cut short by a premature death.
[1] Giovio is particular upon these points: 'Ho veduto io ne gli
armari de' suoi Archivi maravigliosi libri in carta pecora, i quali
contenevano d' anno in anno i nomi de' capitani, condottieri, e
soldati vecchi, e le paghe di ogn' uno, e 'l rotulo delle
cavallerie, et delle fanterie: v' erano anco registrate le copie
delle lettere le quali negli importantissimi maneggi di far guerra o
pace, o egli haveva scritto ai principi o haveva ricevuto da loro.'
[2] The description given by Corio (pp. 260, 266-68) of the dower in
money, plate, and jewels brought by Valentina Visconti to Louis
d'Orleans is a good proof of Gian Galeazzo's wealth. Besides the
town of Asti, she took with her in money 400,000 golden florins. Her
gems were estimated at 68,858 florins, and her plate at 1,667 marks
of Paris. The inventory is curious.
[3] 'History of the Italian Republics' (1 vol. Longmans), p. 190.