and the council of the King. He himself warmly espoused the cause of the
army, which frankly declared a battle impossible against such
overwhelming odds: unless reinforcements arrived from Switzerland,
Orleans must be released by composition from Novara. But the council
insisted on an immediate engagement. The soldiers commonly said that
Orleans had promised Briçonnet an income of 10,000 crowns for his son,
if Milan should still be gained and the siege of Novara raised. The
Swiss did not come; the army was too small. In September there began to
be a serious talk of peace. On the 26th of that month, Orleans and his
army were released by composition from Novara. Over 2,000 of them had
died of hunger, and many fell by the roadside from sheer weakness and
died there as they lay. (Commines found fifty of them dying in a garden,
and saved their lives by a timely mess of pottage.) Most of those who
lived to reach the camp perished of the dangerous abundance. More than
three hundred of their wasted corpses were cast upon the dunghills of
Vercelli.
This was a heavy price to pay for one man’s disobedient ambition. All
the harder did it seem to buy nothing with so great expense. There were
many who were still unwilling for peace. Orleans had endeared himself to
his troops by his conduct during the hunger of Novara, where he had
fared and fasted like any common man-at-arms, setting aside the ducal
mess for the use of the sick in hospital. His mess-fellows were willing
still to die for him. By an ironic turn of fate, on the very day on
which the army evacuated Novara, 20,000 Swiss came to the relief of the
king. With such a reinforcement as this, cried Orleans, Ligny, D’Amboise
and their men, Charles might not only conquer Milan, but make himself
master of the whole of Italy. But the negotiations for peace already
were begun; Novara was lost; the French soldiers were few and much
enfeebled; and it was rumoured that the Swiss meant no less than to
capture King Charles with all his nobles, carry them off into the
impregnable fastness of the Alps, and then exact a fabulous ransom for
their liberty.
The King thought it best to dismiss at once these dangerous allies, and
take his homesick soldiers back to France. On Oct. 10th peace was
concluded. The king promised—on condition that Lodovico Sforza renounced
all claim to Asti, made no obstacle to the relief of the French in
Naples, and paid to Orleans a war indemnity of 50,000 ducats—not to
sustain his cousin’s right to Milan. Orleans was enraged and
disappointed. In secret he negotiated for the support of the Swiss
captains, and with these and with 800 of his men-at-arms he meant to
march from Vercelli upon Milan. But the night before he was to leave,
when all was ready, suddenly he demanded the consent of the King.
Charles refused to sanction this breach of the peace, and bade his
cousin join the army in marching back to France. By Nov. 7th Orleans,
none the richer for his endeavours, was with the King at Lyons.
A little more than a year after this the King would gladly have sent his
cousin of Orleans to conquer Milan: it was the Duke who made excuses and
would not go. For soon after the French returned to France, the Dauphin
died. Charles, who had inherited that terrible distrust of his own
children from which he had suffered in his father, did not greatly
mourn, or so at least Commines assures us. But if the quickness of a
little child of three—his own son—had given him concern, much more did
he dread his new heir, the Duke of Orleans. The queen, bewailing the
loss of her child, had fallen into a lamentable melancholy, and Charles,
with an absurd idea of cheering the poor mother, ordered a masque of
gentlemen to dance before her. Orleans was among them, and he danced to
such purpose, with such lightness of heart and heel, such buoyancy and
gladness, that the sorrowing queen was seriously offended; and Charles
himself determined, if possible, to send his cheerful heir a little
further from the throne.
An opportunity soon offered. Florence, faithful against all the world to
France, sent to the King at Amboise, asking him to come and uproot the
Sforza out of Milan. She offered to furnish 800 men-at-arms and 5,000
footmen at her own cost. The cardinal of St. Peter in Vinculis, the
Orsini, Bentivoglio of Bologna, Este of Ferrara, Gonzaga of Mantua, all
had promised to hire their forces to the King. Genoa was to be conquered
by Trivulzio while Orleans marched on Milan. The plan of campaign was
settled, the troops were all drawn up, Trivulzio had already entered
Italy with 6,000 infantry and 800 men-at-arms, when, on the very night
of his departure, Orleans suddenly abandoned his post. On his own
private quarrel, he declared, he could not and he would not go; as the
King’s lieutenant, and at his express command, he was ready to
depart—not otherwise. “I would never force him to the wars against his
will,” exclaimed Charles, and, though for many days the Florentine
ambassadors besought him to exercise the authority of the throne, he
refused to interfere with Orleans. “Thus was the voyage dashed,” relates
Commines, “spite of great charges and all our friends in a readiness.
And this was done to the King’s great grief, for Milan being once won,
Naples would have yielded of itself.”
What, then, had happened to change the mind of Orleans—Orleans,
disobedient at Novara, and disobedient again to-day for so opposite a
reason? “He shunned this enterprise,” continues our historian, “because
he saw the King ill-disposed of his body, whose heir he should be if he
died.” “He would not go,” relates Guicciardini, “for he saw that the
King was ill, and to himself belonged the succession of the crown.”
Just a year after this, on the morning of Palm Sunday (April 8, 1498),
Louis of Orleans, fallen into a sort of undetermined half-disgrace, was
standing at a window in his house at Blois, when he saw in the street
some soldiers of the royal guard, running quickly. “God save the King!”
they cried; “Vive le roi Louis XII.!” This was the first King Louis
heard of the sudden death of his cousin. The day before, Charles VIII.
had fallen down, suddenly stricken to death, as he and his wife were
watching a game of tennis from the gallery at Amboise.
XI.
The French claimant to Milan was now the King of France. From this
moment the pretensions of Orleans became a factor in European history.
The plans of the first Duke of Milan went so grievously astray, that,
instead of France and Germany each holding the other in check, for half
a century their armies occupied the soil of Lombardy, nor, when they
withdrew, was the land left at peace, but, baffled and paralyzed, the
helpless prey of Spain.
This Iliad is too important to be contained within the slender limits of
an essay. We can but briefly indicate the events which developed and
then extinguished the right of the French to Milan. Conquered in 1499,
by Louis XII. of France, Lombardy remained for five and twenty years an
intermittent province of that kingdom, continually revolting,
continually reconquered. During this time several privileges and
investitures, extracted from the Emperor, confirmed the victories of
France, and annulled the claims of Lodovico Sforza. These investitures
are worthy of at least our brief consideration, since, from the moment
of their bestowal, the French claim to Milan, already emphasised by the
rights of heredity, testamentary bequest, and contract, received the
final sanction of the feudal law.
The first of these Imperial investitures was bestowed on King Louis XII.
by the hand of Maximilian on April 7, 1505.[103] It secured the Duchy of
Milan (_non obstante priore investitura illustri Ludovico Sfortia prius
exhibita_) to the King of France and to his sons; or, in default of
males, to his daughter Claude. At this time, through the influence of
Queen Anne, Claude was most unnaturally betrothed to the permanent enemy
of her country, the future Charles V., and in this document he is
mentioned as her husband and co-heir—a fact he did not allow to slip.
But fortunately the heiress of Brittany, Orleans, and Milan, was not
allowed to marry the great rival of France. On June 14, 1509, a second
investiture confirmed the inheritance of Claude, and associated with her
therein her future husband, Francis of Angoulême, her cousin, equally
with herself the offspring of Valentine and Orleans.[104] This Imperial
document explicitly admits the right of feminine succession to a Lombard
fief,[105] for Claude, it affirms, is the heiress to Milan through her
father, the grandson of Madame Valentine. But it says nothing of the
descent of Francis of Angoulême, although it provides that if Claude
should die in childhood, and the King have no other children born to
take her place, then Francis of Angoulême shall be recognized as in his
own right Duke of Milan because he is the heir of the King of France.
Footnote 103:
Luenig, sectio ii. classis i.: “De Ducato Mediolanesi,” xliv.
Footnote 104:
See in Luenig, June 14, 1509, No. xlv., and also, with some
unimportant variations of text, Bib. Nat. Paris, MS. 2950, Ancien
Fonds Français.
Footnote 105:
_Præfatus rex ex ducibus Mediolani originem trahit, medio illustris
quondam dominæ Valentinæ aviæ suæ, filiæ quondam illustris Johannis
Galeatii Mediolani ducis._
These are the rights of Francis I. to Milan, rights absolute and
impregnable. But it was only by continual conquest that the French could
keep their hold upon the Milanese. For the tendencies of ages go to show
us that there is a natural right more potent than the claims of blood,
succession, testament, adoption, or investiture. The French dukes of
Milan were, in their own dominions, foreigners. And, as the wise
Commines foresaw—
“There is no great seniorie but in the end the dominion thereof
remaineth to the natural countrymen. And this appeareth by the realm of
France, a great part whereof the Englishmen possessed the space of four
hundred years, and yet now hold they nothing therein but Calais and two
little castles, the defence whereof costeth them yearly a great sum of
money. And the self-same appeareth also by the realm of Naples and the
Isle of Sicily, and the other provinces possessed by the French, where
now is no memorial of their being there, save only their ancestors’
graves.”
It was the fatal battle of Pavia which really lost her Italian
dependencies to France. The treaty of Madrid, extorted by compulsion,
which proved so powerless to restore to the Emperor Burgundy (already
become an integral part of France), resigned to him for ever the
dominions of the French in Italy; not, however, without a struggle. No
sooner was Francis released from Madrid than he declared that extorted
contract void. He despatched protest after protest[106] to all the
courts in Europe: but what availed to retain his hold on Cognac, proved
vain to regain him the Milanese.
Footnote 106:
See for example “Protestations de François 1^{er},” Bib. Nat. MS.
2846.
Immediately after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. had invested Francesco
Sforza II., the son of Il Moro, with the duchy of his fathers. But what
should happen on the death of Francesco Sforza, a childless man?
Foreseeing this event, the hopes of the king of France were not
extinguished; and the ten years between 1530 and 1540 are filled with
the various endeavours, menaces, persuasions, by which he strove to
obtain from the emperor the Duchy of Milan for the second son of France.
Since it was evidently impossible to induce Charles V. to let Milan be
an adjunct to the French Crown, the ambition of the king persevered upon
a lower level, and a French Duke of Milan became the sum of his desires.
At two different moments the realization of this scheme appeared
possible. In 1535, after the death of Francesco Sforza II., negotiations
were set on foot to obtain the Milanese for Orleans. A document still
existing in the National Library at Paris[107] proves how lively and how
sanguine at this moment was the hope of Francis I. to recover Milan. The
king offered a promise never to unite this duchy to the Crown of France,
and declared himself ready to expend an immense sum on its investiture.
But the Venetians,[108] aware of the danger to themselves which a great
French state must create in Italy, temporized and manœuvred so well that
the matter came to nothing; for Charles V. was in a humour to credit
their assertions, that any time was better than time present. The
affairs of Italy were dull and dead to him. All his energies were fixed
upon the idea of the crusade against Algiers. It was proposed that
Orleans should join him in this enterprize,[109] and that, hand to hand
in this holy fight, emperor and prince might consent to forget the
bitter memory of bygone days. But in 1536 the eldest son of Francis
died, and Orleans became the Dauphin of France. The schemes, the policy
which during several years had endeavoured to secure for the husband of
Catherine de’ Medici an Italian principality, collapsed before that
unexpected stroke of fate. Orleans was not to be the head of an Italian
kingdom reaching from the Alps to Rome, and in 1540 Charles V. invested
his own son, Philip of Spain, with the Duchy of Milan. Yet France could
not acquiesce in this alienation of her transalpine inheritance, and in
1544 the disastrous treaty of Crépy provided that, in two years from
that date, either Milan or the Netherlands should be bestowed upon the
third son of Francis. But before the time of the engagement had expired,
Prince Charles was dead, and Milan fast in the grasp of the Spaniards.
Footnote 107:
Bib. Nat. MS. 2846, No. 57: _Instruction baillée au Seigneur
d’Espercieu après la mort du duc de Milan, Sforce, &c._
Footnote 108:
Ibid.: _Les Vénitiens ont practiqué bien avant cette mattière et
laissent, ce semble, le dict Sieur de Granvelle entendre qu’ils
parlent autrement que le roy, par aventure, ne pense; l’ambassadeur
parle assez publiquement de diviser le dict estat en plusieurs
pièces_.
Footnote 109:
Ibid.
THE MALATESTAS OF RIMINI.
NOTES AND DETAILS.
It is a centre for many memories, this little town of Rimini, set in the
plain by the Adriatic. Here ruled and ravaged the Mastin Vecchio of
Dante. The eyes of Francesca and her lover remember eternally these
yellow sands. Here Parisina left her innocence. Here dwelt Gismondo,
prince of traitors. And there are older memories than these. Yet in the
city whence Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, whence Augustus began the great
Flaminian Way, we remember, not Cæsar or Augustus, but that strange,
brave, cruel, perfidious race of petty despots, whose encroaching
personality and whose genius for architecture has left an enduring trace
on the cities of Romagna.
Pesaro, Fano, Cesena, Verruchio, and many another town owned the unquiet
sway of these Malatestas, and found them a perverse and twisted race,
shot with opposite qualities. They were a race of wrongheads, as their
surname tells us. Criminal often and yet not merely vicious, having some
great thought in them mostly, some fine intention still manifest through
the error of their lives, many of their vices were due to circumstance.
A dominant, courageous race of princelings, mostly illegitimate, never
sure of their tenure, it was only by unquestioned autocracy and a
never-relaxed grasp that they could secure their state from inner and
outer ravage. Their hand was against every man, and every man’s against
them. Not only the Pope anxious to enlarge his Venetian frontier, and
Venice eager for another province on the Adriatic seaboard; not only the
Duke of Urbino, the hereditary foe, perched like an eagle on the hills
above, watching the unguarded moment to pounce upon his prey: not only
these, and Sforza and Arragon, but every brother or cousin of the house,
from his petty stronghold in the plain, was ready to snatch from the
lord of Rimini, his dearly held supremacy.
Such absolute power in the present, with such uncertain future, is above
all things dangerous to heady natures. The Malatestas grew mad sometimes
with their unrestrained indulgence, mad with cruelty and wild debauch;
but we repeat they were not merely vicious. They were strong, cunning,
brave unto death, ambitious; they knew how to make their subjects love
them; they left their little seaside village a monument of art, and made
their few miles of plain a power in Italy.
In 1427 there was no lawful heir to this long-enriched possession. Carlo
Malatesta, twice married, lived in childish state at Rimini: Pandolfo of
Fano, dying in 1427, left no heir from his three brides; but, in
bequeathing to his brother Carlo his estate of Fano, he also sent to him
three natural children, still young boys, for whom both uncle and father
had in vain attempted to obtain a bull of legitimation. Powerful enemies
stood in their path. By excluding these children, Malatesta of Pesaro on
the one hand, and Frederic of Urbino on the other, hoped to succeed to
Rimini and Fano; and for long they persuaded the Pope to their own
interests. But Carlo Malatesta was not easily thwarted.
This Carlo was in many ways the most honourable of his race; a
righteous, moral, pious soldier and captain, much such another as those
who saved England under Cromwell. It is recorded of him that, entering
Mantua in triumph on the morning of Virgil’s birthday, he found the
great irregular square there full of revellers, dancing and singing and
crowning with wreaths of flowers the statue of the poet. Whereat,
incensed at such worship paid to a vain heathen idol, he led up his
soldiers to the pedestal and bade them throw the statue into the Mincio;
which being done, or reported to be done, such a chorus of blame and
indignation rose throughout the humanistic Hellenist Italy of that day
as not one of the orgies, crimes, brutalities, and lusts of Carlo’s
kinsmen had ever wakened. All this gave little discomfiture to Carlo,
himself in his way a connoisseur of art and letters, and the first
patron of the young Ghiberti, whom he employed to decorate the Gattolo
at Rimini. Seldom indeed was Rimini so enviable as during the long and
prosperous reign of Carlo. But in 1429 Carlo died.
Just before his death he had procured the legitimation of his nephews.
He was succeeded by Galeotto, the eldest, a lad of seventeen, who found
a heavy load in the much-battered helmet and sheath left empty for him.
Many hungry eyes adverse to him were fixed already on that jacent helm;
Frederic of Urbino and the faithless cousin of Pesaro were ranked close
beneath the city gates; the more ready to snatch his inheritance because
Eugene IV., the newly elected Pope, discussed with much dislike and
doubt the legitimation granted to Carlo by his predecessor. The Pope,
represented by Urbino, claimed Rimini as devolving to the See; Sforza
and Pesaro, each for himself, were ready to contest it with him. What
chance against such tremendous odds had Galeotto, seventeen years old,
weak in health, illegitimate, with no great ally to enforce his claims?
A more inadequate champion the mind cannot imagine. No David eager to
fight the giant, this Galeotto Malatesta, but a wan, emaciated youth,
half-crazed, half-saint. In the middle of the panic, with the horror of
a triple sack maddening the miserable Riminese, this prince left the
city to dwell in the monastery of Arcangelo, outside the gates. There he
passed his days serene, scathless in the midst of peril; neither for
himself nor his kingdom taking any thought.
So strange this spectacle, so awful, that the very enemies of Rimini
stopped in their onslaught amazed. The lion, it is said, will not attack
a sleeping prey. Eugene, the Pope (in his temporal character the deadly
foe of Rimini), wrote to its lord, bidding him remember the imperative
duties of his position. The letter reached that “magnificent man and
potent prince” in the monastery at Arcangelo, where clad in the coarse
robes of a Franciscan friar, he led an ascetic, starved, and mutilated
life. What was the magnificence of earth to him? So harsh were his
self-inflicted penances that the wounds on his body never ceased to
bleed. What had he to do with rule and governance? The brothers of the
monastery, and the young virgin wife who drooped and paled at his side,
were all of mankind he knew or saw; and he himself the chief of sinners.
Neither Pope nor armies could force him back to earth. Thus friends and
foes alike failed to touch him; there was no pity in the heart of
Galeotto the Saint.
Or rather—common, yet tragical transmutation of the Middle Ages—his pity
took a retrospective turn; dead and dry to the present woes it might
relieve, it rushed back in a mighty impotent tide to the foot of that
sacred and awful Cross, whose divine tragedy was the continual spectacle
of the saintly life. Pity for the dead Christ—throbbing, yearning,
helpless, and indignant pity for the agonized Saviour—this surely lay at
the bottom of all crusades, tortures, persecutions, inquisitions of the
Middle Ages. Living ever with the crucifix in sight, dwelling ever and
solely in presence of that dread expiation-such fanatics as Galeotto
forgot the example of the life of Christ in the terror and pity of
Golgotha. Vengeance on the enemies of God! vengeance on the traitors who
still stab and crucify the ever newly sacrificed God and Victim! so ran
the tenor of mediæval piety. And the contagion of this fanatic sentiment
slaughtered the armies of the East, tossed Albigensian babies on to
lance-points, and roasted before a ribald soldiery the pious Vaudois
women; the martyrs of Saint Bartholomew and the martyrs of Smithfield
were hewn and burned by the strength of it; and from its armoury the
Inquisition drew its deadliest weapons.
Thus Galeotto, unmoved by the misery of the people who, owing allegiance
to him, died, starved, and sorrowed for his sake, was nevertheless, not
without his private schemes of sanctity and militant devotion. High
thoughts were born in that narrow mind, as in the intervals of penance
and office the lord of Rimini paced the monastery garden. Monk as he was
by life and feeling, he too had his ambition; he too had his work to
fulfil. And here solved that the Jews should be cast out from Rimini.
Months went on, and the details of his scheme matured in the brain of
the cloistered prince; but, meanwhile, his foes pressed closer and
closer round him, and there was no leader to lead the few forlorn troops
out to battle; yet ruin stared upon the city nearer every day, and now
or never must the decisive step be taken. Still Galeotto prayed and
dreamed in his cell at Arcangelo. But an unsuspected deliverer was in
Rimini. One autumn night in 1430, secret to most of the citizens, a
desperate sally was made from the gates of the town. A short, brisk
uncertain conflict in the terrifying darkness, and the surprised armies
were driven back, ignorant of the small number of their assailants. And
as in the dawn, the conqueror led his troops back inside the gates,
flushed and triumphant, the people crowded out into the streets to look
at him and bless him, crying that the great days of Carlo and of
Verruchio had returned; and behold this saviour of the city was the
brother and heir of Galeotto—was the boy Sigismond, or Gismondo,
Malatesta, not yet thirteen years old!
Whether the Pope and the oncoming armies perceived that at last they had
a substantive enemy to deal with, or whether touched with compassion by
so much youthful daring, they concluded a peace with Rimini only a few
days after the successful sally. A ruinous peace indeed; forfeiting many
broad lands and territories in return for the acknowledgment of the true
right to Rimini, Fano, and Cesena of these legitimized Malatestas. But
the people were thankful for any peace, and Galeotto easily yielded,
seeing here the needed opportunity to prove his piety. He signed the
treaty on consideration that the Holy Father would authorize him to
expel the Jews from Rimini.