possibility of war between France and Milan, grievously estranged at
that date by the presence of the French in Genoa, and by the rumours of
witchcraft which defamed the reputation and endangered the safety of
Madame Valentine in France. At this juncture Giangaleazzo, probably
alarmed at the terms of his daughter’s marriage-contract, procured a
second imperial investiture,[54] distinctly limiting the succession to
male heirs. But this was not the end. In 1396 news came to Paris of the
battle of Nicopolis, which necessitated an immediate _rapprochement_
with Milan; for Giangaleazzo Visconti, feared and hated because of his
friendship with the Turk, was at this juncture the one necessary man,
capable of mediating between the French and the East. Great court was
paid to him, and he accepted the French advances. Peace and amity being
restored between the two countries, on March 30, 1397, he obtained a
third and last investiture from Wenzel,[53] which restored the
conditions of inheritance to their original footing, and bestowed the
duchy of Milan on Giangaleazzo Visconti, _descendentes et successores
sui_.
Footnote 53:
“Ann. Med.,” in Muratori, “Rer. Ital. Script.” xvi.
Footnote 54:
Dumont, ii. clxxxix.
This ambiguity of phrase may possibly have been designed. The fact that
the fief was a _pm corr 189.17 Fahnlehn Fahnlehen>_, directly dependent
on the emperor, and that (so far as I can discover) no special Imperial
privilege had been granted to Madame Valentine, would in Germany itself
appear as strong evidence in favour of a solely masculine succession as
even the second investiture could afford. But in Italy, by the custom of
the country and the authority of contract and testament, the children of
Valentine would be included among the heirs and descendants of her
father; and, in case the whole race of his sons expired, the vague terms
of the investiture would allow the line of Orleans to put in a claim
which would prevent so important a part of Italy from relapsing to the
foreign emperor. Such at least, as it appears to me, must have been the
design of the duke in obtaining this last investiture, a two-edged
weapon in the hands of him who has been described as the wisest and the
most astute among all the princes of the west.
His position, therefore, seems to have been as follows. To secure
himself against any inconvenient pretensions of the French, he had the
restrictions of the feudal law; and yet he was equally protected against
the encroachments of the empire. He had the sanction of local custom,
the ambiguity of the terms of investiture; and, in addition to this, a
papal privilege, conceding to Valentine the right to succeed her
brothers or her nephews in the state of Milan.
The right of a Pope to dispose of an Imperial fief appears upon the face
of it a very questionable matter, even when the Empire be really vacant.
When Valentine Visconti was contracted to her husband, Clement VII. had
merely declared an interregnum in the empire, on account of the
adherence of Wenzel, King of the Romans, to the faction of Urban the
Pope at Rome. Such was the supremacy of the Church over Imperial affairs
at this period, that, notwithstanding the absurdity of this plea and the
fact that Clement was an Antipope, none was ever found to question the
legality of the French claim to Asti, which was not granted to Orleans
by any Imperial privilege until the investiture of 1413. An intriguing
adventurer anxious to consolidate a new and unpopular dynasty by every
legal claim, Giangaleazzo cultivated Emperor, Pope, and Antipope. Urban
and Clement and Wenzel were all in turn solicited to confirm the tenure
of Visconti. Corio appears to believe that the succession of Valentine
to Milan was granted by Urban, who was certainly in Lombardy in the year
1387. But Urban had denied to Giangaleazzo the coveted title of king of
Italy; and there are as yet no documents discovered which prove the
alluring hypothesis that the astute Visconti held in his possession a
decree of the Pope no less than a decree of the Antipope granting the
succession to Milan to his daughter.
Enough, however, remains to show by what a cunning opposition of France
to Germany, and Germany to France, the Duke of Milan strove to secure
Italian independence. If the Germans, then but the shadow of a power,
chose to assert their over-lordship, the claim of the French was strong
enough to insure them two enemies instead of one; and _vice versa_:—as,
indeed, a later century too adequately proved. Hoping to hold each
neighbour in check and fear of the other, Giangaleazzo meant to insure a
period of quiet growth for his own principality of Lombardy.
Thus the contract securing Milan to Valentine by a papal transfer made
for France; the second investiture was absolute for Germany: the first
and third were so worded that they conveyed a different meaning on
either side of the Alps. Besides papal privileges and imperial
investitures there is, however, a third way of conferring property: I
mean the way in which Naples was transferred to Anjou—the way of
bequest.
But, the reader will exclaim, can a feoffer dispose of a fief without
the written consent of his feodary? Here, as in the question of feminine
succession, the matter was chiefly decided by the custom of the
province. In certain countries—as, for example, Nassau, Friedland, Ober
Lausitz—a feoffer might dispose of his possessions by will, although a
contrary law held good in other countries.
But whatever the local law, the tendency was strong, even in feudal
Germany, to diminish the rights of the empire to the advantage of the
feudatory powers. As Menzel puts it, “the emperor grasped but a shadowy
sceptre ... the princes increased in wealth and power, while the emperor
was gradually impoverished. Imperial investiture had become a mere form,
which could not be refused except on certain occasions; and the
pfalzgraves, formerly intrusted with the management of Imperial allods,
had seized them as hereditary fiefs.” What was done with impunity in
Germany, was done with audacity beyond the Alps. And the Duke of Milan,
who had received his principality as a vassal, intended to dispose of it
like an hereditary monarch. If we impeach his right to pursue this
course, it is not only the claims of the Visconti, but of almost every
noble family in Italy, Germany, or Flanders that must submit to be
denied or censured.
Yet claiming and acting upon his own authority to dispose of Milan,
Giangaleazzo Visconti involved his testament in the same web of intrigue
and counter-intrigue which characterized his earlier policy. No less
than three wills, entirely different, are open to us; and as the most
important of these is only known in an undated copy, it is difficult to
decide which was his final disposition of affairs. The first, familiar
enough to the student of Corio, was drawn up in 1397, and was modified
in 1401; it makes no provision at all for Valentine. The second (No.
ccxxiii in the first volume of Osio’s documents), undated, but probably
composed in 1397, confirms her _in all possessions previously bestowed_,
but grants her nothing else, unless she should fall into a state of
poverty or widowhood, in which case she was to have sufficient and
princely nurture in her brother’s home at Milan, with a dowry in case
she should contract a second marriage. This is all, yet this is enough
to confirm the contract of 1387. But it is the latest-found of the
testaments of Giangaleazzo Visconti which is most important to the
student of the French claim to Milan. This will, discovered in 1872 by
Signor Luigi Osio in the Milanese Archives, gives an entirely new force
to the pretensions of Orleans. Yet it exists only in copy and in
extract—like a passage of Sappho saved by some unconscious
grammarian—quoted by a Sforzesco advocate in a letter of warning
addressed to Lodovico il Moro on Jan. 10, 1496.
At this date, the usurper Lodovico (possessed by the family conviction
that at some time his grandfather, Filippo Maria Visconti, must have
made a will bequeathing Milan to Lodovico’s mother) had entrusted his
friend and kinsman Giason del Maino _elegantissimo et celeberrimo
legista_, (if we may trust the verdict of Corio) with the task of
searching the Milanese Archives to this end. Del Maino discovered
nothing concerning Madonna Bianca; but instead he found two highly
compromising copies of the will of Giangaleazzo Visconti, which had come
to light in the house of Messer Giovanni Domenico Oliari, notary of
Pavia, son of Andriano Oliari (an obstinate and honest servant of the
Visconti dukes), of whom my readers will hear more upon a future page.
“As for these copies,” wrote Messer Giasone, “though they are only
copies, and by no means according to the terms, I entreat you to have
them seized at once, as well as three other copies which I have reason
to believe are in the possession (1) of the brothers of the Certosa of
Pavia, (2) of Manfredo da Ozino, and (3) of the Signore della Mirandola.
You will do well to keep them safe, for they would be of the greatest
value to the Duke of Orleans, since this testament and fidei-commissio
provides that, should the sons of Giangaleazzo die without male heirs,
one of the sons of Madonna Valentine shall succeed to Milan. And, though
I could find it in my heart to maintain that the Duke of Orleans has no
right to obtain anything, as to Milan, from you or your illustrious
children, none the less you will do well to keep these copies safe.”
Lodovico took the hint. Of the five copies mentioned not one exists
to-day. Only the forgotten letter remains to show the intention of
Giangaleazzo Visconti. Sudden death and swift oblivion rudely damaged
his dexterous intrigues—so much here for France, so much there for
Germany—an even balance held neatly in a steady hand. The plague numbed
that cunning hand for ever in the autumn of 1402. Murder soon removed
the elder son of the great duke; and the bastard Gabriello died on the
executioner’s scaffold in hostile Genoa. Both died childless, and Milan
fell to their younger brother, Filippo Maria. He ruled in peace and
splendour for more than thirty years in Milan. But two marriages brought
him no sons; only one daughter, and she illegitimate, cheered his
magnificent palace. As the Duke grew old, men began to ask each other
who should succeed him in Milan: his natural daughter, married to the
great captain Francesco Sforza? or his nephew, his sister’s son, the
Duke of Orleans? or his wife’s relations of Savoy? or, after all, must
Milan return, a lapsed fief, into the foreign hands of the German
emperor.
II.
Meanwhile a melancholy fate had pursued the French heirs to Milan, the
children of Valentine and Orleans. This is not the place to explain how
their young dissensions with their father’s murderers summoned the
English into France; or how the youngest, John of Angoulême, was sent to
England, a mere child, in 1412, as a hostage for his brother’s debt; or
how, three years later, the defeat at Agincourt sent Charles of Orleans
to join him there. The sons of Valentine remained in prison all their
youth. When, in 1440, the son of their father’s murderer, the gentle
Duke of Burgundy, ransomed the Duke of Orleans out of bondage, Charles
was a man of forty-six,[55] who returned home to find his estates half
ruined by disastrous wars; his brother Philip dead; his half-brother a
hero—Dunois, the restorer of his country. It was late to regain his
position in this altered world, but at least he lost no time. In the
same month of the same year (November, 1440) Charles married a niece of
Burgundy, Mary of Cleves. In 1445 his brother, John of Angoulême, newly
released from England, married a neighbour of his sister’s—Marguerite de
Rohan, to whose elder sister he had been contracted in his youth. The
two princes were determined to recover their inheritance, to raise up
children, and restore the ancient dignity of their house. Much of
Angoulême and much of Orleans and much of the inheritance of Bonne
d’Armagnac was still in the hands of the English. The estates of Orleans
in France were grievously diminished. And outside France Asti had been
lost also.
Footnote 55:
He was born 24th of November, 1394. See for the release of Orleans the
excellent chapter in the Marquis de Beaucourt’s “Histoire de Charles
VII.” t. iii., Paris, 1885.
In the year 1422, when Charles of Orleans had lain already seven years,
and John ten years, in an English prison, when Philip of Vertus was
dead, when France was paralysed, and Henry VI. of England crowned the
king of France in Paris, the county of Asti, in great fear of the
English (those Goths of the Riviera) and of the nearer jealousies of
ambitious Montferrat, sent to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and
begged him to receive Asti under his guardianship and protection[57]
until such time as either of his nephews should be released from
England. The Duke of Milan consented willingly. Asti was the Calais of
Italy, and from the Italian point of view it appeared intolerable and
unnatural that this one county should remain a little island of France
in Lombardy, a _pied-à-terre_ across the mountains for invading Gaul.
And now, after twenty years of undisturbed possession, the Duke of Milan
turned a deaf ear to his nephew’s reminder that he was home again and
ready to reassume his inheritance. As a fact the Duke did not dare to
restore Asti. In 1438 he had made Francesco Sforza his lieutenant there;
and he was afraid of Sforza. It was in vain sending letters and
requisitions; so in the beginning of the year 1441 the princes of
Orleans sent Dunois to Milan.[56]
Footnote 56:
See M. Leopold Delisle, Collection Bertrand d’Estaing, a long note
about F.M. Visconti’s protection of Asti, and secret instruction of
Orleans to Cousinot, p. 135-40.
Footnote 57:
“The Bastard came with this requisition in the year 1442 to Milan,
where I, Secundinus Ventura, saw him” (“Memoriale Secundini Venturæ”).
Dunois went twice, February, 1441, and in 1451. In spite of Ventura’s
line, the date is fixed by a document communicated to me by Count
Albert de Circourt (Pièces Originales Fontanieu, dossier 1185, No.
38): “Payez 200 écus d’or à nostre comis et féal frère le bastard
d’Orléans sur ung voiage qu’il a fait pour nous au pais de Lombardie
partant de nostre dicte ville de Blois au dict mois de Fébrier dernier
passé.” Blois 22nd Mai 1441.
There were other matters more important even than the restitution of
Asti, upon which it was well that a man so wise, so experienced, so
persuasive as Dunois should confer with the uncle of his half-brothers.
The Duke of Milan had no sons, one daughter only, and she was
illegitimate. Therefore the princes of Orleans considered themselves the
heirs to Milan. But they were not alone in expecting this inheritance.
The Emperor pointed to the clause in the investiture of 1396 which
declared that, in default of males, Milan should revert to the empire.
Jacopo Visconti, a distant cousin of the Duke’s, brought forward some
pretensions of his own. Sforza, the husband of the Duke’s natural
daughter, thought of the house of Este and of other Italian houses where
more than once a bastard, if courageous and beautiful, had succeeded to
his father before legitimate heirs; and as to the fact that Madonna
Bianca was a woman, had not Giovanna I. of Naples succeeded to King
Robert, even in defiance of a Salic law? Meanwhile the princes of Savoy
remembered that when the Duke of Milan had married the Savoyard princess
he had made, upon receipt of her dower, a promise to her father and her
brother that if no children sprang from this union, he would bequeath
the titles of Milan to Savoy. It is significant of the strange confusion
of the laws of inheritance in Italy that all these princes believed in
the right of a Duke of Milan to bestow by testament, or deed or gift, or
marriage-contract, that which was, in fact, a fief of the Holy Roman
Empire. But the rights of the empire had fallen into long disuse across
the Alps, where a strange confusion of kinship, bequest, investiture, or
election by the people regulated the succession to Papal and Imperial
fiefs. Some princes succeeded in one way, some in the other. To the eyes
of contemporaries they all appeared justifiable alternatives, giving
some shadow of right to that which a strong hand meant to grasp and
meant to keep. “Most of the princes in Italy,” wrote Commines fifty
years later, “hold their lands by no title unless it be given them in
heaven, which we can but divine.”
Thus eyed suspiciously by rival heirs, Dunois, as the representative of
Orleans, crossed the Alps in 1441 and came to Milan, both to require the
restitution of Asti, and also, as Ventura remarks, to confer on other
matters with the Duke. The Duke of Milan was a sad, timid, indifferent
man, old at five-and-fifty and harassed by an almost lunatic suspicion
of danger from his friends. As he grew older his fears and doubts grew
stronger, and he saw no motive for any sort of conduct beside the desire
to succeed him in Milan. Oppressed by hypochondria, corpulent to
deformity, fatigued by the weight of his body, and exhausted by the
heaviness upon his spirits, this timid and sceptical Volpone of Lombardy
found his sole amusement in weaving into a complicated perplexity the
expectations of his heirs. Sitting immovable in his corner at Milan,
like some huge spider spinning in the dusk, he crossed and recrossed,
twisted and confused, in his dreary web, the hopes of Sforza and of
Orleans, of Savoy and of the bastard cousins of his house.
No one could be sure of the succession. Sforza, the object of his senile
fondness, was the object also of his insane suspicion. The Duke had
tried a score of times to shuffle out of a promise to give him his
natural daughter; and the very week that he had finally consented to
their marriage, he sent a private messenger to Lionello d’Este, offering
_him_ the hand of Madonna Bianca. Nevertheless, in 1441 Sforza married
Bianca, a mere girl, but bringing in her dowry the Signories of Cremona
and Pontremoli, in addition to his lieutenancy of Asti. After the
marriage he was no more sure of the Duke of Milan than he had been
before. The uncertain seesaw of the Duke’s caprices continued as
unsteady as of old. On the one hand, the Duke was aware that Sforza,
though the son of a peasant, was the most remarkable Italian of his day,
courageous, frank, spirited, kind of heart, and cunning. His immense
strength of will both attracted and repelled the vacillating and
suspicious Visconti. He admired Sforza, and Sforza was the husband of
his only child. Still more, Sforza was secretly supported by Agnese del
Maino, the mother of Bianca, the sole woman whose influence had ever
touched the indifferent and preoccupied heart of Filippo Maria. On the
other hand, the Duke was afraid of Sforza—and to fear, in timid natures,
is to hate.
When fear and suspicion sank the scale, Visconti inclined to his wife’s
relations of Savoy, who, having no right at all except such as he chose
to give them, presented no cause for fear. Or he encouraged the claims
of Jacopo Visconti. Osio, in a note, informs us that this Jacopo
Visconti was the son of Gabriello, the bastard of Giangaleazzo, and had
this been the case Jacopo Visconti would have had a certain claim. But
Gabriello left no children, and Jacopo must have been the son of one of
the numerous children of Bernabò. Nevertheless he considered himself to
have pretensions. When all these had been weighed in the balance and
found wanting, there remained the princes of Orleans.
In early life the Duke of Milan had been inclined to France; and he had
been a suitor for that Princess Marie d’Anjou, who afterwards married
King Charles VII. From 1420 to 1427 the pages of Osio abound in messages
and treaties. Then the vexed question of Asti began to embitter his
relations with France, and to increase that fatal suspicion which ever
made him turn with sudden loathing from his former friends. While his
discontent with Anjou was still undecided, the Genoese handed into his
custody the enemy of Anjou, the prince of Arragon, taken prisoner at
sea. In their suzerain Visconti, the ally of Anjou, the Genoese imagined
that they had found a sure custodian for Arragon. But they had not
reckoned upon the personal charm of Alfonso the Magnanimous, nor upon
the capricious indifference of Visconti. Young, handsome, engaging,
fearless, their chivalrous captive won the heart of his timid jailer,
and easily turned his fluctuating policy from Anjou towards Arragon.
Visconti suddenly deserted his own subjects, released Alfonso without
consulting the Genoese, and supported him upon the throne of Naples.
With some thought in his heart, doubtless, of the success of Alfonso,
Dunois turned his steps to Milan. He also was handsome, persuasive,
rhetorical; and if no longer young, his comely head was encircled by the
aureole of heroic victory. But Dunois lacked the enthusiasm, the
spontaneity, that, in Arragon, had warmed for a moment the numb and
chilly heart of the Duke of Milan. Dunois was as cold, as sceptical, as
wise, as worldly as himself. His flowers of speech made no real effect
upon the weary Duke, who, to get rid of him, made, doubtless, some
magnificent promise for the future; for Dunois did not insist on his
demand for Asti, but returned almost immediately to France, hoping to
settle matters by the friendly intervention of the Emperor Frederic; but
at that time the customary _malentendu_ as to the occupation of Alsace
estranged France and Germany, and Frederic declined to interfere with
the projects of the Duke of Milan.
Dunois had not impressed the Duke, who was impressed only by youth,
fearlessness, and a never-daunted will. He thought he perceived these
qualities in the young Dauphin, half in disgrace on his estate in
Dauphiné. Him also Visconti determined to drag into the tangled web of
the Milanese succession; and about this time negotiations with the
Dauphin Louis began to complicate the difficulties of Transalpine
policy.
Already in the spring of 1445[58] a minute in the Archives of Milan,
transcribed by Signor Luigi Osio, records the willingness of the Duke of
Milan to further the Dauphin in his plan of an Italian invasion,
provided that Louis agree to help the friends and not the enemies of
Visconti. Asti should be confided to a person equally trusted by Orleans
and Milan, and after the expiration of a given term should be freely
handed back to the eldest son of Valentine. Notwithstanding this
fair-spoken scheme, Visconti finds it necessary to caution his young
ally against certain persons on the French side of the Alps who use
threats and menaces towards the Crown of Milan. By these it is clear
that he intends his nephews of Orleans. He has no friendship for them.
_Noluit restituere_, briefly remarks Secundino Ventura.
Footnote 58:
Feb. 23 (The Milanese began the year upon Dec. 25). Osio, vol. iii.
cccxviii.
The negotiations with Louis proceeded briskly, and in May the Milanese
ambassador arrived in Paris, where he found _grande garra e divisione_
between the restless Dauphin and King René of Sicily, who he remarks (to
our unfeigned surprise) _è quello che governa tucto questo reame_.
Meanwhile Louis, young as he was, had already learned a maxim as true in
policy as in almsgiving: he let not his right hand divine the secrets of
his left; and while on the one side he treated with the Duke of Milan,
on the other he practised with Savoy. According to the latter plan Savoy
and the Dauphin, aided by Montferrat and Mantua and Ferrara, were to
conquer between them the north of Italy; France was to take Genoa, the
Lucchese, Parma, Piacenza, Tortona—all south of the Po and east of
Montferrat; Savoy was to gain Milan and keep the Riviera; Alessandria
was to be handed over to Montferrat, and the Duke of Ferrara and the
Marquis of Mantua were, _for the present_, to keep their actual
possessions; but this significant phrase was followed by one more
significant still: “All future conquests are to be divided at the rate
of two shares to France and one share to Savoy.”[59]
Footnote 59:
B. de Mandrot. See also MSS. of Bib. Nat., Lat. 17779, fos. 53-56; and
for the correspondence of Pope Felix with his son, Duke Louis of
Savoy, upon this subject, an exhaustive article by M. Gaullier in the
eighth volume of the “Archiv für schweizerische Geschichte.”