legitimize his children by Isotta. She had no children. Even before that
ominous festival her husband had made the war of succession at Milan
against her father. Her claims on him were breaking, one by one. And
when the peace was made, and the Pope gave Sigismond, with Sinigaglia,
the legitimation of his children, she must have thought bitterly of
Ginevra’s end. Indeed a few weeks afterwards she too died suddenly,
terribly. Not poison this time, the rumour went. Gismondo, they said,
had strangled her with a napkin.
None dared accuse him then. He was at the height of his power and
formidable triumph—at the summit, the climax, beyond which is no ascent.
Yet even then he had made a deadly enemy, scorned at present, but who
knew how to wait. Not Sforza, who seems to have taken the loss of his
daughter with strange indifference. It was the perfidy and not the
violence of Sigismond that wrought his ruin. Engaged to fight for
Arragon in the war of the Milanese succession, he had received in
advance a large portion of his pay. Then the Florentines sought to tempt
him from his allegiance. With true Tuscan shrewdness they chose for
their agent no Medici, no magnificent money-bag or puissant general—but
Gianozzo Manetti the Humanist. Him and his rare manuscripts they send
into Gismondo’s camp; and as the scholar treats with the great captain,
he shows him such-and-such a precious Greek fragment, or a perfect copy
of Virgil—or the Platonists, pointing without too obvious intention the
superior culture of Florence to barbarous Arragon. Gismondo, fascinated,
stepped into the snare. The next day he deserted to Florence, refusing,
moreover, to restore the immense wage he had drawn from the Duke of
Arragon for services never to be rendered. Nor at the time was there any
redress for that prince; but the time of vengeance was to come.
Meanwhile, incautious, believing that he could compass heaven and earth
between his courage and his perfidy, Sigismond earned yet more of the
traitor’s wages. Scarcely was the peace of Lodi signed (in 1454), than
he hired himself and his troops to the Republic of Siena in their
quarrel against the lord of Pittigliano. Again he deserted to the enemy,
thinking to make a better bargain with him. The Sienese sent him his
demission, “in terms of great courtesy and haughtiness,” but denounced
his treachery to all the great powers with which they were allied,
including Arragon. He, perceiving in this double proof of treachery,
sufficient cause for a quarrel, sent Piccinino, the greatest soldier of
fortune of his day, against the wall of Rimini. Yet all was not lost;
for Sforza came to the aid of his son-in-law. Had Sigismond stuck to his
sword all might have gone well; but of late he had become perilously
adept in the traitor’s cunning trade. He despatched a secret message to
René, king of Anjou, offering—in return for present help—to invade the
kingdom of Naples, oust Alfonso of Arragon and restore it to the
Angevines. René accepted, and landed at Genoa, but only in time to learn
the sudden death of Alfonso. Sforza, learning all the details of the
scheme, withdrew his forces from Rimini, alienated once and for ever
from the traitor who would call the French to settle his quarrels; for
Sforza, as we know, had reasons for wishing the kinsman of Charles of
Orleans well on the other side the Alps. At this moment the succession
of a Sienese, Æneas-Sylvius Piccolomini, to the papal throne under the
title of Pius II., left Gismondo without a friend in Italy, five years
after his triumphs in war and in peace of the glorious year 1450.
Little time now for temple-building. Gismondo, before Siena, had amused
himself with drawing out plans for the dome in intervals of battles and
traitorous despatches. He now found enough to do in keeping Piccinino at
bay. The Angevines were of no service; they had but estranged the
sympathies of Italy from his cause. He tried even, it is said, to tempt
the universal enemy of Christendom, the Grand Turk himself, to espouse
his cause. There is no knowing to what lengths he would not go in his
lonely, impotent, swift despair, and defiant ruin; and it is possible
that he may have remembered the examples of Carlo Zeno and the great
Visconti. One good and wise thing, at least, Gismondo did in these
terrible years of friendless battle. He married the faithful Isotta, who
proved herself a right valiant defender and regent of his city.
Meanwhile the Pope had enrolled himself among the active enemies of
Sigismond. Siena was avenged. Amid great state and ceremony the effigy
of Gismondo Malatesta was burned in the streets of Rome; interdict and
excommunication were pronounced against him. Parricide, murderer of old
men and innocent women, committer of adultery and incest, prince of
traitors, enemy of God and man: so ran the terms of this tremendous
accusation. But the Pope was not contented merely to accuse. He
threatened not only Gismondo with his anathema, but whatsoever nation or
army should arise to help him. Having thus disabled his enemy, he sent
his forces against Rimini.
Sigismond, maddened and desperate, looked vainly round for an ally.
Siena, Arragon, Florence, Milan, all were hostile, or at best neutral.
Yet help must be found. Almost alone, facing a hundred perils, Gismondo
trudged across the Apennines to the kingdom of Naples in search of his
fatal friends the Angevines. But from them he got no help, not a promise
even. Back to Rimini, desperate, baited, hurried the miserable
Sigismond. Finding the towns still held out, he took to the sea, and
went to Venice—praying in his abject extremity for succour, for
protection. And the Venetians, bound to him by old ties, did indeed
afford him a slender assistance. By the aid of this he escaped death and
flagrant ruin. The Pope made peace with him, though only on condition
that he and his brother Domenico should make public penance for their
misdeeds at Rome, resigning all their possessions save their capitals
and a few castles, which also must devolve to the Holy See after the
deaths of their present lords. And to these terms he consented. Nothing
but his sword and his city were now left to the once triumphant
Sigismond. Leaving Rimini to the staunch Isotta—_fœmina belligera et
fortis_—he hired himself to the Venetians, to conduct their forces
against the Turks in the Morea. Here a faint shadow of his former glory
played for a while around him; and in 1465 Gismondo returned to Rimini,
enriched, and bringing with him as his dearest possession the bones of
Gemisthus Pletho, the Platonist, to place in the first sarcophagus of
the temple.
Within the year Pius II. died, and Paul II. reigned in the Vatican. The
new pontiff called Sigismond to Rome, and there concluded with him what
seemed a most favourable treaty. But Gismondo was no sooner back in
Rimini than the Pope, jealous of Venice, proposed to him to cede his
city to Rome, in exchange for Spoleto and Foligno. When Sigismond
comprehended this proposal a veritable madness seemed to seize him.
Resign Rimini, the city he had saved at thirteen, had fought for ever
since, had spent his whole life and fortune in embellishing! He and
Isotta and his sons go into exile in the marshes of Foligno! Rimini,
with the Rocca and temple of his building, with the tombs of centuries
of ancestors—Rimini, with its salts and its seaboards—yield _that_?
Sigismond sent no answer to the Pope; but mad, in a burning fever, he
journeyed by day and night to Rome. His attendants noticed that he never
slept, that he clutched under his coat a dagger, never relaxed. Arrived
at Rome, he went instantly to the Vatican, demanding a private audience;
but the Pope, warned, it may be, appointed a meeting for the morrow.
Then he received the lord of Rimini, guarded by a great concourse of
princes and cardinals. Sigismond had not foreseen such a reception.
Gazing wildly, and clutching still the ineffectual hidden dagger which
he could not use, he made what terms he could, since revenge was
impossible. The right to remain in Rimini was finally conceded him, but
under the pretext of a captainship of troops the Pope kept him far from
home, employed in petty guerilla warfare. A year later the fever had
gained a fearful hold upon him. He dragged himself back to Rimini, to
Isotta. Impoverished, friendless, powerless, the city was at least his
own to die in. His last thoughts were for Isotta and her children, left
friendless in an unkind world. Thus he died, the great Malatesta.
THE LADIES OF MILAN.
“CHERCHEZ LA FEMME.”
When Galeazzo Maria, Duke of Milan, was murdered in church at Christmas
by a band of heroes, his brothers, the Duke of Bari and Lodovico il
Moro, were absent on an embassy in France. The head of affairs was Cecco
Simonetta, since many years the secretary and minister, first of Count
Francesco, and later of his son. Having lived so long in the family,
Simonetta was aware how much his dead master’s children had to fear from
their uncles. With one stroke of the pen he banished the Duke of Bari
and Lodovico il Moro.
This was in 1476. For three years all went well in Milan. Simonetta had
so long guided the course of affairs that the death of the Duke made
little difference to the external policy of the state. Galeazzo Maria
had called himself a Ghibelline, Cecco Simonetta dared at last to avow
himself a Guelf; but under one as under the other, the course of Milan
continued Liberal and French. Inside the city there were a few less
murders,—less ominous stories than were told in the lifetime of the
handsome, cruel, dilettante Duke. His widow, the Duchesse Bonne, had the
wardship of her children, and lived a pleasant life in her beautiful
palace, where Commines remembered to have seen her in great authority.
She had two little boys and a girl; she had excellent counsellors, a
court full of admirers, beautiful clothes, and a devoted lover.
Yet the Duchess was not satisfied. Bonne de Savoie was an empty pate,
vain and restless, as was the temper of her house. There was in the
palace a young man who carved before her at table, Antonio Tassino, an
adventurer from Ferrara, “of very mean parentage,” not handsome, but
with a certain grace and air in the way he wore his cloak. This was the
Duchess’s lover, and there was no matter of state (says Corio) but she
consulted her carver before she allowed it to pass. It is not surprising
that Simonetta—an old statesman, tenacious of dignity, in spite of his
Liberalism, was scandalized at the importance of Tassino. It is equally
easy to imagine how the successful Ferrarese was irritated by the
disdain of Simonetta. So it fell out; and rather out of spite than from
conviction, Tassino constituted himself the chief of the Ghibellines in
Milan, merely intending to procure the fall of Simonetta. So great was
his influence over the Duchess, that he persuaded her at last to privily
recall her husband’s brother, Il Moro—a Sforza, and therefore presumably
a Ghibelline—who was at that moment engaged in the war at Genoa.
All that follows sound like a passage in some ancient novel of
adventure. The Duchess sends to Genoa to Il Moro, who, coming at night
to Milan, is secretly admitted by the Duchess and her lover through the
garden gate of the palace. Lodovico returns not alone; Bari is dead but,
in place of the lost brother, Roberto di Sanseverino a great captain,
dare-devil, incorrigible, comes at his heels: a man whom Simonetta had
exiled with the sons of Francesco Sforza, a Ghibelline _à l’outrance_, a
personal enemy of Cecco. These were the men whom Bonne, weary of her
ancient counsellor’s respectability, called home, “through great
simplicity,” as Commines declares, “supposing they would do the said
Cecco no harm, and the truth is that so they had both of them sworn and
promised.”
When Sanseverino and Il Moro were safe in the palace, the Duchess sent
for Simonetta and told him all she had done. She must have been alarmed
to see the horror and consternation on the faithful secretary.[111]
“Duchessa Illustrissima,” said the man, with the quiet of despair, “he
will cut off my head, that is all; a little time more and he will send
you packing!” The Duchess probably remembered these words when, the
third day after their return, Il Moro and Sanseverino caused the man who
had signed their exile to be carried through the streets of Milan in a
wine barrel, and then—still in this ridiculous tumbril—taken to the
fortress at Pavia. There was Simonetta imprisoned; but once inside the
gates his lot appeared to mend. Lodovico il Moro frequently rode across
to Pavia to take counsel with the wise old statesman and learn his views
of the world. He went indeed so often that the people of Milan began to
murmur and to say that Lodovico, recalled by a Ghibelline _coup d’étât_,
was a Guelf in disguise. To reassure them on that head, in the month of
October, 1480, Lodovico intimated to Simonetta—not without many
apologies—that, in deference to popular prejudice, he must even consent
to lose his head. And in that very month, the first part of the
secretary’s prophecy came true.
Footnote 111:
“Cecco ed i suoi colleghi oltra modo d’animo furono consternati”
(Corio, book vii.).
The second half was for a while delayed. Duchess Bonne found no reason
to regret the step which had relieved her of an inconvenient old
servant. “They used the lady very honourably in her judgment, seeking to
content her humour in all things,” said Commines, who knew them all.
“But all matters of importance they two despatched alone, making her
privy but to what pleased them; and no greater pleasure could they do
her than to communicate nothing with her. For they permitted her to give
this Anthony Tassino what she would; they lodged him hard by her
chamber; he carried her on horseback behind him in the town; and in her
house was nothing but feasting and dancing.” The Duchess had never led a
happier life; but all that jollity endured but half a year. One day
Lodovico took out his little nephews to walk in Milan; children are ever
interested in things of warfare; he took them to the Rocca—the
impregnable fortress—he took them inside; he did not bring them home.
English readers know what to expect when an ambitious uncle, in the
Middle Ages, leaves two little Princes in the Tower. But no midnight
assassin cut short the days of Giangaleazzo and his brother Ermes. They
were more useful to their uncle, living—at least until he had made his
own position surer: for at present he only ruled in Milan as Tutor and
Regent of the little Duke. But, by whatever title, he ruled effectually,
and soon he rid his palace of the tearful and frivolous presence of
Madame Bonne, whom he exiled from her duchy “for immorality,” and who
carried her inept remonstrances and her tarnished honour to find a none
too chivalrous asylum at the court of her brother-in-law, Louis XI. of
France, a man impatient of unsuccessful women.
Meanwhile Lodovico il Moro flourished in Milan. Under his cultured and
dignified rule it became a magical city, a capital of masterpieces.
There in 1483, Leonardo da Vinci took up his abode, cast his bronze
statue of Francesco Sforza, painted pictures, and founded a school of
Lombard painters, little less exquisite, mysterious, and sensual than
himself. The Choir of Singers, whom Galeazzo Maria Sforza had brought
across the Alps, increased, and the singing and playing of Milan became
a thing of note. Temples and palaces sprang up as by enchantment; and
learned humanists—grave Romans, bearded Greeks, astute Orientals—from
all the centres of knowledge in the world, came to lecture on law,
science, and the classics, in brilliant Milan. Nor was the Court of
Venus, says Corio, less distinguished than the Court of Minerva. “All
were willing to concede their best and fairest to the Court of Cupid;
fathers their daughters, husbands their wives, brothers their sisters.”
And the laxity of Lombard manners which had scandalized the very Court
of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in 1471, was not less abandoned, not less
luxurious, although more natural and freer from cruelty under the
sceptre of the Regent Lodovico who appears at the head of this princely
retinue, a man majestic, suave, omniscient, as any Duke of Shakespeare’s
plays.
And yet the real Duke was seldom seen, seldom heard. It was polite to
suppose him still a child. None the less every one knew he had been born
in the year 1469, amid incredible rejoicings; and many had seen the
great Lorenzo de’ Medici when he came to the christening, and had looked
on the magnificent necklace of diamonds which he had given the Duchess.
“Ah, you shall be godfather to all my children!” the Duke Galeazzo Maria
had cried with cordial _naïveté_. And now—ah, Time’s revenges!—the Duke
was murdered, the Duchess in exile, and the babe whom all men had
welcomed—a prisoner rather than a ward in the hands of the ambitious
Regent!
Men began to murmur, and when Giangaleazzo was about eighteen his uncle
found himself unable any longer to defer his marriage. Years ago the
child had been betrothed to Isabel of Arragon, the granddaughter of the
King of Naples. She came to Milan in 1487. A little later Lodovico
himself married a young wife, Beatrice, daughter of Ercole d’Este, Duke
of Ferrara.
So long as there had been no woman at the head of the Court of Milan,
there had been no discord. The young Duke, half a captive, had a doglike
docile affection for his tyrant; he was content to yield his place and
keep his title; and Lodovico was satisfied to have the place without the
name. But Isabel of Arragon was a Neapolitan and a Spaniard—a nature
passionate, arrogant, intense. In vain she urged her husband to assert
his rights. He promised what she would, and then confessed their
conversation to his uncle. When her child was born, and still the bride
of Lodovico sat on the throne which should have been her throne—Isabel
would no longer possess her soul in patience. This time she did not
appeal to her husband—a beautiful youth, soft as silk, innocent as
flowers, incapable of revenge or determination; she wrote to her father
and her grandfather at Naples, men as different from him as men can be.
She asserted her rights (“essendo giovane di grand’ animo”); she told
them of the intolerable yoke of Lodovico—of her husband, a grown man and
a father, yet kept in tutelage. She told them doubtless by her messenger
(no word of personal complaint appears in her letter) what Corio tells
us: that amid all the luxury of Milan, the Duke and the Duchess procured
with difficulty the bare necessities of life. There was much indignation
in her old home, and Alfonso wrote to Il Moro demanding the throne and
government of Milan for his son-in-law. “You make a laughing-stock of my
daughter—shall we endure to see our blood despised?”[112] Lodovico, as
his manner was, returned a soft answer. And a year or two went by in
procrastination and recrimination; but in 1493 the house of Naples, in
defence of the young Duke, declared war upon the Regent of Milan.
Footnote 112:
Corio, book vii.
In another place I have spoken of the dismay and terror of that hour;
the still rage of Lodovico—a rage not unmixed with joy and with the
presentiment of success; the anger of his young wife, determined not to
quit her throne, determined to take at last from the detested Isabel
that one fine thing which as yet she had not dared to take from her: the
title of Duchess. My readers know how, on the one hand, Lodovico sent to
the Emperor admitting the illegal nature of the Sforza claim, and
entreating him (for a consideration) to bestow it on him anew; how, on
the other hand, he sent into France reminding Charles VIII. of the
French claim to Naples; and how the French crossed the Alps in
September; and how, in September also, very secretly, the Emperor’s
Investiture arrived in Milan; and how on the morrow after the French
left Milan the young Duke died (Teodoro di Pavia discovering in his body
the evident signs of poison); and how the people, overawed by the
neighbourhood of the French, were taught to acclaim Lodovico,
consecrated thus alike by Imperial privilege and popular voice; so that
he ruled at last as Duke in Milan.
Meanwhile Isabel and her little son had wandered about in exile, vainly
seeking supporters. Success smiled on her rival, Beatrice, the mother of
two sons who each, after many adventures, should rule as Duke of Milan.
In September, 1496, while Isabel, her child in her arms, was discovering
the futility of resistance, Beatrice at Vigevano was entertaining
Maximilian. The great Emperor was at that time a man of thirty-seven,
with long whitening hair, dressed in a long black velvet coat, a black
woollen French cap, black stockings and sleeves; he wore no ornament
save a little gold chain with the order of the Golden Fleece. He was
under a vow to wear nothing but black until he could boast a Turkish
victory. But, melancholy and grizzled Don Quixote as he appeared,
Maximilian was no less an Emperor; and the Diary of Marino Sanuto shows
us the splendour with which the Duke and Duchess of Milan made him
welcome.
That splendour was very costly. Not only did it compel the Duke to levy
grievous taxes (_grandissime exstrusione a li so populi_) on his
subjects, so that they were like desperate men, desiring any change. If
the expense of this entertainment was paid in tears, no less a price
should be exacted for its fatigue. In September the Duchess Beatrice was
pregnant: Marino Sanuto will conclude the story.[113]
Footnote 113:
“Nuove del mexe de Zener. 1497 O.S.
“Chome a Milano nel Castello a dì 3, la duchessa, moglie dil ducha
presente Lodovico, chiamata Beatrice, figlia dil ducha di Ferrara, poi
parturido uno fiol morto; etiam la era morta 5 hore dopo el puto. Di
la qual morte el ducha steva in gran mesticia, serade le fenestre in
una camera a lume di candela. Et è da saper, come vidi una lettera,
che detta Duchessa morite a dì 2 zener, a hora 6 di note, et che in
quel zorno era stada di bona voglia in carretta per Milano, et fatto
ballar in Castello fin hore 2 di note. Et lassò do soli figlioli, uno
chiamato Maximiliano ch’è Conte di Pavia e l’altro, Sforza, di anni 3.
La qual morte el Ducha non poteva tolerar, per il grande amor le
portava et diceva non si voller più curar ne de figlioli, ne di Stato,
ne di cossa mondana; et apena voleva viver. Stava in una camera per
mesticia tutta di panni negri, et cussi stete per 15 zorni. Et che in
questa notte instessa in che la Duchessa morite, caschò a terra li
muri dil suo zardin, non essendo sta ni vento ni terra moto; el qual
da alcuni fu tolto per mal augurio.”
“Diarii di Marino Sanudo, January 9, 1496.”
“News of the month of January, 1496 (Old Style).
“How at Milan, in the castle, on the third day of the month, the
Duchess, wife of the reigning Duke Lodovico, Beatrice by name, daughter
of the Duke of Ferrara, was delivered of a still-born son; _etiam_ she
herself was dead five hours after the child. And the said death hath
plunged the Duke in heavy sorrow, so that he keepeth his room, the
shutters closed and candles lit in daytime. And ’tis also reported—as I
saw it set down in another letter—that the said Duchess died on the
second day of the month, at six o’clock after noon; and that very day
she had gone riding in her carriage through the streets of Milan, and
had held a ball at the castle until two o’clock after dinner. And she
hath left only two children behind her, boys—the one, Maximilian, Count
of Pavey; the other, Sforza, three years of age. And the Duke cannot
suffer the sorrow of this loss, for the great love he bore to his wife;
and he saith he hath no heart for his children, nor his State nor for
aught under the sun; so that almost is he weary of his life. And, out of
sadness, he keepeth his chamber, which is hung all in black; and there
for a fortnight he hath shut himself in. And ’tis said that, in the
selfsame night the Duchess died, the walls of her garden fell crashing
to the ground, and yet was there neither tempest, wind nor earthquake;
which thing was held by many for a sign of very evil omen.”
* * * * *