At the time of his accession the Visconti had already rooted out the

Correggi and Rossi of Parma, the Scotti of Piacenza, the Pelavicini of

San Donnino, the Tornielli of Novara, the Ponzoni and Cavalcabò of

Cremona, the Beccaria and Languschi of Pavia, the Fisiraghi of Lodi, the

Brusati of Brescia. Their viper had swallowed all these lesser

snakes.[1] But the Carrara family still ruled at Padua, the Gonzaga at

Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, while the great house of Scala was in

possession of Verona. Gian Galeazzo's schemes were first directed

against the Scala dynasty. Founded, like that of the Visconti, upon the

imperial authority, it rose to its greatest height under the Ghibelline

general Can Grande and his nephew Mastino, in the first half of the

fourteenth century (1312-51). Mastino had himself cherished the project

of an Italian Kingdom; but he died before approaching its

accomplishment. The degeneracy of his house began with his three sons.

The two younger killed the eldest; of the survivors the stronger slew

the weaker and then died in 1374, leaving his domains to two of his

bastards. One of these, named Antonio, killed the other in 1381,[2] and

afterwards fell a prey to the Visconti in 1387. In his subjugation of

Verona Gian Galeazzo contrived to make use of the Carrara family,

although these princes were allied by marriage to the Scaligers, and had

everything to lose by their downfall. He next proceeded to attack Padua,

and gained the co-operation of Venice. In 1388 Francesco da Carrara had

to cede his territory to Visconti's generals, who in the same year

possessed themselves for him of the Trevisan Marches. It was then that

the Venetians saw too late the error they had committed in suffering

Verona and Padua to be annexed by the Visconti, when they ought to have

been fortified as defenses interposed between his growing power and

themselves. Having now made himself master of the North of Italy,[3]

with the exception of Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna, Gian Galeazzo turned

his attention to these cities. Alberto d' Este was ruling in Ferrara;

Francesco da Gonzaga in Mantua. It was the Visconti's policy to enfeeble

these two princes by causing them to appear odious in the eyes of their

subjects.[4] Accordingly he roused the jealousy of the Marquis of

Ferrara against his nephew Obizzo to such a pitch that Alberto beheaded

him together with his mother, burned his wife, and hung a third member

of his family, besides torturing to death all the supposed accomplices

of the unfortunate young man. Against the Marquis of Mantua Gian

Galeazzo devised a still more diabolical plot. By forged letters and

subtly contrived incidents he caused Francesco da Gonzaga to suspect his

wife of infidelity with his secretary.[5] In a fit of jealous fury

Francesco ordered the execution of his wife, the mother of several of

his children, together with the secretary. Then he discovered the

Visconti's treason. But it was too late for anything but impotent

hatred. The infernal device had been successful; the Marquis of Mantua

was no less discredited than the Marquis of Ferrara by his crime. It

would seem that these men were not of the stamp and caliber to be

successful villans, and that Gian Galeazzo had reckoned upon this defect

in their character. Their violence caused them to be rather loathed than

feared. The whole of Lombardy was now prostrate before the Milanese

tyrant. His next move was to set foot in Tuscany. For this purpose Pisa

had to be acquired; and here again he resorted to his devilish policy of

inciting other men to crimes by which he alone would profit in the

long-run. Pisa was ruled at that time by the Gambacorta family, with an

old merchant named Pietro at their head. This man had a friend and

secretary called Jacopo Appiano, whom the Visconti persuaded to turn

Judas, and to entrap and murder his benefactor and his children. The

assassination took place in 1392. In 1399 Gherardo, son of Jacopo

Appiano, who held Pisa at the disposal of Gian Galeazzo, sold him this

city for 200,000 florins.[6] Perugia was next attacked. Here Pandolfo,

chief of the Baglioni family, held a semi-constitutional authority,

which the Visconti first helped him to transmute into a tyranny, and

then, upon Pandolfo's assassination, seized as his own.[7] All Italy and

even Germany had now begun to regard the usurpations of the Milanese

despot with alarm. But the sluggish Emperor Wenceslaus refused to take

action against him; nay, in 1395 he granted to the Visconti the

investiture of the Duchy of Milan for 100,000 florins, reserving only

Pavia for himself. In 1399 the Duke laid hands on Siena; and in the next

two years the plague came to his assistance by enfeebling the ruling

families of Lucca and Bologna, the Guinizzi and the Bentivogli, so that

he was now able to take possession of those cities.

[1] Il Biscione, or the Great Serpent, was the name commonly given

to the tyranny of the Visconti (see M. Villani, vi. 8), in allusion

to their ensign of a naked child issuing from a snake's mouth.

[2] Corio, p. 255, tells how the murder was accomplished. Antonio

tried to make it appear that his brother Bartolommeo had met his

death in the prosecution of infamous amours.

[3] Savoy was not in his hands, however, and the Marquisate of

Montferrat remained nominally independent, though he held its heir

in a kind of honorable confinement. Venice, too, remained in

formidable neutrality, the spectator of the Visconti's conquests.

[4] The policy adopted by the Visconti against the Estensi and the

Gonzaghi was that recommended by Machiavelli (Disc. iii. 32):

'quando alcuno vuole o che un popolo o un principe levi al tutto l'

animo ad uno accordo, non ci è altro modo più vero, nè più stabile,

che fargli usare qualche grave scelleratezza contro a colui con il

qual tu non vuoi che l' accordo si faccia.'

[5] This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian

Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina,

daughter of Bernabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy

the more disgraceful.

[6] The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty

despotism. Appiano's crime, which gave a tyranny to his children, is

similar to that of Tremacoldo, who murdered his masters, the

Vistarini of Lodi, and to that of Luigi Gonzaga, who founded the

Ducal house of Mantua by the murder of his patron, Passerino

Buonacolsi.

[7] Pandolfo was murdered in 1393. Gian Galeazzo possessed himself

of Perugia in 1400, having paved his way for the usurpation by

causing Biordo Michelotti, the successor of the Baglioni to be

assassinated by his friend Francesco Guidalotti. It will be noticed

that he proceeded slowly and surely in the case of each annexation,

licking over his prey after he had throttled it and before he

swallowed it, like a boa-constrictor.

There remained no power in Italy, except the Republic of Florence and

the exiled but invincible Francesco da Carrara, to withstand his further

progress. Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. Francesco managed

to return to Padua. Still the peril which threatened the whole of Italy

was imminent. The Duke of Milan was in the plenitude of manhood--rich,

prosperous, and full of mental force. His acquisitions were well

cemented; his armies in good condition; his treasury brim full; his

generals highly paid. All his lieutenants in city and in camp respected

the iron will and the deep policy of the despot who swayed their action

from his arm-chair in Milan. He alone knew how to use the brains and

hands that did him service, to keep them mutually in check, and by their

regulated action to make himself not one but a score of men. At last,

when all other hope of independence for Italy had failed, the plague

broke out with fury in Lombardy. Gian Galeazzo retired to his isolated

fortress of Marignano in order to escape infection. Yet there in 1402 he

sickened. A comet appeared in the sky, to which he pointed as a sign of

his approaching death--'God could not but signalize the end of so

supreme a ruler,' he told his attendants. He died aged 55. Italy drew a

deep breath. The danger was passed.

The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo for the enslavement of

Italy, the ability and force of intellect which sustained him in its

execution, and the power with which he bent men to his will, are

scarcely more extraordinary than the sudden dissolution of his dukedom

at his death. Too timid to take the field himself, he had trained in his

service a band of great commanders, among whom Alberico da Barbino,

Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, and

Ottobon Terzo were the most distinguished. As long as he lived and held

them in leading strings, all went well. But at his death his two sons

were still mere boys. He had to intrust their persons, together with the

conduct of his hardly won dominions, to these captains in conjunction

with the Duchess Catherine and a certain Francesco Barbavara. This man

had been the Duke's body-servant, and was now the paramour of the

Duchess. The generals refused to act with them; and each seized upon

such portions of the Visconti inheritance as he could most easily

acquire. The vast tyranny of the first Duke of Milan fell to pieces in a

day. The whole being based on no legal right, but held together

artificially by force and skill, its constituent parts either reasserted

their independence or became the prey of adventurers.[1] Many scions of

the old ejected families recovered their authority in the subject towns.

We hear again of the Scotti at Piacenza, the Rossi and Correggi at

Parma, the Benzoni at Crema, the Rusconi at Como, the Soardi and

Colleoni at Bergamo, the Landi at Bobbio, the Cavalcabò at Cremona.

Facino Cane appropriated Alessandria; Pandolfo Malatesta seized Brescia;

Ottonbon Terzo established himself in Parma. Meanwhile Giovanni Maria

Visconti was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo Maria

occupied Pavia. Gabriello, a bastard son of the first duke, fortified

himself in Crema.

[1] The anarchy which prevailed in Lombardy after Gian Galeazzo's

death makes it difficult to do more than signalize a few of these

usurpations. Corio, pp. 292 et seq., contain the details.

In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, there was a

progressive tendency to degeneration. The strain of tyranny sustained by

force and craft for generations, the abuse of power and pleasure, the

isolation and the dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a

kind of hereditary madness.[1] In the case of Giovanni Maria and Filippo

Maria Visconti these predisposing causes of insanity were probably

intensified by the fact that their father and mother were first cousins,

the grandchildren of Stefano, son of Matteo il Grande. Be this as it

may, the constitutional ferocity of the race appeared as monomania in

Giovanni, and its constitutional timidity as something akin to madness

in his brother. Gian Maria, Duke of Milan in nothing but in name,

distinguished himself by cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of his

ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of living men. All the

criminals of Milan, and all whom he could get denounced as criminals,

even the participators in his own enormities, were given up to his

infernal sport. His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the dogs to their

duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his

victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.[2] In 1412 some

Milanese nobles succeeded in murdering him, and threw his mangled corpse

into the street. A prostitute is said to have covered it with roses.

Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of Facino Cane,[3] who

brought him nearly half a million of florins for dowry, together with

her husband's soldiers and the cities he had seized after Gian

Galeazzo's death. By the help of this alliance Filippo was now gradually

recovering the Lombard portion of his father's dukedom. The minor

cities, purged by murder of their usurpers, once more fell into the

grasp of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and political

tragedies that drenched their streets with blood. Piacenza was utterly

depopulated. It is recorded that for the space of a year only three of

its inhabitants remained within the walls.

[1] I may refer to Dr. Maudsley (Mind and Matter) for a scientific

statement of the theory of madness developed by accumulated and

hereditary vices.

[2] Corio, p. 301, mentions by name Giovanni da Pusterla and

Bertolino del Maino as 'lacerati da i cani del Duca.' Members of the

families of these men afterwards helped to kill him.

[3] Beatrice di Tenda, the wife of Facino Cane, was twenty years

older than the Duke of Milan. As soon as the Visconti felt himself

assured in his duchy, he caused a false accusation to be brought

against her of adultery with the youthful Michele Oranbelli, and, in

spite of her innocence, beheaded her in 1418. Machiavelli relates

this act of perfidy with Tacitean conciseness (1st. Fior. lib. i.

vol. i. p. 55): 'Dipoi per esser grato de' benefici grandi, come

sono quasi sempre tutti i Principi, accusè Beatrice sua moglie di

stupro e la fece morire.'

Filippo, the last of the Visconti tyrants, was extremely ugly, and so

sensitive about his ill-formed person that he scarcely dared to show

himself abroad. He habitually lived in secret chambers, changed

frequently from room to room, and when he issued from his palace refused

salutations in the streets. As an instance of his nervousness, the

chroniclers report that he could not endure to hear the noise of

thunder.[1] At the same time he inherited much of his father's insight

into character, and his power of controlling men more bold and active

than himself. But he lacked the keen decision and broad views of Gian

Galeazzo. He vacillated in policy and kept planning plots which seemed

to have no object but his own disadvantage. Excess of caution made him

surround the captains of his troops with spies, and check them at the

moment when he feared they might become too powerful. This want of

confidence neutralized the advantage which he might have gained by his

choice of fitting instruments. Thus his selection of Francesco Sforza

for his general against the Venetians in 1431 was a wise one. But he

could not attach the great soldier of fortune to himself. Sforza took

the pay of Florence against his old patron, and in 1441 forced him to a

ruinous peace; one of the conditions of which was the marriage of the

Duke of Milan's only daughter, Bianca, to the son of the peasant of

Cotignola. Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria had no male heir.

The great family of the Visconti had dwindled away. Consequently, after

the duke's death in 1447, Sforza found his way open to the Duchy of

Milan, which he first secured by force and then claimed in right of his

wife. An adverse claim was set up by the House of Orleans, Louis of

Orleans having married Valentina, the legitimate daughter of Gian

Galeazzo.[2] But both of these claims were invalid, since the

investiture granted by Wenceslaus to the first duke excluded females. So

Milan was once again thrown open to the competition of usurpers.

[1] The most complete account of Filippo Maria Visconti written by a

contemporary is that of Piero Candido Decembrio (Muratori, vol.

xx.). The student must, however, read between the lines of this

biography, for Decembrio, at the request of Leonello d' Este,

suppressed the darker colors of the portrait of his master. See the

correspondence in Rosmini's Life of Guarino da Verona.

[2] This claim of the House of Orleans to Milan was one source of

French interference in Italian affairs. Judged by Italian custom,

Sforza's claim through Bianca was as good as that of the Orleans

princes through Valentina, since bastardy was no real bar in the

peninsula. It is said that Filippo Maria bequeathed his duchy to the

Crown of Naples, by a will destroyed after his death. Could this

bequest have taken effect, it might have united Italy beneath one

sovereign. But the probabilities are that the jealousies of

Florence, Venice, and Rome against Naples would have been so

intensified as to lead to a bloody war of succession, and to hasten

the French invasion.

The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan blazed forth upon the

death of the last duke. In spite of so many generations of despots, the

people still regarded themselves as sovereign, and established a

republic. But a state which had served the Visconti for nearly two

centuries, could not in a moment shake off its weakness and rely upon

itself alone. The republic, feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, was

short-sighted enough to engage Francesco Sforza as commander-in-chief

against the Venetians, who had availed themselves of the anarchy in

Lombardy to push their power west of the Adda.

Sforza, though the ablest general of the day, was precisely the man whom

common prudence should have prompted the burghers to mistrust. In one

brilliant campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond the Adda, burned

their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the Po, and utterly defeated their army

at Caravaggio. Then he returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the

surrounding cities, blockaded the Milanese in their capital, and forced

them to receive him as their Duke in 1450. Italy had lost a noble

opportunity. If Florence and Venice had but taken part with Milan, and

had stimulated the flagging energies of Genoa, four powerful republics

in federation might have maintained the freedom of the whole peninsula

and have resisted foreign interference. But Cosimo de' Medici, who was

silently founding the despotism of his own family in Florence, preferred

to see a duke in Milan; and Venice, guided by the Doge Francesco

Foscari, thought only of territorial aggrandizement. The chance was

lost. The liberties of Milan were extinguished. A new dynasty was

established in the duchy, grounded on a false hereditary claim, which,

as long as it continued, gave a sort of color to the superior but still

illegal pretensions of the house of Orleans. It is impossible at this

point in the history of Italy to refrain from judging that the Italians

had become incapable of local self-government, and that the prevailing

tendency to despotism was not the results of accidents in any

combination, but of internal and inevitable laws of evolution.

It was at this period that the old despotisms founded by Imperial Vicars

and Captains of the People came to be supplanted or crossed by those of

military adventurers, just as at a somewhat later time the Condottiere

and the Pope's nominee were blent in Cesare Borgia. This is therefore

the proper moment for glancing at the rise and influence of mercenary

generals in Italy, before proceeding to sketch the history of the Sforza

family.

After the wars in Sicily, carried on by the Angevine princes, had ceased

(1302), a body of disbanded soldiers, chiefly foreigners, was formed

under Fra Ruggieri, a Templar, and swept the South of Italy. Giovanni

Villani marks this as the first sign of the scourge which was destined

to prove so fatal to the peace of Italy.[1] But it was not any merely

accidental outbreak of Banditti, such as this, which established the

Condottiere system. The causes were far more deeply seated, in the

nature of Italian despotism and in the peculiar requirements of the

republics. We have already seen how Frederick II. found it convenient to

employ Saracens in his warfare with the Holy See. The same desire to

procure troops incapable of sympathizing with the native population

induced the Scala and Visconti tyrants to hire German, Breton, Swiss,

English, and even Hungarian guards. These foreign troops remained at

the disposal of the tyrants and superseded the national militia. The

people of Italy were reserved for taxation; the foreigners carried on

the wars of the princes. Nor was this policy otherwise than popular. It

relieved all classes from the conscription, leaving the burgher free to

ply his trade, the peasant to till his fields, and disarming the nobles

who were still rebellious and turbulent within the city walls. The same

custom gained ground among the Republics. Rich Florentine citizens

preferred to stay at home at ease, or to travel abroad for commerce,

while they intrusted their military operations to paid generals.[2]

Venice, jealous of her own citizens, raised no levies in her immediate

territory, and made a rule of never confiding her armies to Venetians.

Her admirals, indeed, were selected from the great families of the

Lagoons. But her troops were placed beneath the discipline of

foreigners. The warfare of the Church, again, had of necessity to be

conducted on the same principles; for it did not often happen that a

Pope arose like Julius II., rejoicing in the sound of cannon and the

life of camps. In this way principalities and republics gradually

denationalized their armies, and came to carrying on campaigns by the

aid of foreign mercenaries under paid commanders. The generals, wishing

as far as possible to render their troops movable and compact,

suppressed the infantry, and confined their attention to perfecting the

cavalry. Heavy-armed cavaliers, officered by professional captains,

fought the battles of Italy; while despots and republics schemed in

their castles, or debated in their council-chambers, concerning objects

of warfare about which the soldiers of fortune were indifferent. The pay

received by men-at-arms was more considerable than that of the most

skilled laborers in any peaceful trade. The perils of military service

in Italy, conducted on the most artificial principles, were but slight;

while the opportunities of self-indulgence--of pillage during war and of

pleasure in the brief intervals of peace--attracted all the hot blood of

the country to this service.[3] Therefore, in course of time, the

profession of Condottiere fascinated the needier nobility of Italy, and

the ranks of their men-at-arms were recruited by townsfolk and peasants,

who deliberately chose a life of adventure.

[1] VIII. 51.

[2] We may remember how the Spanish general Cardona, in 1325,

misused his captaincy of the Florentine forces to keep rich members

of the republican militia in unhealthy stations, extorting money

from them as the price of freedom from perilous or irksome service.

[3] Matarazzo, in his Chronicle of Perugia, gives a lively picture

of an Italian city, in which the nobles for generations followed the

trade of Condottieri, while the people enlisted in their bands--to

the utter ruin of the morals and the peace of the community.

At first the foreign troops of the despots were engaged as body-guards,

and were controlled by the authority of their employers. But the

captains soon rendered themselves independent, and entered into military

contracts on their own account. The first notable example of a roving

troop existing for the sake of pillage, and selling its services to any

bidder, was the so-called Great Company (1343), commanded by the German

Guarnieri, or Duke Werner who wrote upon his corselet: 'Enemy of God, of

Pity and of Mercy.' This band was employed in 1348 by the league of the

Montferrat, La Scala, Carrara, Este, and Gonzaga houses, formed to check

the Visconti.

'In the middle of the fourteenth century,' writes Sismondi,[1] 'all the

soldiers who served in Italy were foreigners: at the end of the same

century they were all, or nearly all, Italian.' This sentence indicates

a most important change in the Condottiere system, which took place

during the lifetime of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Alberico da Barbiano, a

noble of Romagna, and the ancestor of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso,

adopted the career of Condottiere, and formed a Company, called the

Company of S. George, into which he admitted none but Italians. The

consequence of this rule was that he Italianized the profession of

mercenary arms for the future. All the great captains of the period were

formed in his ranks, during the course of those wars which he conducted

for the Duke of Milan. Two rose to paramount importance--Braccio da

Montone, who varied his master's system by substituting the tactics of

detached bodies of cavalry for the solid phalanx in which Barbiano had

moved his troops; and Sforza Attendolo, who adhered to the old method.

Sforza got his name from his great physical strength. He was a peasant

of the village of Cotignola, who, being invited to quit the mattock for

a sword, threw his pickax into an oak, and cried, 'If it stays there, it

is a sign that I shall make my fortune.' The ax stuck in the tree, and

Sforza went forth to found a line of dukes.[2] After the death of

Barbiano in 1409, Sforza and Braccio separated and formed two distinct

companies, known as the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi, who carried on

between them, sometimes in combination, but usually in opposition, all

the wars of Italy for the next twenty years. These old comrades, who had

parted in pursuit of their several advantage, found that they had more

to lose than to gain by defeating each other in any bloody or

inconveniently decisive engagement. Therefore they adopted systems of

campaigning which should cost them as little as possible, but which

enabled them to exhibit a chess-player's capacity for designing clever

checkmates.[3] Both Braccio and Sforza died in 1424, and were succeeded

respectively by Nicolo Piccinino and Francesco Sforza. These two men

became in their turn the chief champions of Italy. At the same time

other Condottieri rose into notice. The Malatesta family at Rimini, the

ducal house of Urbino, the Orsini and the Vitelli of the Roman States,

the Varani of Camerino, the Baglioni of Perugia, and the younger

Gonzaghi furnished republics and princes with professional leaders of

tried skill and independent resources. The vassals of these noble houses

were turned into men-at-arms, and the chiefs acquired more importance in

their roving military life than they could have gained within the narrow

circuit of their little states.

[1] Vol. v. p. 207.

[2] This is the commonly received legend. Corio, p. 255, does not

draw attention to the lowness of Sforza's origin, but says that he

was only twelve years of age when he enlisted in the corps of

Boldrino da Panigale, condottiere of the Church. His robust physical

qualities were hereditary for many generations in his family. His

son Francesco was tall and well made, the best runner, jumper, and

wrestler of his day. He marched, summer and winter, bareheaded;

needed but little sleep; was spare in diet, and self-indulgent only

in the matter of women. Galeazzo Maria, though stained by despicable

vices was a powerful prince, who ruled his duchy with a strong arm.

Of his illegitimate daughter, Caterina, the wife of Girolamo Riario,

a story is told, which illustrates the strong coarse vein that still

distinguished this brood of princes. [See Dennistoun, 'Dukes of

Urbino,' vol. i. p. 292, for Boccalini's account of the Siege of

Forli, sustained by Caterina in 1488. Compare Sismondi, vol. vii. p.

251.] Caterina Riario Sforza, as a woman, was no unworthy inheritor

of her grandfather's personal heroism and genius for government.

[3] I shall have to notice the evils of this system in another

place, while reviewing the _Principe_ of Machiavelli. In that

treatise the Florentine historian traces the whole ruin of Italy

during the sixteenth century to the employment of mercenaries.

The biography of one of these Condottieri deserves special notice, since

it illustrates the vicissitudes of fortune to which such men were

exposed, as well as their relations to their patrons. Francesco

Carmagnuola was a Piedmontese. He first rose into notice at the battle

of Monza in 1412, when Filippo Maria Visconti observed his capacity and

bravery, and afterwards advanced him to the captaincy of a troop. Having

helped to reduce the Visconti duchy to order, Carmagnuola found himself

disgraced and suspected without good reason by the Duke of Milan; and in

1426 he took the pay of the Venetians against his old master. During the

next year he showed the eminence of his abilities as a general; for he

defeated the combined forces of Piccinino, Sforza, and other captains of

the Visconti, and took them prisoners at Macalo. Carmagnuola neither

imprisoned nor murdered his foes.[1] He gave them their liberty, and

four years later had to sustain a defeat from Sforza at Soncino. Other

reverses of fortune followed, which brought upon him the suspicion of

bad faith or incapacity. When he returned to Venice, the state received

their captain with all honors, and displayed unusual pomp in his

admission to the audience of the Council. But no sooner had their velvet

clutches closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, instituted a

secret impeachment of his conduct, and on May 5, 1432, led him out with

his mouth gagged, to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned for

this judicial murder. Had Carmagnuola been convicted of treason? Was he

being punished for his ill success in the campaign of the preceding

years? The Republic of Venice, by the secrecy in which she enveloped

this dark act of vengeance, sought to inspire the whole body of her

officials with vague alarm.

[1] Such an act of violence, however consistent with the morality of

a Cesare Borgia, a Venetian Republic, or a Duke of Milan, would have

been directly opposed to the code of honor in use among Condottieri.

Nothing, indeed, is more singular among the contradictions of this

period than the humanity in the field displayed by hired captains.

War was made less on adverse armies than on the population of

provinces. The adventurers respected each other's lives, and treated

each other with courtesy. They were a brotherhood who played at

campaigning, rather than the representatives of forces seriously

bent on crushing each other to extermination. Machiavelli says

(Princ. cap. xii.) 'Aveano usato ogni industria per levar via a se e

a' soldati la fatica e la paura, non s'ammazzando nelle zuffe, ma

pigliandosi prigioni e senza taglia.' At the same time the license

they allowed themselves against the cities and the districts they

invaded is well illustrated by the pillage of Piacenza in 1447 by

Francesco Sforza's troops. The anarchy of a sack lasted forty days,

during which the inhabitants were indiscriminately sold as slaves,

or tortured for their hidden treasure. Sism. vi. 170.

But to return to the Duchy of Milan. Francesco Sforza entered the

capital as conqueror in 1450, and was proclaimed Duke. He never obtained

the sanction of the Empire to his title, though Frederick III. was

proverbially lavish of such honors. But the great Condottiere,

possessing the substance, did not care for the external show of

monarchy. He ruled firmly, wisely, and for those times well, attending

to the prosperity of his states, maintaining good discipline in his

cities, and losing no ground by foolish or ambitious schemes. Louis XI.

of France is said to have professed himself Sforza's pupil in

statecraft, than which no greater tribute could be paid to his political

sagacity. In 1466 he died, leaving three sons, Galeazzo, Duke of Milan,

the Cardinal Ascanio, and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro.

'Francesco's crown,' says Ripamonti, 'was destined to pass to more than

six inheritors, and these five successions were accomplished by a series

of tragic events in his family. Galeazzo, his son, was murdered because

of his abominable crimes, in the presence of his people, before the

altar, in the middle of the sacred rites. Giovanni Galeazzo, who

followed him, was poisoned by his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico was

imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a dungeon.[1] One of his

sons perished in the same way; the other, after years of misery and

exile, was restored in his childless old age to a throne which had been

undermined, and when he died, his dynasty was extinct. This was the

recompense for the treason of Francesco to the State of Milan. It was

for such successes that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and

danger.' In these rapid successions we trace, besides the demoralization

of the Sforza family, the action of new forces from without. France,

Germany, and Spain appeared upon the stage; and against these great

powers the policy of Italian despotism was helpless.

[1] In the castle of Loches, there is said to be a roughly painted

wall-picture of a man in a helmet over the chimney in the room known

as his prison, with this legend, _Voilà un qui n'est pas content_.

Tradition gives it to Il Moro.

We have now reached the threshold of the true Renaissance, and a new

period is being opened for Italian politics. The despots are about to

measure their strength with the nations of the North. It was Lodovico

Sforza who, by his invitation of Charles VIII. into Italy, inaugurated

the age of Foreign Enslavement. His biography belongs, therefore, to

another chapter. But the life of Galeazzo Maria, husband of Bona of

Savoy, and uncle by marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an

integral part of that history of the Milanese despots which we have

hitherto been tracing. In him the passions of Gian Maria Visconti were

repeated with the addition of extravagant vanity. We may notice in

particular his parade-expedition in 1471 to Florence, when he flaunted

the wealth extorted from his Milanese subjects before the soberminded

citizens of a still free city. Fifty palfreys for the Duchess, fifty

chargers for the Duke, trapped in cloth of gold; a hundred men-at-arms

and five hundred foot soldiers for a body-guard; five hundred couples of

hounds and a multitude of hawks; preceded him. His suite of courtiers

numbered two thousand on horseback: 200,000 golden florins were expended

on this pomp. Machiavelli (1st. Fior. lib. 7) marks this visit of the

Duke of Milan as a turning-point from austere simplicity to luxury and

license in the manners of the Florentines, whom Lorenzo de' Medici was

already bending to his yoke. The most extravagant lust, the meanest and

the vilest cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recreation.[1] He

it was who used to feed his victims on abominations or to bury them

alive, and who found a pleasure in wounding or degrading those whom he

had made his confidants and friends. The details of his assassination,

in 1476, though well known, are so interesting that I may be excused for

pausing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate a moral

characteristic of this period which is intimately connected with the

despotism. Three young nobles of Milan, educated in the classic

literature by Montano, a distinguished Bolognese scholar, had imbibed

from their studies of Greek and Latin history an ardent thirst for

liberty and a deadly hatred of tyrants.[2] Their names were Carlo

Visconti, Girolamo Olgiati, and Giannandrea Lampugnani. Galeazzo Sforza

had wounded the two latter in the points which men hold dearest--their

honor and their property[3]--by outraging the sister of Olgiati and by

depriving Lampugnani of the patronage of the Abbey of Miramondo. The

spirit of Harmodius and Virginius was kindled in the friends, and they

determined to rid Milan of her despot. After some meetings in the garden

of S. Ambrogio, where they matured their plans, they laid their project

of tyrannicide as a holy offering before the patron saint of Milan.[4]

Then having spent a few days in poignard exercise for the sake of

training,[5] they took their place within the precincts of S. Stephen's

Church. There they received the sacrament and addressed themselves in

prayer to the Protomartyr, whose fane was about to be hallowed by the

murder of a monster odious to God and man. It was on the morning of

December 26, 1476, that the duke entered San Stefano. At one and the

same moment the daggers of the three conspirators struck him--Olgiati's

in the breast, Visconti's in the back, Lampugnani's in the belly. He

cried 'Ah, Dio!' and fell dead upon the pavement. The friends were

unable to make their escape; Visconti and Lampugnani were killed on the

spot; Olgiati was seized, tortured, and torn to death.

[1] Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. 777,

and Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures.

See too his character by Machiavelli, 1st. Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p.

316. Yet Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with

the vice of unbridled sensuality.

[2] The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this

time, as also during the French Revolution, fired the

imagination of patriots. Lorenzino de' Medici appealed to the

example of Timoleon in 1537, and Pietro Paolo Boscoli to that

of Brutus in 1513.

[3] 'Le ingiurie conviene che siano nella roba, nel sangue, o

nell' onore.... La roba e l'onore sono quelle due cose che

offendono più gli uomini che alcun' altra offesa, e dalle quali

il principe si debbe guardare: perchè e' non può mai spogliare

uno tanto che non gli resti un coltello da vendicarsi; non può

tanto disonorare uno che non gli resti un animo ostinato alla

vendetta.' Mach. Disc. iii. 6.

[4] See Olgiati's prayer to Saint Ambrose in Sismondi, vii. 87,

and in Mach. Ist. Fior. lib. 7.

[5] Giovanni Sanzi's chronicle, quoted by Dennistoun, vol. i.

p. 223, describes the conspirators rehearsing on a wooden

puppet.

In the interval which elapsed between the rack and the pincers, Olgiati

had time to address this memorable speech to the priest who urged him to

repent: 'As for the noble action for which I am about to die, it is this

which gives my conscience peace; to this I trust for pardon from the

Judge of all. Far from repenting, if I had to come ten times to life in

order ten times to die by these same torments, I should not hesitate to

dedicate my blood and all my powers to an object so sublime.' When the

hangman stood above him, ready to begin the work of mutilation, he is

said to have exclaimed: Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memora

facti--my death is untimely, my fame eternal, the memory of the deed

will last for aye.' He was only twenty-two years of age.[1] There is an

antique grandeur about the outlines of this story, strangely mingled

with mediæval Catholicism in the details, which makes it typical of the

Renaissance. Conspiracies against rulers were common at the time in

Italy; but none were so pure and honorable as this. Of the Pazzi

Conjuration (1478) which Sixtus IV. directed to his everlasting infamy

against the Medici, I shall have to speak in another place. It is enough

to mention here in passing the patriotic attempt of Girolamo Gentile

against Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa in 1476, and the more selfish plot of

Nicolo d' Este, in the same year, against his uncle Ercole, who held the

Marquisate of Ferrara to the prejudice of his own claim. The latter

tragedy was rendered memorable by the vengeance taken by Ercole. He

beheaded Nicolo and his cousin Azzo together with twenty-five of his

comrades, effectually preventing by this bloodshed any future attempt to

set aside his title. Falling as these four conspiracies do within the

space of two years, and displaying varied features of antique heroism,

simple patriotism, dynastic dissension, and ecclesiastical perfidy, they

present examples of the different forms and causes of political

tragedies with a noteworthy and significant conciseness.[2]

[1] The whole story may be read in Ripamonti, under the head of

'Confessio Olgiati;' in Corio, who was a page of the Duke's and an

eye-witness of the murder; and in the seventh book of Machiavelli's

'History.' Sismondi's summary and references, vol. vii. pp. 86-90,

are very full.

[2] It is worthy of notice that very many tyrannicides took

place in Church--for example, the murders of Francesco Vico dei

Prefetti, of the Varani, the Chiavelli, Giuliano de' Medici,

and Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The choice of public service, as the

best occasion for the commission of these crimes, points to the

guarded watchfulness maintained by tyrants in their palaces and

on the streets. Banquets and festivities offered another kind

of opportunity; and it was on such occasions that domestic

tragedies, like Oliverotto's murder of his uncle and Grifonetto

Baglioni's treason, were accomplished.

Such was the actual condition of Italy at the end of the fifteenth

century. Neither public nor private morality in our sense of the word

existed. The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the

members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime

in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy.

Tyrannicide became honorable; and the proverb, 'He who gives his own

life can take a tyrant's,' had worked itself into popular language. At

this point it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning public

murder which prevailed in Italy. Machiavelli, in the _Discorsi_ iii. 6,

discusses the whole subject with his usual frigid and exhaustive

analysis. It is no part of his critical method to consider the morality

of the matter. He deals with the facts of history scientifically. The

esteem in which tyrannicide was held at Florence is proved by the

erection of Donatello's Judith in 1495, at the gate of the Palazzo

Pubblico, with this inscription, _exemplum salutis publicæ cives

posuere_. All the political theorists agree that to rid a state of its

despot is a virtuous act. They only differ about its motives and its

utility. In Guicciardini's Reggimento di Firenze (Op. Ined. vol. ii. pp.

53, 54, 114) the various motives of tyrannicide are discussed, and it is

concluded that _pochissimi sono stati quelli che si siano mossi

meramente per amore della libertà della sua patria, a' quali si conviene

suprema laude_.[1] Donato Giannotti (Opere, vol. i. p. 341) bids the

conspirator consider whether the mere destruction of the despot will

suffice to restore his city to true liberty and good government--a

caution by which Lorenzino de' Medici in his assassination of Duke

Alessandro might have profited; for he killed one tyrant in order only

to make room for another. Lorenzino's own Apology (Varchi, vol. iii. pp.

283-295) is an important document, as showing that the murderer of a

despot counted on the sympathy of honorable men. So, too, is the verdict

of Boscolo's confessor (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 309), who pronounced that

conspiracy against a tyrant was no crime. Nor did the demoralization of

the age stop here. Force, which had been substituted for Law in

government, became, as it were, the mainspring of society. Murders,

poisoning, rapes, and treasons were common incidents of private as of

public life.[2] In cities like Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an

inconceivably low rate. A man's life was worth scarcely more than that

of a horse. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with professional

cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics claimed for their abodes the

right of sanctuary. Popes sold absolution for the most horrible

excesses, and granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of

crimes of lust and violence. Success was the standard by which acts were

judged; and the man who could help his friends intimidate his enemies,

and carve a way to fortune for himself by any means he chose, was

regarded as a hero. Machiavelli's use of the word _virtù_ is in this

relation most instructive. It has altogether lost the Christian sense of

_virtue_, and retains only so much of the Roman _virtus_ as is

applicable to the courage, intellectual ability, and personal prowess of

one who has achieved his purpose, be that what it may. The upshot of

this state of things was that individuality of character and genius

obtained a freer scope at this time in Italy than during any other

period of modern history.

[1] 'Very few indeed have those been, whose motive for tyrannicide

was a pure love of their country's liberty; and these deserve the

highest praise.'

[2] It is quite impossible to furnish a complete view of

Italian society under this aspect. Students must be referred to

the stories of the novelists, who collected the more dramatic

incidents and presented them in the form of entertaining

legends. It may suffice here to mention Bartolommeo Colleoni,

Angelo Poliziano, and Pontano, all of whom owed their start in

life to the murder of their respective fathers by assassins; to

Varchi and Filelfo, whose lives were attempted by cut-throats;

to Cellini, Perugino, Masaccio, Berni, in each of whose

biographies poison and the knife play their parts. If men of

letters and artists were exposed to these perils, the dangers

of the great and noble may be readily imagined.

At the same time it must not be forgotten that during this period the

art and culture of the Renaissance were culminating. Filelfo was

receiving the gold of Filippo Maria Visconti. Guarino of Verona was

instructing the heir of Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre was educating

the children of the Marquis of Mantua. Lionardo was delighting Milan

with his music and his magic world of painting. Poliziano was pouring

forth honeyed eloquence at Florence. Ficino was expounding Plato.

Boiardo was singing the prelude to Ariosto's melodies at Ferrara. Pico

della Mirandola was dreaming of a reconciliation of the Hebrew, Pagan,

and Christian traditions. It is necessary to note these facts in

passing; just as when we are surveying the history of letters and the

arts, it becomes us to remember the crimes and the madness of the

despots who patronized them. This was an age in which even the wildest

and most perfidious of tyrants felt the ennobling influences and the

sacred thirst of knowledge. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the Lord of

Rimini, might be selected as a true type of the princes who united a

romantic zeal for culture with the vices of barbarians.[1] The coins

which bear the portraits of this man, together with the medallions

carved in red Verona marble on his church at Rimini, show a narrow

forehead, protuberant above bushy eyebrows, a long hooked nose, hollow

cheeks, and petulant, passionate, compressed lips. The whole face seems

ready to flash with sudden violence, to merge its self-control in a

spasm of fury. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta killed three wives in

succession, violated his daughter, and attempted the chastity of his own

son. So much of him belongs to the mere savage. He caused the

magnificent church of S. Francesco at Rimini to be raised by Leo Alberti

in a manner more worthy of a Pagan Pantheon than of a Christian temple.

He incrusted it with exquisite bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of

the earliest Renaissance style, carved his own name and ensigns upon

every scroll and frieze and point of vantage in the building, and

dedicated a shrine there to his concubine--_Divæ Isottæ Sacrum_. So much

of him belongs to the Neo-Pagan of the fifteenth century. He brought

back from Greece the mortal remains of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon,

buried them in a sarcophagus outside his church, and wrote upon the tomb

this epigraph: 'These remains of Gemistus of Byzantium, chief of the

sages of his day, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo,

commander in the war against the king of the Turks in the Morea, induced

by the mighty love with which he burns for men of learning, brought

hither and placed within this chest. 1466.' He, the most fretful and

turbulent of men, read books with patient care, and bore the

contradictions of pedants in the course of long discussions on

philosophy and arts and letters. So much of him belonged to the new

spirit of the coming age, in which the zeal for erudition was a passion,

and the spell of science was stronger than the charms of love. At the

same time, as Condottiere, he displayed all the treasons, duplicities,

cruelties, sacrileges, and tortuous policies to which the most

accomplished villain of the age could have aspired.

[1] For a fuller account of him, see my 'Sketches in Italy and

Greece,' article _Rimini_.

It would be easy, following in the steps of Tiraboschi, to describe the

patronage awarded in the fifteenth century to men of letters by

princes--the protection extended by Nicholas III. of Ferrara to Guarino

and Aurispa--the brilliant promise of his son Leonello, who corresponded

with Poggio, Filelfo, Guarino, Francesco Barbaro, and other

scholars--the liberality of Duke Borso, whose purse was open to poor

students. Or we might review the splendid culture of the court of

Naples, where Alfonso committed the education of his terrible son

Ferdinand to the care of Lorenzo Valla and Antonio Beccadelli.[1] More

insight, however, into the nature of Italian despotism in all its phases

may be gained by turning from Milan to Urbino, and by sketching a

portrait of the good Duke Frederick.[2] The life of Frederick, Count of

Montefeltro, created Duke of Urbino in 1474 by Pope Sixtus IV., covers

the better part of the fifteenth century (b. 1422, d. 1482). A little

corner of old Umbria lying between the Apennines and the Adriatic,

Rimini and Ancona, formed his patrimony. Speaking roughly, the whole

duchy was but forty miles square, and the larger portion consisted of

bare hillsides and ruinous ravines. Yet this poor territory became the

center of a splendid court. 'Federigo,' says his biographer, Muzio,

'maintained a suite so numerous and distinguished as to rival any royal

household.' The chivalry of Italy flocked to Urbino in order to learn

manners and the art of war from the most noble general of his day. 'His

household,' we hear from Vespasiano, 'which consisted of 500 mouths

entertained at his own cost, was governed less like a company of

soldiers than a strict religious community. There was no gaming nor

swearing, but the men conversed with the utmost sobriety.' In a list of

the court officers we find forty-five counts of the duchy and of other

states, seventeen gentlemen, five secretaries, four teachers of grammar,

logic, and philosophy, fourteen clerks in public offices, five

architects and engineers, five readers during meals, four transcribers

of MSS. The library, collected by Vespasiano during fourteen years of

assiduous labor, contained copies of all the Greek and Latin authors

then discovered, the principal treatises on theology and church history,

a complete series of Italian poets, historiographers, and commentators,

various medical, mathematical, and legal works, essays on music,

military tactics and the arts, together with such Hebrew books as were

accessible to copyists. Every volume was bound in crimson and silver,

and the whole collection cost upwards of 30,000 ducats. For the expenses

of so large a household, and the maintenance of this fine library, not

to mention a palace that was being built and churches that required

adornment, the mere revenues of the duchy could not have sufficed.

Federigo owed his wealth to his engagements as a general. Military

service formed his trade. 'In 1453,' says Dennistoun, 'his war-pay from

Alfonso of Naples exceeded 8,000 ducats a month, and for many years he

had from him and his son an annual peace-pension of 6,000 in name of

past services. At the close of his life, when captain-general of the

Italian league, he drew in war 165,000 ducats of annual stipend, 45,000

being his own share; in peace, 65,000 in all.' As a Condottiere,

Federigo was famous in this age of broken faith for his plain dealing

and sincerity. Only one piece of questionable practice--the capture of

Verucchio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come from Sigismondo

Malatesta--stained his character for honesty. To his soldiers in the

field he was considerate and generous; to his enemies compassionate and

merciful.[3] 'In military science,' says Vespasiano, 'he was excelled by

no commander of his time; uniting energy with judgment, he conquered by

prudence as much as by force. The like wariness was observed in all his

affairs; and in none of his many battles was he worsted. Nor may I omit

the strict observance of good faith, wherein he never failed. All to

whom he once gave his word, might testify to his inviolate performance

of it.' The same biographer adds that 'he was singularly religious, and

most observant of the Divine commands. No morning passed without his

hearing mass upon his knees.'

[1] The Panormita; author, by the way, of the shameless

'Hermaphroditus.' This fact is significant. The moral sense was

extinct when such a pupil was intrusted to such a tutor.

[2] For the following details I am principally indebted to 'The

Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,' by James Dennistoun; 3 vols.,

Longmans, 1851. Vespasiano's Life of Duke Frederick (Vite di

uomini illustri, pp. 72-112) is one of the most charming

literary portraits extant. It has, moreover, all the value of a

personal memoir, for Vespasiano had lived in close relation

with the Duke as his librarian.

[3] See the testimony of Francesco di Giorgio; Dennistoun, vol.

i. p. 259. The sack of Volterra was, however, a blot upon his

humanity.

While a boy, Federigo had been educated in the school of Vittorino da

Feltre at Mantua. Gian Francesco Gonzaga invited that eminent scholar to

his court in 1425 for the education of his sons and daughter, assembling

round him subordinate teachers in grammar, mathematics, music, painting,

dancing, riding, and all noble exercises. The system supervised by

Vittorino included not only the acquisition of scholarship, but also

training in manly sports and the cultivation of the moral character.

Many of the noblest Italians were his pupils. Ghiberto da Correggio,

Battista Pallavicíni, Taddeo Manfredi of Faenza, Gabbriello da Cremona,

Francesco da Castiglione, Niccolo Perrotti, together with the Count of

Montefeltro, lived in Vittorino's house, associating with the poorer

students whom the benevolent philosopher instructed for the love of

learning. Ambrogio Camaldolese in a letter to Niccolo Niccoli gives this

animated picture of the Mantuan school: 'I went again to visit Vittorino

and to see his Greek books. He came to meet me with the children of the

prince, two sons and a daughter of seven years. The eldest boy is

eleven, the younger five. There are also other children of about ten,

sons of nobles, as well as other pupils. He teaches them Greek, and they

can write that language well. I saw a translation from Saint Chrysostom

made by one of them which pleased me much.' And again a few years later:

'He brought me Giovanni Lucido, son of the Marquis, a boy of about

fourteen, whom he has educated, and who then recited two hundred lines

composed by him upon the shows with which the Emperor was received in

Mantua. The verses were most beautiful, but the sweetness and elegance

of his recitation made them still more graceful. He also showed me two

propositions added by him to Euclid, which prove how eminent he promises

to be in mathematical studies. There was also a little daughter of the

Marquis, of about ten, who writes Greek beautifully; and many other

pupils, some of noble birth, attended them.' The medal struck by

Pisanello in honor of Vittorino da Feltre bears the ensign of a pelican

feeding her young from a wound in her own breast--a symbol of the

master's self-sacrifice.[1] I hope to return in the second volume of

this work to Vittorino. It is enough here to remark that in this good

school the Duke of Urbino acquired that solid culture which

distinguished him through life. In after years, when the cares of his

numerous engagements fell thick upon him, we hear from Vespasiano that

he still prosecuted his studies, reading Aristotle's Ethics, Politics,

and Physics, listening to the works of S. Thomas Aquinas and Scotus read

aloud, perusing at one time the Greek fathers and at another the Latin

historians.[2] How profitably he spent his day at Urbino may be gathered

from this account of his biographer: 'He was on horseback at daybreak

with four or six mounted attendants and not more, and with one or two

foot servants unarmed. He would ride out three or four miles, and be

back again when the rest of his court rose from bed. After dismounting,

he heard mass. Then he went into a garden open at all sides, and gave

audience to those who listed until dinner-time. At table, all the doors

were open; any man could enter where his lordship was; for he never ate

except with a full hall. According to the season he had books read out

as follows--in Lent, spiritual works; at other times, the history of

Livy; all in Latin. His food was plain; he took no comfits, and drank no

wine, except drinks of pomegranate, cherry, or apples.' After dinner he

heard causes, and gave sentence in the Latin tongue. Then he would visit

the nuns of Santa Chiara or watch the young men of Urbino at their

games, using the courtesy of perfect freedom with his subjects. His

reputation as a patron of the arts and of learning was widely spread.

'To hear him converse with a sculptor,' says Vespasiano, 'you would have

thought he was a master of the craft. In painting, too, he displayed the

most acute judgment; and as he could not find among the Italians worthy

masters of oil colors, he sent to Flanders for one, who painted for him

the philosophers and poets and doctors of the Church. He also brought

from Flanders masters in the art of tapestry.' Pontano, Ficino, and

Poggio dedicated works of importance to his name; and Pirro Perrotti, in

the preface to his uncle's 'Cornucopia,' draws a quaint picture of the

reception which so learned a book was sure to meet with at Urbino.[3]

But Frederick was not merely an accomplished prince. Concurrent

testimony proves that he remained a good husband and a constant friend

throughout his life, that he controlled his natural quickness of temper,

and subdued the sensual appetites which in that age of lax morality he

might have indulged without reproach. In his relations to his subjects

he showed what a paternal monarch should be, conversing familiarly with

the citizens of Urbino, accosting them with head uncovered, inquiring

into the necessities of the poorer artisans, relieving the destitute,

dowering orphan girls, and helping distressed shopkeepers with loans.

Numerous anecdotes are told which illustrate his consideration for his

old servants, and his anxiety for the welfare and good order of his

state. At a time when the Pope and the King of Naples were making money

by monopolies of corn, the Duke of Urbino filled his granaries from

Apulia, and sold bread during a year of scarcity at a cheap rate to his

poor subjects. Nor would he allow his officers to prosecute the indigent

for debts incurred by such purchases. He used to say: 'I am not a

merchant; it is enough to have saved my people from hunger.' We must

remember that this excellent prince had a direct interest in

maintaining the prosperity and good-will of his duchy. His profession

was warfare, and the district of Urbino supplied him with his best

troops. Yet this should not diminish the respect due to the foresight

and benevolence of a Condottiere who knew how to carry on his calling

with humanity and generosity. Federigo wore the Order of the Garter,

which Henry VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan Order of the Ermine,

and the Papal decorations of the Rose, the Hat, the Sword. He served

three pontiffs, two kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The

Republic of Florence and more than one Italian League appointed him

their general in the field. If his military career was less brilliant

than that of the two Sforzas, Piccinino, or Carmagnuola, he avoided the

crimes to which ambition led some of these men and the rocks on which

they struck. At his death he transmitted a flourishing duchy, a

cultivated court, a renowned name, and the leadership of the Italian

League to his son Guidobaldo.

[1] Prendilacqua, the biographer of Vittorino, says that he died so

poor that his funeral expenses had to be defrayed.

[2] Pius II. in his Commentaries gives an interesting account

of the conversations concerning the tactics of the ancients

which he held with Frederick, in 1461, in the neighborhood of

Tivoli.

[3] The preface to the original edition of the 'Cornucopia' is

worth reading for the lively impression which it conveys of

Federigo's personality: 'Admirabitur in te divinam illam

corporis proceritatem, membrorum robur eximium, venerandam oris

dignitatem, ætatis maturam gravitatem, divinam quandam

majestatem cum humanitate conjunctam, totum præterea talem

qualem esse oportebat eum principem quem nuper pontifex maximus

et universus senatus omnium rerum suarum et totius

ecclesiastici imperii ducem moderatoremque constituit.'

The young Duke, whose court, described by Castiglione, may be said to

have set the model of good breeding to all Europe, began life under the

happiest auspices. From his tutor Odasio of Padua we hear that even in

boyhood he cared only for study and for manly sports. His memory was so

retentive that he could repeat whole treatises by heart after the lapse

of ten or fifteen years, nor did he ever forget what he had resolved to

retain. In the Latin and Greek languages he became an accomplished

scholar,[1] and while he appreciated the poets, he showed peculiar

aptitude for philosophy and history. But his development was precocious.

His zeal for learning and the excessive ardor with which he devoted

himself to physical exercises undermined his constitution. He became an

invalid and died childless, after exhibiting to his court for many years

an example of patience in sickness and of dignified cheerfulness under

the restraints of enforced inaction. His wife, Elizabetta Gonzaga, one

of the most famous women of her age, was no less a pattern of noble

conduct and serene contentment.

Such were the two last princes of the Montefeltro dynasty.[2] It is

necessary to bear their virtues in mind while dwelling on the

characteristics of Italian despotism in the fifteenth century. The Duchy

of Urbino, both as an established dynasty not founded upon violence, and

also as a center of really humane culture, formed, it is true, an

exception to the rule of Italian tyrannies: yet, if we omitted this

state from our calculation, confining our attention to the extravagant

iniquities of the Borgia family, or to the eccentricities of the

Visconti, or to the dark crimes of the court of Naples, we should gain a

false notion of the many-sided character of Italy, in which at that time

vices and virtues were so strangely blended. We must never forget that

the same society which produced a Filippo Maria Visconti, a Galeazzo

Maria Sforza, a Sigismondo Malatesta, a Ferdinand of Aragon, gave birth

also to a Lorenzo de' Medici and a Federigo da Montefeltro. It is only

by studying the lives of all these men in combination that we can obtain

a correct conception of the manifold personality, the mingled polish and

barbarism, of the Italian Renaissance.

[1] It is not easy to say what a panegyrist of that period intended

by 'a complete knowledge of Greek,' or 'fluent Greek writing,' in a

Prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by these

phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, but

rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of Latin

books to understand allusions and quotations. Poliziano, it may be

remarked, thought it worth while to flatter Guidobaldo in a Greek

epigram.

[2] After Guidobaldo's death the duchy was continued by the

Della Rovere family, one of whom, Giovanni, Prefect of Rome and

nephew of Sixtus IV., married the Duke's sister Giovanna in

1474.

Some more detailed account of Baldassare Castiglione's treatise _Il

Cortegiano_ will form a fitting conclusion to this Chapter on the

Despots. It is true that his book was written later than the period we

have been considering,[1] and he describes court life in its most

graceful aspect. Yet all the antecedent history of the past two

centuries had been gradually producing the conditions under which his

courtier flourished; and the Italian of the Renaissance, as he appeared

to the rest of Europe, was such a gentleman as he depicts. For the

historian his book is of equal value in its own department with the

Principe of Machiavelli, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and the

Diary of Burchard.

[1] It was written in 1514, and first published in folio by the Aldi

of Venice in 1528. We find an English translation so early as 1561

by Thomas Hoby. At this time it was in the hands of all the

gentlefolk of Europe. It is interesting to compare the 'Cortegiano'

with Della Casa's 'Galateo,' published in 1558. The 'Galateo'

professes to be a guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the

minute rules laid down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the

present century. In manners and their ethical analysis we have

certainly gained nothing during the last three centuries. The

principle upon which these precepts of conduct are founded is not

etiquette or fashion, but respect for the sensibilities of others.

It would be difficult to compose a more philosophical treatise on

the lesser duties imposed upon us by the conditions of society--such

minute matters as the proper way to blow the nose or use the napkin,

being referred to the one rule of acting so as to cause no

inconvenience to our neighbors.

In the opening of his 'Cortegiano' Castiglione introduces us to the

court of Urbino--refined, chivalrous, witty, cultivated,

gentle--confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy. He

brings together the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife of

Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and active as that of

Shakespeare's Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, the Ciceronian dictator of letters

in the sixteenth century; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni's patron, the author

of 'Calandra,' whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti enables us to

estimate his innate love of humor; Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours,

of whom the marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the tomb in San

Lorenzo; together with other knights and gentlemen less known to

fame--two Genoese Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of

Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, l' Unico Aretino, and Fra Serafino the

humorist. These ladies and gentlemen hold discourse together, as was the

custom of Urbino, in the drawing-room of the duchess during four

consecutive evenings. The theme of their conversation is the Perfect

Courtier. What must that man be who deserves the name of Cortegiano,

and how must he conduct himself? The subject of discussion carries us at

once into a bygone age. No one asks now what makes the perfect courtier;

but in Italy of the Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican to

despotic forms of government which we have traced in the foregoing

pages, the question was one of the most serious importance. Culture and

good breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures of the

intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of courts; for one effect

of the Revival of Learning had been to make the acquisition of polite

knowledge difficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than

in the age of Dante. Men of ambition who desired to acquire a reputation

whether as soldiers or as poets, as politicians or as orators, came to

court and served their chosen prince in war or at the council-table, or

even in humbler offices of state. To be able, therefore, to conduct

himself with dignity, to know how to win the favor of his master and to

secure the good-will of his peers, to retain his personal honor and to

make himself respected without being hated, to inspire admiration and to

avoid envy, to outshine all honorable rivals in physical exercises and

the craft of arms, to maintain a credable equipage and retinue, to be

instructed in the arts of polite intercourse, to converse with ease and

wit, to be at home alike in the tilting-yard, the banquet-hall, the

boudoir, and the council-chamber, to understand diplomacy, to live

before the world and yet to keep a fitting privacy and distance,--these

and a hundred other matters were the climax and perfection of the

culture of a gentleman. Courts being now the only centers in which it

was possible for a man of birth and talents to shine, it followed that

the perfect courtier and the perfect gentleman were synonymous terms.

Castiglione's treatise may therefore be called an essay on the character

of the true gentleman as he appeared in Italy. Eliminating all qualities

that are special to any art or calling, he defines those essential

characteristics which were requisite for social excellence in the

sixteenth century. It is curious to observe how unchangeable are the

laws of real politeness and refinement. Castiglione's courtier is, with

one or two points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, such as

all men of education at the present day would wish to be.

The first requisite in the ideal courtier is that he must be noble. The

Count of Canossa, who proposed the subject of debate, lays down this as

an axiom. Gaspar Pallavicino denies the necessity[1] But after a lively

discussion, his opinion is overruled, on the ground that, although the

gentle virtues may be found among people of obscure origin, yet a man

who intends to be a courtier must start with the prestige of noble

birth. Next he must be skillful in the use of weapons and courageous in

the battle-field. He is not, however, bound to have the special science

of a general, nor must he in times of peace profess unique devotion to

the art of war: that would argue a coarseness of nature or vainglory.

Again, he must excel in all manly sports and exercises, so as, if

possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill

on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of

display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and

not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he

does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every

form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most

perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to

hide his art, and show that what he says or does comes from him without

effort or deliberation.' This vice of affectation in all its kinds, and

the ways of avoiding it, are discussed with a delicacy of insight which

would do credit to a Chesterfield of the present century, sending forth

his son into society for the first time. Castiglione goes so far as to

condemn the pedantry of far-fetched words and the coxcombry of elaborate

costumes, as dangerous forms of affectation. His courtier must speak and

write with force and freedom. He need not be a purist in his use of

language, but may use such foreign phrases and modern idioms as are

current in good society, aiming only at simplicity and clearness. He

must add to excellence in arms polite culture in letters and sound

scholarship, avoiding that barbarism of the French, who think it

impossible to be a good soldier and an accomplished student at the same

time. Yet his learning should be always held in reserve, to give

brilliancy and flavor to his wit, and not brought forth for merely

erudite parade. He must have a practical acquaintance with music and

dancing; it would be well for him to sing and touch various stringed and

keyed instruments, so as to relax his own spirits and to make himself

agreeable to ladies. If he can compose verses and sing them to his own

accompaniment, so much the better. Finally, he ought to understand the

arts of painting and sculpture; for criticism, even though a man be

neither poet nor artist, is an elegant accomplishment. Such are the

principal qualities of the Cortegiano.

[1] Italy, earlier than any other European nation, developed

theoretical democracy. Dante had defined true nobility to consist of

personal excellence in a man or in his ancestors; he also called

'nobiltà' sister of 'filosofia.' Poggio in his 'Dialogue De

Nobilitate,' into which he introduces Niccolo Niccoli and Lorenzo

de' Medici (Cosimo's brother), decides that only merit constitutes

true nobility. Hawking and hunting are far less noble occupations

than agriculture; descent from a long line of historic criminals is

no honor. French and English castle-life, and the robber-knighthood

of Germany, he argues, are barbarous. Lorenzo pleads the authority

of Aristotle in favor of noble blood; Poggio contests the passage

quoted, and shows the superiority of the Latin word 'nobilitas'

(distinction) over the Greek term [Greek: _eugeneia_] (good birth).

The several kinds of aristocracy in Italy are then discussed. In

Naples the nobles despise business and idle their time away. In Rome

they manage their estates. In Venice and Genoa they engage in

commerce. In Florence they either take to mercantile pursuits or

live upon the produce of their land in idleness. The whole way of

looking at the subject betrays a liberal and scientific spirit,

wholly free from prejudice. Machiavelli ('Discorsi,' i. 55) is very

severe on the aristocracy, whom he defines as 'those who live in

idleness on the produce of their estates, without applying

themselves to agriculture or to any other useful occupation.' He

points out that the Venetian nobles are not properly so called,

since they are merchants. The different districts of Italy had

widely different conceptions of nobility. Naples was always

aristocratic, owing to its connection with France and Spain. Ferrara

maintained the chivalry of courts. Those states, on the other hand,

which had been democratized, like Florence, by republican customs,

or like Milan, by despotism, set less value on birth than on talent

and wealth. It was not until the age of the Spanish ascendency

(latter half of sixteenth century) that Cosimo I. withdrew the young

Florentines from their mercantile pursuits and enrolled them in his

order of S. Stephen, and that the patricians of Genoa carried

daggers inscribed 'for the chastisement of villeins.'

The precepts which are laid down for the use of his acquirements and his

general conduct, resolve themselves into a strong recommendation of tact

and caution. The courtier must study the nature of his prince, and show

the greatest delicacy in approaching him, so as to secure his favor, and

to avoid wearying him with importunities. In tendering his advice he

must be modest; but he should make a point of never sacrificing his own

liberty of judgment. To obey his master in dishonorable things would be

a derogation from his dignity; and if he discovers any meanness in the

character of the prince, it is better to quit his service.[1] A courtier

must be careful to create beforehand a favorable opinion of himself in

places he intends to visit. Much stress is laid upon his choice of

clothes and the equipment of his servants. In these respects he should

aim at combining individuality with simplicity, so as to produce an

impression of novelty without extravagance or eccentricity. He must be

very cautious in his friendships, selecting his associates with care,

and admitting only one or two to intimacy.

[1] From many passages in the 'Cortegiano' it is clear that

Castiglione is painting the character of an independent gentleman,

to whom self-culture in all humane excellence is of far more

importance than the acquisition of the art of pleasing.

Circumstances made the life of courts the best obtainable; but there

is no trace of French 'oeil-de-boeuf' servility.

In connection with the general subject of tact and taste, the Cardinal

Bibbiena introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of

jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of

wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad

taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere

obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many

jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the

essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth

by cleverness, and not by mere tricks and clumsy inventions.

In bringing this chapter on Italian Despotism in the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries to a conclusion, it will be well to cast a backward

glance over the ground which has been traversed. A great internal change

took place and was accomplished during this period. The free burghs

which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave place to

tyrannies, illegal for the most part in their origin, and maintained by

force. In the absence of dynastic right, violence and craft were

instruments by means of which the despots founded and preserved their

power. Yet the sentiments of the Italians at large were not unfavorable

to the growth of principalities. On the contrary, the forces which move

society, the inner instinct of the nation, and the laws of progress and

development, tended year by year more surely to the consolidation of

despotisms. City after city lost its faculty for self-government, until

at last Florence, so long the center of political freedom, fell beneath

the yoke of her merchant princes. It is difficult for the historian not

to feel either a monarchical or a republican bias. Yet this internal and

gradual revolution in the states of Italy may be regarded neither as a

matter for exultation in the cause of sovereignty, nor for lamentation

over the decay of liberty. It was but part of an inevitable process

which the Italians shared, according to the peculiarities of their

condition, in common with the rest of Europe.

In tracing the history of the Visconti and the Sforzas our attention has

been naturally directed to the private and political vices of the

despot. As a contrast to so much violence and treachery, we have studied

the character of one of the best princes produced in this period. Yet it

must be borne in mind that the Duke of Urbino was far less

representative of his class than Francesco Sforza, and that the aims and

notions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti formed the ideal to which an Italian

prince of spirit, if he had the opportunity, aspired. The history of art

and literature in this period belongs to another branch of the inquiry;

and a separate chapter must be devoted to the consideration of political

morality as theorized by the Italians at the end of these two centuries

of intrigue. But having insisted on the violence and vices of the

tyrants, it seemed necessary to close the review of their age by

describing the Italian nobleman as court-life made him. Castiglione

shows him at the very best: the darker shadows of the picture are

omitted; the requirements of the most finished culture and the tone of

the purest society in Italy are depicted with the elegance of a scholar

and the taste of a true gentleman. The fact remains that the various

influences at work in Italy during the age of the despots had rendered

the conception of this ideal possible. Nowhere else in Europe could a

portrait of so much dignity and sweetness, combining the courage of a

soldier with the learning of a student and the accomplishments of an

artist, the liberality of freedom with the courtesies of service, have

been painted from the life and been recognized as the model which all

members of polite society should imitate. Nobler characters and more

heroic virtues might have been produced by the Italian commonwealths if

they had continued to enjoy their ancient freedom of self-government.

Meanwhile we must render this justice to Italian despotism, that beneath

its shadow was developed the type of the modern gentleman.