the rectitude of human nature. Of all these personages, Charles of
Orleans, a simple lyric creature, kept fresh and wholesome in arrested
youth behind his prison bars, and Sforza, an honest, grasping and
ambitious soldier, alone inspire respect or sympathy. This old duke,
conscious that in a few months his immense possessions will have
dwindled to a single grave, amusing the last hours of his sceptical,
indifferent existence by juggling the expectations of a dozen heirs;
this child-prince, without an impulse or an illusion left of youth,
successfully deceiving a couple of enemies who each believes himself his
sole ally—these unfortunately are no exceptions to the rule of the game.
Savoy, in the act of drawing up this project of conquest, was
encouraging the Milanese to trust him to secure them a free republic on
the death of the Duke. Montferrat and Mantua, pledged on the one hand to
conquer Italy with the Dauphin, were as deeply pledged to Venice[60] to
oppose the invader and preserve the peace. Each had been careful to risk
something on every possible event, so that no sudden turn of the wheel
of Fortune could bring about complete disaster.
Footnote 60:
Feb. 14, 1447. Reg. 17, fol. 106, Secreta, Venice. This document
records the dismay of Florence and Venice upon learning the league of
France and Milan. These two cities with Montferrat, Mantua, Angleria,
and the other Lombard powers, joined in a solemn convention to oppose
the common enemy and to preserve the peace.
On the 9th of February, 1447, an indiscreet French squire, riding to
Rome upon a message, let out to the Florentines that a league had been
formed between the Dauphin of France and the Duke of Milan.[61]
According to this report Visconti had offered to aid the lad to recover
Genoa, and had volunteered, in defiance of the rights of Orleans, to
make him lord of Asti. A document in Osio (t. iii. ccclxxiii.) dated the
20th of December, 1446, and a series of letters in the Bibliothèque
Nationale,[62] confirm this remarkable statement, which, if it spread
horror throughout Italy, caused no less indignation among the heirs of
Valentine. Strangely enough it was Sforza, at that time the Milanese
governor of Asti, who advocated the cause of the Dauphin. “Give him
Asti, and he will do you excellent service. Pay him well; and yet
contrive it in such a way that none but your Highness shall be cock or
hen in this country.” This advice was rendered still more unpalatable to
the Italians and to the house of Orleans by a rumour that the Duke of
Milan intended to adopt the Dauphin as his heir. Before the month was
out the north Italian princes formed themselves into a counter-league
against France and Milan, and Orleans and Dunois had despatched to Milan
the baillie of Sens, a certain Reynouard du Dresnay, with a demand for
the immediate restitution of Asti. This time they would brook no
refusal, they would be tempted by no future benefits. Indignant and
disenchanted, they instructed their lieutenant to press the matter home;
and on the 4th of May, Asti again returned to France. The conditions of
the surrender were peculiar. The county was not directly given back to
Orleans, but yielded to Du Dresnay as the lieutenant of the king, so
long as the said king should preserve the good will and consent of
Charles of Orleans, _directus dominus ipsius civitatis et patriæ_.
Footnote 61:
Desjardins, “Nég. dipl. avec la Toscane,” t. i. p. 60.
Footnote 62:
Bibl. Nat. MSS. Ital. 1584, Nos. 21 and 84, quoted by the Marquis de
Beaucourt in the “Revue des Questions Historiques” for October, 1887.
In this matter at least the shifty Duke of Milan was outwitted. Asti had
slipped from his grasp; France had again her hand upon the key of
Lombardy. Much of his interest in the game was gone. As the summer waxed
and waned, the Duke grew more than ever heavy, indifferent, and
lethargic. He was not seriously ill, but, as I have said, his interest
in the game was over. In August his health, always feeble, sank in the
great heat of the summer. Immense in his unwieldly corpulence, the Duke
sat in a darkened chamber of his palace brooding over his unfinished
testament. He suffered no physician near him, and his illness—a low
fever—was kept a secret. But the faint heart of Filippo Maria could no
longer animate the weight of his body. On the 13th of August, 1447, he
died—less of his illness, it was said, than of utter indifference, as
one who, weary of the spectacle of existence, left his seat and retired
whence he came.
Above the corpse, scarcely yet cold, the rival heirs, in eager
expectation, gathered to the reading of the will. The Duchess-dowager
represented Savoy; Madonna Bianca appeared for the absent Sforza;
Raynouard du Dresnay came to Milan on behalf of Orleans; while, at a
distance, Montferrat and Jacopo Visconti looked to their own interests;
the Venetians had hopes of their own; the Milanese, as we know, intended
to inaugurate a republic; the emperor, serene above these petty
quarrels, declared that by feudal law Milan had already devolved to him.
Absent or present, there was not one of these, save him, but had some
promise of Filippo Maria’s in his mind when at length the testament was
opened. The will was dated August 12th,[63] the day before the death of
the Duke. There was no mention in it of his daughter, Madonna Bianca,
none of his wife, none of any of his nephews or kinsmen. He left Alfonso
of Arragon his universal heir.
Perhaps, as Guicciardini suggests, love of his people induced the dying
Duke to leave his city to a distant tyrant; perhaps, in his suspicion of
his present friends, his fancy turned with pleasure to the good bright
youth who had been his captive long ago; perhaps his defeat at Asti made
him like to think of the evil turn that once he had done the French in
Naples; or, it may be, the mere desire of outraging the detestable
_cohue_ of his quasi-legal heirs proved irresistibly fascinating to the
sceptical old man. At least so it was. Every right was outraged;[64] the
King of Naples was left the Duke of Milan. “Nevertheless come here as
soon as you can,” wrote Antonio Guidoboni to Sforza[65] on the 14th;
“once on the spot and half the game is won.”
Footnote 63:
“Archivio Storico Lombardo,” Anno iii. fasc. iv.
Footnote 64:
Osio, ii. note to p. 2. In the hour of his death, on August 14th, the
Duke drew a codicil leaving everything to Alfonso. Two days before he
had left Alfonso _erede universale_, and Bianca _erede particolare_.
Of course in either case she remained mistress of Cremona and
Pontremoli.
Footnote 65:
Osio quotes this letter, which exists in the Archives of Milan: _Fece
el Re d’Arragona erede del tutto, non facta mentione veruna di M.B.
[Madonna Bianca] ne de la mogliere ne d’altri.... Vegnate pur voi via
senza veruna dimora; zonto siate qua lo mezo del giocho e vincto._
III.
It was at this moment that for the first time the French claim to Milan
became a question for practical politics. Frederic the Pacific was not
the man to press the rights of the German Empire in Italy, rights which
at this time were continually disregarded, and which nothing less than a
military occupation could enforce. Even the Ghibellines in Lombardy
declared, not for the Emperor Frederic, but for Count Francesco Sforza.
Yet the Emperor Frederic was, so far as the legal and abstract side of
the matter was concerned, the one really serious rival of the Duke of
Orleans.
For Alfonzo of Arragon showed no inclination to take up arms in defence
of his unexpected bequest. Although, in the city of Milan itself, he had
a considerable party in his favour, at this time neither Alfonso nor his
rivals appear to have regarded the will of the late duke in any serious
spirit. The story ran in Milan that, in the week before his death, when
that astounding testament was made, Filippo Maria had smiled and said,
“It will be good to see how it will go to pieces when I am dead.” A
cynical pleasure in aggravating as much as possible this imminent ruin
must, I think, have prompted the Duke to leave Milan to Alfonso. And if
his detached, amused, malevolent soul could really from any
extra-mundane point of vantage have watched the events which quickly
followed his decease, he would have found the spectacle as exciting and
as novel as he wished. The Milanese at once declared themselves a free
republic, governed by various Princes of Liberty. Whereupon all the
subject cities announced that if Milan was a republic, so was each of
them, for they would not submit to bear the yoke of a city no nobler
than the rest. Hereupon such of the cities as were not strong enough to
stand alone gave themselves, some to the Venetians, some to Savoy, some
to Genoa, some to Orleans, some to Montferrat, some to Ferrara; and all
these powers sent armies into Lombardy to protect their rights. Matters
were still further complicated by the dissensions of the Bracceschi and
Sforzeschi, the Guelfs and Ghibellines. In Pavia alone, for instance,
the Guelfs declared, some for Venice, some for Orleans, some for the
King of France, some for the Dauphin; the Bracceschi declared for
Alfonzo of Arragon; Savoy and Montferrat each had a faction at their
service, but the great body of the Ghibellines were in favour of Count
Francesco Sforza, to whom finally the city submitted. This was a blow to
the free republic of Milan next door; but in the miserable state of
their dominions, the unfortunate Princes of Liberty did not dare to
remonstrate with their too potent commander, and Count Francesco,
sovereign at Pavia, continued to be the servant of the Milanese
republic.
So soon as the news of the death of the Duke of Milan came to France,
the French prepared to assert the rights of Orleans. On September 3rd
Charles VII. wrote from Bourges to Turin, recommending the rights of
Orleans to Savoy:—
“_Nostre tres-cher et très-amé frère, le Duc d’Orléans, à présent Duc de
Milan_ [asserts the king] _par le décès du feu Duc son oncle, qui est
naguères allé de vie à trespas, comme son plus prochain hoir, nous a
bien exprès faict dire et remonstré le bon droict qu’il ha au dict Duché
de Milan._”[66]
Footnote 66:
This letter is quoted in M. Gaullieur’s interesting collection of
documents from the correspondence of Duke Louis of Savoy, published in
the eighth volume of the “Archiv für schweizerische Geschichte.” Also
in M. de Beaucourt’s “History,” _op. cit._
And Savoy, in all his further proceedings to obtain the protectorate of
Milan for himself, excepts the French claim, against which he avows
himself powerless to protest. This claim, theoretically so strong, had
also in its favour the devotion—the veneration, says Corio—which the
royal name of France inspired in the Guelfs of Lombardy; and in this
moment of revolution the Guelfs, the democratic party, were
exceptionally powerful. The governor of Asti, Raynouard du Dresnay,
infected by the ardour of the times, could no longer await the coming of
his master, but on September 22nd, furnished with 3,300 golden ducats of
Asti, at the head of a little force of 1,500 men-at-arms, sallied out to
plant the royal lilies of Orleans upon the soil of Milan.
Almost at once the inhabitants of Felizzano, Solero, Castellaccio, and
Bergolio yielded to his arms. So many of the fortresses in the
Alessandrino followed suit that Alessandria and all the country round
were filled with fear. The force of Raynouard was very small, but
inspired with so much fury, such fervour and cruelty of battle, that the
softer Italians did not dare resist him. The smaller cities opened at
his knock, and even in the larger cities there was a party which, afraid
of his vengeance, and fascinated by the prestige of France, would have
welcomed him with open arms. Yet there were many, hating the stranger
and his barbarian ferocity, who sent messenger after messenger to
Sforza, bidding him arrive and deliver them. “Patience!” said Count
Francesco. “In the first onslaught the French are more than men. Soon
they will weary, and then we will attack them.” But meanwhile, with
undiminished energy, day after day the victories of Raynouard proceeded,
and further and further into Lombardy advanced the banners of the king
of France.
On October 1st an embassy from the unhappy republic of Milan arrived in
Venice requesting aid and counsel. This, of a truth, was seeking
sweetness in the jaws of the lion; for Lodi, Codogno, and other cities
had already revolted to the Venetians, who hoped in time, by skilful
management, to possess the greater part of Lombardy. But the bewildered
Princes of Liberty knew not in whom to place their trust. Venice and
Florence were leagued together, and each hoped to obtain something from
the dismemberment of the territories of Milan; Montferrat, Mantua,
Savoy, Genoa, and France, in open arms, were spoliating the corpse of
their neighbour—for a corpse indeed it seemed—and of the captain-general
of their own forces these heads of the republic were more profoundly
suspicious than of any open foe. Too many of the nobles in Milan were
secretly in favour of this adventurer. Only the people, the Guelfs,
sustained their republican ardour with violent rhetoric, and declared
that they would rather be the servants of the Turk, or of the Devil,
than of Count Francesco Sforza.
There was this in favour of Venice, that she detested Count Francesco
(who had left her service for the Duke of Milan’s) as bitterly as any
Guelf in Lombardy. And Venice, the most aristocratic of oligarchies, was
for complicated political reasons greatly favoured by the Guelfs.
Therefore, not without hope in their hearts, the delegates of Milan
awaited the answer of the Venetian senate. Three practicators, or
agents, were deputed by the Ten to confer with the ambassadors
concerning the proposed alliance between Milan and Venice; but these
agents were secretly bidden in no way to commit or bind the Venetian
government (_nichil obligando nos_); for the conference really was to be
only a means of extracting information as to the true condition of
affairs in Milan.[67] And it would be as valueless to us, as to the
hapless, bamboozled Milanese, were it not that here we get, I think, the
first evidence of the Venetian inclination to pronounce for France.[68]
Footnote 67:
Secreta, Reg. 17, fol. 171, tergo.
Footnote 68:
_Sed si in colloquiis fieret mentio per ipsos oratores de serenissimo
Rege Francorum, et de Januense, qui occupassent de locis que fuerant
quondam ducis, in hoc casu, praticatores ipsi iustificare debeant, in
modesta et convenienti forma verborum, factum præfati Regis, et
Januensis; videlicet, quod per nos, contra eos, honeste et
convenienter fieri non possit._
There was no help here from the violence of Raynouard. Venice especially
declared that against France and Genoa she would do nothing. And every
day recorded the conquests of the French. The Milanese ambassadors
returned very sadly, “despised by the Venetians,” says Corio, “and
treated as perniciously as possible.” In vain they bade Francesco Sforza
give battle to the audacious little force of Raynouard. Count Francesco,
who had ever been favourable to France, pursued his waiting game,
although Bosco Marengo, closely besieged by the French, was almost at
the end of possible resistance, and the fall of Bosco meant the loss of
Alessandria. At last the Milanese succeeded in scraping together about
fifteen hundred soldiers, and these, under Coglioni, they sent to
Alessandria to harass the enemy. The French were taken between two
fires—on the one side Coglioni, on the other the Alessandrian
reinforcements; yet at first they gained the day, but so furious was
their anger, and so long they dallied in the slaughter of their enemies,
that before they had despatched the last, a further reinforcement of the
Milanese, and a successful sally on the part of the besieged,
intercepted their return. Raynouard was taken prisoner with many of his
men; the cities which had revolted to him returned to the allegiance of
the Milanese republic; and the royal troops, leaderless and disbanded in
the very hour of victory, fled home as best they might to Asti.
This was on Oct. 17, 1447. Twelve days later the Duke of Orleans himself
arrived in Asti. There he made a solemn entry on Oct. 26th, riding under
a däis borne by the notables of the city robed and hooded all in white,
_pro majori letitia adventus ipsius domini ducis_. Charles of Orleans
was now a man of fifty-seven, amiable and sanguine. Something of the
charm and of the inefficiency of youth appeared to linger around this
aging poet, who, taken captive a youth of twenty-four, issued into the
world again almost a man of fifty. Those intervening years had held for
him none of the serious business of life: and his experience was still
the experience of charming, ardent, and unhappy youth. Since Agincourt
he had counted his years by lyrics, not by battles; and now perhaps one
of the serious things to him in this contentious Lombardy was his
friendship with Antonio Astesano, professor of eloquence and poetry at
Asti, himself no inconsiderable versifier, and author of a poetic
epistle on the victories of the Maid of Orleans, which in 1430 he had
sent to the Duke in his English prison. Charles, with his serene
unpractical temper, his interest in literature, his inexperience of
life, hoping all things, doing nothing, appears a strange figure in that
distracted Lombardy: a garlanded maypole stuck in the front of battle.
At first the arrival of the Duke of Orleans appeared an event of
immeasurable importance. The Guelfs in every Lombard town, who at first
had thought only of Venice, began, more loudly even than during the
campaign of Raynouard, to declare for France. The Duke came armed with
promises from France, from Burgundy, from Brittany, from England. There
were no bounds to the magnificence with which he declared himself about
to take the field. But perhaps it would not be necessary to take the
field at all. The Duke sent a deputation to the Milanese republic; the
lord of Cognac, one of the nobles of Ceva, Caretti (whose family all the
while were practising none too secretly with Montferrat), Secondino
Natti, Antonio Romagnano, and Francesco Roero, requested the Milanese to
submit to the allegiance of their lawful duke. But the Milanese were all
too well aware of the hateful consequences of tyranny. Men were still
alive whose brothers and whose children had been torn to pieces, limb by
limb, by the hounds of Giammaria Visconti, the uncle of this man. The
suspicion, the cunning, the timid fear of Filippo Maria had succeeded to
that oppression. “This time,” said the people of Milan, “we will
preserve ourselves a free republic.”
A show of force would at least be necessary to induce them to change
their minds; and in December, 1447, Charles of Orleans sent an embassy
to Venice,[69] requesting the Council to enter into an arrangement with
him, and to furnish him with troops. He repeated his assurances of aid
from France, England, and Burgundy; and if such aid as this were really
forthcoming, Venice, animated by a limited Venetian and not by a
national Italian patriotism, would certainly hesitate to cross his path.
So bitter was the hatred of Venice towards Sforza, that any other
candidate appeared preferable to him; and this douce, unready Charles
would be easier to manage than a man of that heroic and ambitious type.
Yet in a matter so important it was, before all things, necessary to be
circumspect; and the Venetians put off the Duke of Orleans with many
assurances of their devoted adherence and affection, many warnings
against the cunning and the machinations of Sforza, while they wrote to
their allies of Florence requesting an opinion. At this instant Sforza
was so dreaded in Italy, and his victory appeared so imminent, that if a
few of the promised battalions had appeared in Piedmont the Venetians
would gladly have espoused the cause of Orleans. But Sforza, left almost
without money, with no ally that he was really sure of except his
valiant wife, found the situation untenable. He had not a friend in
Italy, nor a friend across the mountains. Peace, if only the feint of
peace, was imperative while he collected his unvanquished forces for a
further struggle. Early in January he wrote to Florence, proposing
peace. The Florentines and the Venetians were bound in so close a league
that peace with the one meant truce with the other; and though, at least
twice, in solemn terms, the Council of Ten warned the Florentine Signory
that there was no substance in this matter, for peace was contrary to
the real interests of Count Francesco, yet in the end Venice agreed to
accept this peace for what it was worth, using the hour of respite to
further her stratagems in other quarters.
Footnote 69:
Reg. 17, fol. 194, tergo. Dec. 30, 1447.
The peace was not worth much. On May 9th Andriano Ricci of Asti arrived
in Venice with a message from the Duke of Orleans.[70] “The French
reinforcements will soon be here,” said the sanguine Duke; “will you
also be my auxiliary?” The Venetians, though still cautious, replied in
terms of alacrity—
“We are ready to grant you all possible aid and favour, and there is no
other prince on earth whom we so warmly desire to be our neighbour in
Milan. Hasten the King of France, for if any good effect is to follow
our endeavours, the troops should come at once. And rely upon it, so
soon as your French auxiliaries are in readiness, we also will provide a
satisfactory contingent to help in the conquest of Milan. And we are the
readier to do this, since the peace which we had begun to treat with the
Milanese republic is already broken, and we at this moment are in open
war with Milan.”
Footnote 70:
Reg. 17, fol. 221, tergo.
* * * * *
But, just at the instant when it would have given most pleasure to
Venice to support the claims of Orleans, she began to feel grave doubts
as to the solidity of his pretensions. Those promised armies of France,
England, Burgundy, and Brittany, which had been on the road ever since
last December, would they never cross the Alps? As yet not a single
soldier had appeared. How far could Venice trust the assertions of the
fanciful and sanguine Orleans? A strain in him of the Visconti
shiftiness mingled with the rhetoric of his father, and for all his
amiable simplicity Charles of Orleans was not a man to inspire
conviction. The Venetians were, however, aware that Burgundy was really
in his favour. It was Burgundy who had paid the ransom of Orleans, and
Burgundy had twice sent his ambassadors to Venice, entreating the Ten in
favour of his cousin. There was a great friendship between the good Duke
Philip and the gentle Duke Charles; it seemed as if, having overcome the
tremendous barrier of an hereditary vendetta, these two men, whose
fathers had each been murdered to satisfy the feud, entertained for each
other an affection that had gained by the obstacles it had surmounted.
If Burgundy, the richest duke in Europe, supported Orleans, it might be
well to aid him even in the absence of France, England, and Brittany.
But it would be disastrous to support the inefficient duke alone against
such mighty odds. Yet some aid against Sforza was immediately desirable.
To the Venetians, to have two strings to your bow was the first axiom of
policy; and on May 20, 1448, the Ten despatched to Asti a secret
messenger, one Messer Bernardo Neri, who was to interview the Duke,[71]
to obtain all possible information as to his army and his auxiliaries,
and then, in the utmost privacy, to proceed to Savoy in order to judge
in which direction it best would suit the Venetian cat to jump.
Footnote 71:
Reg. 17, fol. 220. Secreta del Senato, MS.
Messer Bernardo stayed over a fortnight at Asti, although his commission
was only for five days; and from this we may suppose that at first he
really had expectations of the success of Orleans. But on June 10th[72]
he left, ostensibly to return to Venice in order to receive the answer
of the Senate; but in reality he went only a little way on the Venetian
road and turned aside at once into Savoy, for at Turin he knew he should
find further instructions from the Senate. He could only spend a day or
two over his negotiations with the Duke there, for he had to return to
Asti on the day when an answer might reasonably be expected to reach
that place from Venice. But his interview with Duke Louis was evidently
satisfactory, for it is the first of a long series of negotiations.
Footnote 72:
Reg. 18, fol. 3, Secreta del Senato, MS.