S^t. Roch.

Fresco by Borgognone.

Everybody has been in Milan, but who knows
Milan? The traveller in search of the picturesque
and mediæval sees nothing to arrest him—except
comfortable hotels—in a city which seems to
tell only of yesterday. A glance at the Cathedral, at
St. Ambrogio, at the most famous of the pictures,
and he hurries on. Yet a little longer stay reveals a
wealth of artistic interest in the many fine churches,
in the rich galleries and museums, and much also that
is worth learning even in the outward aspect of the
city in the present day. The historic buildings have
mostly fallen, the old crooked ways have given place
to broad thoroughfares, the picturesque life of the past
has been smothered by the sombre bustle of modern
commercialism. But her heritage of beauty is to
some extent inalienable. She remains always Italian.
Colour and atmosphere lend an indestructible charm
even to her modernity. The warm brick of the
buildings against the limpid blue sky, the gold and
grey of sunshine and shadow, the shining canals that
border some of the further streets with a still and
pensive melancholy, make a lovely and characteristic
harmony still, as in the days of the Quattrocentist
artists who painted them in the backgrounds of their
Madonnas and San Roccos. And there are some old
xivstreets left, mostly in the heart of the city, such as
the Via del Pesce and the Via Tre Alberghi, long
cobbled alleys ribboned with triple lines of pavement,
where the tall houses and bowed-out balconies of
curious ironwork, rusted by age and weather, if they
cannot remember the days of Milan’s earlier glory, must
have known at least something of the sad centuries of
bondage which followed, before they shook to the roar
of the Cinque Giornate sixty years ago.

The compass of this small volume has made it impossible
to tell otherwise than summarily of the great
past of this city and of her artistic riches to-day. I
have had to pass over, or barely mention, many noteworthy
things. I am especially sorry that I could
not include the places of interest in the immediate
neighbourhood. A visit to the Certosa of Pavia,
which sums up all the aims and achievements of
Lombard Renaissance art, is necessary for an appreciation
of the Milanese sculptors and painters, while
the associations of the famous building with Gian
Galeazzo Visconte and with the Sforza princes, make
it a part of Milanese story. The old Church of
Chiaravalle, with its incomparable Lombard-Gothic
tower and its trecento frescoes, and picturesque
Monza, where that historic emblem and wonder of
twelfth century goldsmiths’ art, the Iron Crown of
Lombardy, is preserved with other priceless treasures,
ought not to be missed by the traveller.

The main facts of Milanese story are well known,
and may be found, not only in the native chroniclers
and historians, but also in many modern books dealing
with Milan and with Italian history generally.
Mongeri’s L’Arte in Milano, and the writings of
Count Malaguzzi Valeri, especially his Milano in the
series “Italia Illustrata”, have been my chief help in
the topographical and artistic part of this book, and
xvI have also made use of the works of Signor Luca
Beltrami, Mrs. Ady and others. For the painters and
pictures I have depended on Morelli, the acknowledged
authority on Lombard art, and have consulted besides
the writings of Dr. Gustavo Frizzoni, of Mr. Herbert
Cook, and other modern critics.

Milan is to-day the most modern of Italian cities.
Her Risorgimento in the last century, accomplished
with the pouring out of blood and the efforts of
a strenuous virtue, makes for her a mighty and sufficing
past in the near background, and she seems to stand
wholly on this side of it, triumphant and new-create.
Neither Nature nor the further centuries have, you feel,
any longer part in her. Who of the numberless travellers
from the North, as they lose the vision of mountain,
lake and green champaign, just traversed, in the bustle
and confinement of the crowded streets, realises that
this solid mass of brick and stone, this vast hive of
human beings, is the slow product of that enchanting
country, of its rivers and fertile soil, built up and
moulded by human passion and labour during thousands
of years amid the changes and chances of extraordinarily
varied fortunes. Only when his eyes, lifted above the
regular roof-lines of the modern streets, light upon the
2Gothic pinnacles of the Duomo, and a further acquaintance
with the city discovers, wedged among the growths
of yesterday, the many relics of her older past—the
Castle of the fifteenth century Sforza, Renaissance
palaces and churches, St. Ambrogio and its compeers
of the era of liberty, a rare fragment of the older imperial
civilisation—does he become conscious of the
long and painful course of the centuries, and remember
that he stands in the secular capital of Lombardy, on
ground as storied almost as the sacred dust of Rome.

The name alone of Lombardy calls up visions of
continuous strife. There the nations who have made
their grave in Italy lie most thickly. The sunny
fruitful plains at the foot of the barren mountains have
been fattened from the beginning by human blood.
The love of figs—a phrase which has passed into the
language of the Icelanders as an expression for all
passionate appetite—has again and again impelled the
peoples of the grudging North to storm the barrier of
snows and seek the delusive land of promise beyond.
Principalities and kingdoms have been founded there
one after another, only to perish in turn, as if the soft
land of morass and meadow were some unstable quicksand
created for the engulfing of men. Etruscans,
Insubri, Latins, Visigoths, Lombards, French and
Spaniards, have come and gone, in the midst of an
almost incessant warfare.

Yet through all the changes, a quiet, continuous
labour was going on, restraining and directing the
courses of the rivers, draining the marshes, taming the
wild luxuriance of the land to fertile use and order, and
slowly building up out of the confusion of conflicting
elements the solid foundations of the present.

3

THE DUOMO FROM HOTEL EUROPE

4Seated in the centre of the plain which spreads out
at the foot of the Alps, and commanding the natural
gateways between Italy and the countries to north and
5west, Milan seems to have held from the first the chief
position among the cities of Lombardy. In the early
centuries of our era it was hardly less important in
the North of Italy than Rome was in the South. The
line of the Po, cutting across the peninsula, or perhaps
more correctly, the Apennine chain, originally divided
Italy ethnologically and politically, a division which still
endures to some degree in the character and sentiments
of the respective inhabitants on either side. The Insubri,
who drove out the Etruscans and settled in Lombardy
about the sixth century (B.C.), were a race of Gallic
origin. They had no ties of blood with the Romans,
who subjugated them later, and their country—called
by the conquerors, Cisalpine Gaul—was as much
a foreign province of the Latin dominion as the Gaul
beyond the Alps. On the other hand their relationship
and familiarity with that Gaul was so close that it
has influenced the sympathies of the Milanese people
throughout history, and has left a strong impress on
their dialect. When some centuries later the capital
of the Empire was losing its controlling power, and the
bond uniting the members of that immense artificial
system was beginning to relax, Milan assumed an almost
independent position. As the seat of Diocletian and
his colleague Maximian, she could scorn abandoned
Rome, looking with compassion from her magnificent
palaces and baths, her populous streets and mighty
walls, to the silent courts and colonnades of the Palatine
Hill. Constantine completed her severance from
Rome by dividing Italy into two separate portions of
the Empire, and making Milan the capital of the northern
half, with a government distinct from Rome. The
old racial boundaries were thus restored, and on these
lines were built up the many later schemes for the
foundation of a Kingdom of Italy. And on these lines
there rose within the new ecclesiastical empire which
6was shaping itself out of the ruins of the old Roman
system, an episcopal dominion extending over all
Lombardy, and virtually independent of the Church of
Rome. Many centuries were to pass, and fierce struggles
to take place, before the Church of Milan was brought
into subjection to the Papal See. This work of unification,
accomplished chiefly by the potent mind of
Gregory VII. in the eleventh century, in association
with a growing instinct of nationality in the Milanese
people themselves, was one of the most important steps
in the process by which the various and alien elements
of the great Lombard city were converted into a component
part of the Italian nation.

We cannot pause to search into the origins of the
city in that obscure antiquity which Italian legend fills
with the figures of diluvian and Trojan heroes, on an
equal plane of remoteness, or to inquire closely into the
mystery of her name, Mediolanum, as it is in the Latin
tongue, whence by derivation—influenced, doubtless,
by the sweet appellation Mailand, Land of May,
which her green refreshing aspect suggested to her Teutonic
invaders—it has become Milano. The simplest
and most generally accepted explanation of the name is
that it is a bastard word, between Latin and Teutonic,
signifying the Middle Land, and suggested by the city’s
central position in the Plain.

We must take up our story at the beginning
of that barbarian inrush through the yielding barriers
of the Empire, which by mingling the vigour of new
blood with the effete products of Roman civilisation,
generated the travail of mediæval Italy, and out of that
travail a nation. Milan had already a great past, closely
bound up with the vicissitudes of the later Empire.
From Diocletian and Constantine downwards she was
honoured almost constantly by the presence of emperors.
Julian was proclaimed Cæsar within her walls. Many
7edicts of Constantius were published there, Valentinian
made his residence in the city, and there Theodosius
spent long periods, and there died and was buried. The
Empress Justina and her young son, Valentinian II., had
their seat in Milan, and the slothful and degenerate
Honorius ruled from its palace the Empire of the West,
till frightened out by the Goths. The wealth and
luxury of the city in the fourth century, her culture, her
innumerable fine houses, her magnificent walls, built by
Maximian, her circus, temples, theatres, baths, are celebrated
in a famous epigram by the Latin poet Ausonius,
who proclaims her the paragon of Rome.

But at the end of this century the imperial era was
rapidly declining and giving way to a new order of
things. A fresh period of irruptions from the North
was at hand, and within the ancient polity itself a new
organisation, the Christian Church, had arisen and was
usurping spiritual authority. Milan had been early
conspicuous in the history of Christianity. Legend
names S. Barnabas himself as the founder and first
occupant of her See, and she had testified to the new
faith in the days of persecution by the blood of many
martyrs. SS. Gervasio and Protasio, the youthful
warrior pair, SS. Nazaro and Celso, master and faithful
disciple, SS. Felix and Nabor, S. Valeria, San Vittore,
and many others, are recorded with picturesque and
touching details in Milanese legends and art. And
in Milan the triumph of Christianity was first proclaimed,
since here Constantine subscribed his edict of
toleration in 313. But Christianity, established soon
after as the State religion, had yet to struggle with the
difficulty of conflicting counsels and doctrines within
its own body. The tenets promulgated by the Council of
Nicœa in 532 were by no means universally accepted
by Christians in the fourth century, and in North Italy
the teachings of Arius were widely followed, especially
8by the Gothic subjects of the Empire. Under the Empress
Regent Justina they were the religion of the imperial
Court in Milan, and the whole population was
divided into fiercely hostile parties by the doctrinal
question.

It was at this critical point of her political and
ecclesiastical destinies that there appeared in Milan
one of those epoch-making characters who from time
to time arise at moments of hesitation in the history of
human communities, and apparently initiate and determine
their subsequent course. The great figure of
her Bishop Ambrose, Saint and Doctor of the Church,
scourge of the Arians, subduer of emperors, stands for
Milan at the opening of a new era, to which his dominant
mind gives impress, direction and inspiration.
From this time forward, Milan is no more the imperial,
but the Ambrosian city. Throughout her mediæval
existence the consecrating memory of St. Ambrogio,
her patron and protector, set like a spiritual jewel in a
hundred exquisite and devoutly fantastic legends, is
present in her government, her struggles for liberty, her
art and peaceful industry, her daily life and the peculiar
ritual of her religious worship.

In 374 Auxentius, Bishop of Milan, died. He had
been an Arian. A great contention arose between the
two doctrinal parties over the choice of his successor.
The city was in a state of uproar, and it became necessary
to summon the Prefect of the province to restore
peace. A brilliant young advocate named Ambrosius,
of a Roman family of high standing in the official
world, had been lately appointed Prefect. He came to
the capital and convoked a public assembly in the chief
church, to assist at the election of a bishop. It was
impossible, however, for the two parties to agree in a
selection; the powerful Court influence of the Arians
being balanced by a preponderance of orthodox
9Catholics among the people. Suddenly, above the
angry noise of dispute which filled the church, a clear
voice, as of a child, was heard to pronounce distinctly
three times over the words, Ambrose is Bishop. The
nolo episcopari of the young governor, vigorously expressed,
and emphasised, according to legend, by his
flight from the city, nothing availed to save him from
the dignity which the unanimous will of the people now
forced upon him, and Ambrose, as yet unbaptized, was
made Bishop of Milan. Whether the apparent finger
of Providence had been directed by some hidden
terrestrial agency, it is ungrateful to inquire. Ambrose,
in deserting the service of the decaying Empire for the
government of the metropolitan See of Lombardy, had
undoubtedly found the right field for his mighty
energies. He was a great Christian, a man of profound
doctrine, of pure life and loftiest spiritual qualities.
He was also the most able of statesmen. None
knew so well the power of this new polity of the
Christian Church amid the struggling confusion of
forces in the moribund Empire. He became paramount
with his pupil, the young Emperor Gratian, and used
his influence to stamp mercilessly upon the last embers
of Paganism, overthrowing with unsparing arguments
all the pleas of the patrician Symmachus and the Conservative
party in the Roman Senate in favour of the
preservation of the stately faith and customs of their
forefathers. The doctrinal unity of the Church itself
was his next great task. The Arian heresy was, as
we have seen, strongly entrenched in the palace of the
Empress and her son, Valentinian II. Nevertheless,
Ambrose decreed a uniform orthodox worship in all
the numerous churches in the city. Justina protested,
and demanded the use of the New Basilica within the
walls—the principal church in fact—for the Arians.
This being refused, she ordered the bishop to give up
10the Basilica Porciana, outside the city. Ambrose
meekly offered her his life and all his possessions, everything
except what she wanted, the church. “A
temple of God could not be given up by a priest.”
Temporal arms were then moved against him. But all the
forces of the Empire together would have been helpless
against the martyr spirit of the Bishop. The Cathedral
was his fortress, and there he entrenched himself in the
strength of his holiness, surrounded by excited multitudes,
whose ardour he inflamed by fiery discourses,
in which he likened the Empress to Eve bringing ruin
upon Adam, to Jezebel fighting Elijah, Salome destroying
John Baptist, till they vowed to die with him rather
than suffer the temporal authority to prevail over the
spiritual. The very soldiers investing the church,
terrified by the dreadful anathemas pronounced upon
them, rushed in, not to do battle against the faithful,
but to pray with them. For days the people continued
in the church with the Bishop, and on this
occasion, St. Augustine says, ‘It was first instituted
that after the manner of the Eastern Churches, hymns
and psalms should be sung, lest the people should faint
through the weariness of sorrow’—a famous evidence
of the fact that St. Ambrose was the first to introduce
the use of music into the services of the Western
Church.

It is interesting to note in the midst of that vast
crowd of now nameless and forgotten individuals a
figure well known to all times since, the small quiet
African mother, Monica, who had followed her son
across the terrible winter seas, resolved in her invincible
spirit to guide his seeking soul into the haven
of the true faith. And Augustine himself, the young
professor just appointed to the chair of rhetoric in Milan,
must have been present too, gazing upon the surprising
scene of this persecuted but dauntless pastor and
11his devoted flock. Every vestige of the basilica nova
intramurana, where the great struggle took place, is
now long gone. But its place is still the place of
Milan’s Cathedral, the great Gothic Duomo of later
times. And the episcopal palace of to-day occupies
the same site—or near it—of the dwelling of Ambrose,
where Augustine, his heart swelling with eager
questions, would often enter uninvited, as all might
freely do, and watch the holy man in silence, restrained
from speaking by the fear of disturbing him as he sat
reading in his moments of leisure and preparing himself
to expound to the people.

But it would be vain to seek to-day even for the
place of that fourth-century house upon the walls—Maximian’s
walls—where Augustine lodged with his
mother and the marvellous boy Adeodatus, his son,
fated so early to die. Or for the little garden where he
hid himself one day, even from his faithful follower Alypius,
and amid the throes of a terrible spiritual anguish
heard the unseen child’s voice chanting in pure, untroubled
tones, ‘Take up and read, take up and read,’ and
opening the volume of the Apostle saw the words which
lifted his soul out of the torture of conflicting desire into
the serenity of faith at last. Nor is any trace left of the
original baptistery for males, on the south side of the
Cathedral, where the subsequent baptism of Augustine,
Adeodatus and Alypius, at the hands of Ambrose, was
in all probability performed. The place is occupied
now by the Church of San Gottardo.

The conflict between Empress and Bishop was
won by Ambrose. Justina’s efforts to depose him and
set up a new bishop were completely frustrated by his
timely discovery of the bodies of the Milanese martyrs,
SS. Gervasio and Protasio, a miraculous event which
raised him to an invincible position in the opinion of
all Christendom. The triumph of the great bishop,
12though it savours now of bigotry, was of deep and far-reaching
significance. It was the revolt of the new
and as yet hardly tried Church against the ancient
imperial authority. It pointed to the future. It
initiated that obstinate and long-continued struggle
between the temporal and spiritual powers which
makes the history of the Middle Ages in Italy.
For Milan and for Lombardy it meant more; it was
a protest against the influence of the foreigner, against
a strange domination in thought. The Arian heresy
was alien and unnatural to Italian sentiment; its
followers were chiefly among the large population of
Goths settled by this time in Italy. Ambrose, in
rallying round him the masses of the people and conquering
the established powers, was in fact appealing
to the elements out of which the Commune of later
days was to develop—to those instincts of liberty and
nationality of which the Mediæval Church was to be
the glorious guide and champion.

The later and more famous triumph of Ambrose—when,
before the doors of the same Basilica Nova, he
stood, armed only with the insignia of his sacerdotal
office, and barred the entrance of the sanctuary to the
blood-stained Emperor Theodosius, till, awed by his
spiritual dignity, the wearer of the purple sank before
the white-robed priest and did public penance for the
massacre of Thessalonica—was another and greater
proof of the ascendency of the ecclesiastical over the
imperial power. But the significance of the scene
reaches further, and embraces the whole sphere of
humanity. In standing bishop and kneeling king we
see, not the individuals and their immediate motives,
ambitious, despotic, superstitious, as they may partly
have been, not even the struggle of great transitory
interests, but a wider, deeper, more enduring principle—the
recognition of the supremacy of spirit over brute
13force, the victory of the Christian ideal of love and
pity over the earthly lusts of blood and revenge, of the
religion which adores the helpless Mother and Child
over the deified Force of the ancient creeds.

Ambrose was now the most powerful man in the
Empire, ruling the minds of men by the sheer strength
of character and lofty virtue. The Barbarians in their
distant lands testified to the might of his saintliness—this
man who, as a Frankish king asserted with awe,
says to the sun, ‘Stand still,’ and it stands. The two
young Emperors, Gratian and Valentinian, were tools in
his hands, and Theodosius himself had to acknowledge
the Church in the person of Ambrose as a twin power
in the realm. When the Bishop died in 397, he
bequeathed to his successors an episcopal dominion so
strengthened by his powerful personality, and glorified
by the sanctity of his life and doctrine, that it was
ever after associated with his name, and known as the
Ambrosian Church. With its numerous and wealthy
dependent bishoprics, its Arch-Pontiff or Pope, its
cardinals, as the chief clergy were called later, and
immense hierarchy, its peculiar liturgy and ritual, this
Church was accorded the title of Holy—Santa Chiesa—and
acknowledged as self-governing by Gregory the
Great himself.

The Milan of Ambrose and Augustine still belonged
in outward aspect to the imperial past. But a general
decay, hastened by exorbitant taxation and bad administration,
was visible at this time throughout North
Italy, where many of the chief towns were, in Ambrose’s
own words, Corpses of half-ruined cities. At
the opening of the fifth century the simulacrum of Empire
was attacked by the Goths under Alaric (402), and
half a century later (450) Attila, Flagellum Dei, passed
with his Huns over the face of Italy, uprooting the useless
remains of the ancient world, as a plough furrows
14a field for the new sowing. Milan came within
his course, but how deep and extensive was the ruin
wrought by him there we do not know. His was
but the first operation in God’s tilling of that rank
soil for the new life it was to bear. In 538 the city
suffered a second and apparently more complete destruction,
during the war of Narses and Belisarius for the
recovery of Italy from the Ostrogothic dynasty established
by Theodoric. Milan revolted from the Gothic
King Vitige and allied herself with the Eastern
generals. Vitige despatched a portion of his army,
swelled by a host of Burgundians from the mountains,
ancestors, probably, of those Swiss who were to plague
the Milanese in later history. The city was closely
invested, and after some months, deceived in the expectation
of succour from Belisarius, she fell a victim
to the revenge of the Goths. The historian Procopius
describes the three hundred thousand slain, the
women sold as slaves, the habitations razed to the
ground, and his statement, in spite of obvious exaggeration,
is an indication of the awful havoc and desolation
inflicted upon the still soft, corrupt and luxurious city.

This blow seems to have crushed the vitality of
Milan. For centuries she remained in a weak and
depressed condition. During the Lombard domination,
which swept away the brief authority of the
Eastern Empire established by the arms of Narses, her
pre-eminence in North Italy was usurped by Pavia,
which Alboin and his successors chose as the capital
of their new realm, now first called Lombardy. The
broken palaces of the once imperial metropolis no longer
sheltered sovereigns. The Lombard kings delegated
their authority in the city to a governor, whom they
called Duke—whence the name Cordusio, still used in
the centre of the city, a corruption of Corte Ducis,
the palace or judgment-hall of the Duke—and only
15approached from time to time to hold a Diet within
the vast melancholy area of her deserted circus. Even
the successors of St. Barnabas and St. Ambrose
abandoned her, and transferred the See to Genoa, where
it remained till the next century, diminished in power
and prestige by its exile from the city of the Ambrosian
tradition, while the Roman Pontiffs, throughout the
two centuries of Lombard supremacy, were quietly increasing
their influence and making good that claim to
supreme spiritual authority before which the Ambrosian
Church was in the end to succumb.

The return of the episcopal See to Milan indicates
some degree of revival in the city. But two hundred
years more were to pass before her Church resumed
its old importance, and Milan her rightful rank in
North Italy. Under Charlemagne, who conquered
Desiderio in 774, and created a so-called Kingdom of
Italy, Milan held only the third place among the
metropolitan Sees, yielding precedence after Rome to
Ravenna. The Frankish king, whose great scheme of a
restored Roman Empire included a united Latin Church
under the Pope as supreme head, not only exalted the
spiritual authority of Rome over the other Sees, but
even endeavoured to suppress the peculiarities of the
Ambrosian liturgy and force Milan into uniformity
with the rest of the Latin Church. He is said to
have descended upon the city and seized all the liturgical
books, burning some and carrying others away
into Germany. But even his will was helpless against
the cherished custom of centuries. Some religious
men, so the chronicler declares, succeeded in hiding
copies of the books, and as soon as the Emperor had
disappeared, they were unearthed and the old rites
resumed as before.

The political changes of the ninth and tenth centuries
favoured the revival of the Lombard See. With the
16disruption of Charlemagne’s swollen empire, and the removal
of the temporal support, the spiritual sovereignty
of Rome and the unity of the Church broke down, at
least in practice, and the grand and comprehensive idea
of a single rule of Christendom under the twin sceptres
of Emperor and Pope—that inspiration of great minds
in the Middle Ages—failed now, as later, of realisation.
Amid the ungoverned turbulence of the Roman
nobles and citizens the Papacy gradually sank to the
lowest depths of corruption and impotence, and any
deference to its authority once paid by the Milanese
primates was soon forgotten.

For a while the Carlovingian kingdom of Italy held
together in spite of constant wars, and under Louis
II. Lombardy enjoyed a period of peace and great prosperity.
But after his death in 875, the country, rent
by the struggles of various claimants to the throne, and
overrun by Huns and Saracens, was gradually reduced
to a state of chaos, out of which the power of the feudal
barons emerged as the only effective authority. The
Counts and Viscounts, as the imperial ministers were
properly called, lost their authority, or else preserved
it as an hereditary and almost independent right from
father to son, fitting themselves as time went on into the
graduated order of the feudal system, which was extending
itself into the whole organisation of society.
The one stable power, that of the Church, based on an
inextinguishable tradition, became paramount in the
city, and in virtue of its vast possessions assumed the
temporal as well as the spiritual dominion. By the
tenth century the Archbishops of Milan appear as great
feudal princes, the most powerful in North Italy, and
practically independent of the Emperor. This position
was largely due to the spirit and ability of the two
great prelates of the previous century, Angilberto
(824-59), and Ansperto (868-81). Ansperto openly
17refused the obedience claimed from him by John VIII.
By assembling and presiding over the Diet of the
princes of North Italy at Pavia, which elected Charles
the Bald as successor to Louis II., and afterwards
crowning the new monarch, he arrogated the right of
conferring the Crown of Italy independently of the
Papal approval. He appears in this election as a great
temporal prince, leading the North Italian States, and
expressing the revolt of Lombardy against the pretensions
of the Pope in the Lateran to the heritage of the
power which once dominated the world from the
Capitol. Throughout the struggles of the next twenty
years for the possession of the throne, Ansperto’s support
was always given in opposition to the Pope.
When summoned by John VIII. to a Council at Rome
in 879, to answer for his offences against the Holy
See, he shut the door against the papal legates, so that
they were compelled to the undignified proceeding of
shouting the pontiff’s complaint through the keyhole;
and he and all his vast flock, which included, with the
suffragan Sees, the whole of Lombardy, were totally
indifferent to the excommunication stammered against
them by the enraged and helpless Pope.

Archbishop Ansperto was the chief restorer of the
city as well as of the Church of Milan. He rebuilt
and repaired the broken walls, the buildings ruined by
the barbarians, and by his wise and resolute government
gave a much-needed security to the life and property
of the citizens. It was a greatly increased power which
he transmitted to his successors, who wielded it with
the same autocratic spirit. In the confusion of the
Carlovingian break-up, when no one knew who was
the rightful sovereign of the old Lombard kingdom,
or who held the prerogative of electing him, the
Archbishops of Milan assumed the part of king-makers,
and laid the Crown, now on the head of
18an Italian prince, now on that of some heir of the Carlovingian
tradition. The constant aim of the archbishops
was to increase and consolidate their power, and the
weakness of the royal authority gave them their chance.
The story of the city in these two centuries is chiefly
composed of the contests of the Primates with the successive
wearers of the Lombard crown, who in their
turn endeavoured to tyrannise over the See by seizing
the right to elect its occupant, and filling it with their
own rapacious and arrogant favourites. These royal
appointments were violently opposed by the people, so
that the city was distracted by constant schisms and
civil warfare. From 948 to 953 the strife between
Adelmano, the choice of the citizens, and Manasses,
an ambitious and intriguing foreign priest, whom Berengarius
had appointed to the See, filled Milan with
tumult and bloodshed, during which the Ambrosian
Church was despoiled of much of its treasure. The
election in 953 of a third aspirant, Walperto, to whom
the others gave way, closed at last the miserable
war. With the coronation of Otho the Great (964) in
St. Ambrogio, by this archbishop, who had crossed the
Alps in person to summon the German prince to the
deliverance of Italy from the cruel tyranny of Berengarius,
a blessed period of peace and consequent prosperity
began for Milan, favourable to the development
of those popular forces in the city—hitherto depressed
by constant terror and insecurity—which were to make
her history in the coming centuries.

The peace, however, soon bred in the city a restless
vigour which could find no other vent than war. Under
Ariberto d’Intimiano, who was elected archbishop in
1018, Milan, now restored to undisputed pre-eminence
over her rival Pavia and the rest of the Lombard cities,
started upon a career of conquest. In Ariberto the
archiepiscopal pallium cloaked a potent statesman and
19warrior, who well knew how to defend that temporal
power which the ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages
looked upon as the best guarantee of their spiritual
authority. When the Emperor Henry II., who followed
the Othos, died in 1024, and the uncertainty
as to his successor on the Lombard throne threatened
new trouble to Italy, Ariberto hastened to Germany,
and on his sole authority, according to one chronicler,
though others say that he was supported by a party of
Italian magnates, offered the kingdom to Conrad the
Salic. Two years later (1026) he reasserted the right
of the Primate of Milan to crown the King of Italy, by
laying the circlet on the new monarch’s brow within
the city itself. At Conrad’s subsequent coronation in
Rome as Emperor, the Archbishop of Milan was the
most important of the imposing company of ecclesiastical
princes who attended on the occasion. His dignified
withdrawal from a contest with the Archbishop of
Ravenna for the place of highest honour was followed
by a formal recognition of his primacy in a Papal Bull,
while with less self-restraint his vast train of followers
reduced the company of the Ravennese prelate to
proper submission by apostolic blows and knocks in the
streets of Rome, amid a tremendous uproar. Milan’s
ecclesiastical superiority to Ravenna and all other
Italian Sees was thus triumphantly settled.

Ariberto’s ambition for the glory and predominance
of Milan was well supported by the people. They
followed the militant prelate with enthusiasm to the
subjugation of Pavia, which had refused to acknowledge
Conrad as king (1027), and a little later they made
a furious assault under his command upon the little
neighbouring city of Lodi, and forced its freedom-loving
inhabitants to submit to Ariberto’s yoke
and accept a bishop of his choosing. Thus Milan,
impelled by the pride and ambition and necessity of
20expansion bred of strength and riches, was the first to
provoke that spirit of hatred and revenge among the
sister cities of Lombardy, which could only be expiated
by centuries of bloodshed and sorrow.

But neither leader nor people had any doubt of the
righteousness of their military enterprises, which were
indeed invested with a sort of religious consecration.
Ariberto instituted the use of a sacred Car in times of
war, which bore aloft in the midst of the host the
tokens of the Christian Covenant, the Cross and the
Altar of Sacrifice, in sanctifying association with
the Vexillum of the city. Round these emblems of
their faith and of their existence as a community the
citizen soldiers would rally, bearing the Car forward
to victory with irresistible enthusiasm in moments
of advantage, or defending it with despairing resolve
when defeat threatened. Thus was originated the
Caroccio, adopted afterwards by all the Communes of
Italy—an exalted and beautiful idea, which, though
often debased by association with enterprises of greed
or revenge, became also the guide and inspiration of
the Lombard peoples in their noble struggle for liberty
in the succeeding centuries.

That struggle was already foreshadowed in Ariberto’s
time. The pride of the Archbishop and the city which he
governed soon came into violent contact with the will
of the Emperor. Conrad resented the prelate’s increasing
encroachment upon the royal prerogatives. Besides
the sovereign right of making war, the Archbishop
claimed the privilege of investing the bishops of his jurisdiction
and the secular nobles also with their fiefs. His
assumption of autocratic authority provoked a large
party of the lesser nobles, who made an insurrection
against him in 1036, and being defeated and driven out
of the city, united with the aggrieved citizens of Lodi
and broke into open warfare. A fierce battle was fought
21at Campo Malo, in which Ariberto appears to have been
worsted. The Emperor, regarding the moment as
favourable for asserting his authority, crossed the Alps
(1037) to restore peace. But on arriving in Milan
he did not find the humility and submission which he
expected, and offended, or perhaps alarmed, by
the haughtiness of the Prince Prelate and the excited
temper of the populace, he retired to Pavia, and
there summoned Ariberto to appear before a Diet,
to answer the accusations of his enemies. The
Archbishop obeyed, and without allowing him time
for defence, Conrad commanded his arrest. He was
carried to Piacenza and there kept in captivity. But
Conrad had hardly reckoned with the power which
lay behind his great vassal. Instead of accepting this
chastisement with resignation, Milan broke into an
uproar of lamentation at the news of her pastor’s imprisonment.
With fastings, processions and litanies, with
oblations, and benefactions to the poor, the pious citizens
hoped to propitiate Heaven on his behalf, while the
more worldly-minded sought to procure his rescue. At
last, after two months, Ariberto himself found a means
of escape with the aid of the Abbess of the great
convent of San Sisto in Piacenza. This lady, at the
request of a trusty servant whom the prelate managed
to send to her, despatched to him twenty mules laden
with divers kinds of delicate meats, and ten waggon
loads of wine, out of the goodly stores of the
convent. With these provisions Ariberto made a great
feast for his Teuton guards, who soon stupefied themselves
with the good wine. The Milanese chronicler
Landolfo describes the scene—‘ … They became
beyond measure intoxicated—persisting in their potations
until the middle of the night, and each one provoking
his neighbour to drink more and more…. They
began to quarrel and threaten one another with rolling
22eyes and terrible voices, and then to weep with thick
tears pouring down their faces, and so drunk were they
with the wine that they did not know what they were
doing, and their limbs would not serve their office so that
they fell down prostrate. The servants of Ariberto,
seeing them in this plight, were immensely rejoiced, and
carrying them away one by one, laid them out on well
prepared couches as if they had been dead men….’
While the Teutons lay thus and ‘snored terribly,’ the
prisoner slipped quietly off to the river Po hard by,
where he found a ship, sent by the Abbess, in readiness
for him. Into this he entered, and soon reached Milan
in safety, while his guards, awaking, half stupid from
their drunken slumbers, went seeking for him everywhere
with hideous clamour.

The fugitive was soon followed by the irate Emperor,
with a great army, and Milan was closely besieged.
Mighty deeds of valour were performed on either side,
according to the Milanese chroniclers. But all the
efforts of the great Emperor and his hosts were unavailing
against the city, defended by its ancient Roman
walls and by an enormous population. After a few
months he raised the siege, and endeavoured with equal
futility to overthrow Ariberto by deposing him and
setting up another archbishop. His persecution of
Milan provoked, the chroniclers tell us, a signal manifestation
of the Divine wrath, in the person of St. Ambrose
himself, who appeared one day in the midst of terrible
thunder and lightning as the Emperor was listening to
the Mass, and caused such consternation among those
present that many fell down dead. Thus, worsted by
supernatural as well as earthly means, Conrad retired
to Suabia in 1038, leaving the Archbishop master of
the situation, and to all intents and purposes potentate
of Lombardy.

But this crowning height to which Ariberto had
23brought the See of Milan was the brink of a signal
downfall. The greatest, he was also the last of the
strong ecclesiastical princes of Milan. Silently,
steadily during these last centuries of revived vigour
and prosperity a new force had been developing in the
city, and acquiring conscious existence—the People.
The wars of Ariberto’s reign had endowed this force
with the knowledge of arms and a sense of its own
power. It was the nameless, irresistible will of the
masses of the citizens which had carried Ariberto to
victory over the Emperor, and this very victory tended
to the undoing of the Archbishop and his order, by
weakening the feudal system with which the episcopal
and aristocratic power of Milan was now inextricably
bound up. It had been the part of the Church of St.
Ambrose to give the consecrating impulse and inspiration
to the revolt of the new world against the decaying
order of the Roman Empire, and under its latest
representative to lead the city, as we have just seen, to
victory over the Head of feudalism. But now in its
turn this great force for civilisation and humanity was
to be corrupted by temporal power and possession—to
renounce its mission as guide and sanctifier, and
assume instead the part of opposition to the vital and
progressive elements of the community. Ariberto and
his clergy were, in fact, the representatives in Milan of
feudalism and aristocracy. The hierarchy of St.
Ambrose was composed of the great nobles of the city,
in whose families the high ecclesiastical offices and
benefices had became hereditary possessions. These
arch-Priests, arch-Deacons, Cimiliarchs, Decumani—the
Cardinals or Ordinaries, as the highest orders of the
clergy were called—were great feudal magnates, forming
the strongest class of the Milanese nobility. Ranged
beneath them in ecclesiastic and feudal rank were the
lesser clergy, just as the secular aristocracy was divided
24into the two degrees of Captains—Capitani—and their
vassals, called Vavasours—Valvassori. Below these
came the undistinguished masses of the people, merchants,
artisans, and peasants, mostly serfs, and all
absolutely subjected to the arbitrary government of the
nobles.

The first revolt against this system was that already
mentioned, which resulted in the battle of Campo Malo,
and arose within the privileged class itself, being an
attempt of the Valvassori and minor clergy to shake
off the heavy yoke of their feudal superiors. But a
much more fatal discord in the community began in
1042, when the whole populace joined with the discontented
Valvassori, and broke out into fierce rebellion
against the nobles. One Lanzone, a noble who had
deserted his own order, was their leader. A civil war
raged for many months, filling the streets with daily
tumult and bloodshed, and at last the Archbishop and
the magnates were forced to abandon the city. Invoking
the aid of the nobles in the neighbouring communities,
they returned with a strong army and invested
the city. The struggle was waged with hideous ferocity
on both sides, neither giving mercy to prisoners or
wounded. The besiegers built six great strongholds
round the walls, commanding the principal gates, and
effectually shutting out all succour of food or arms.
Two long and terrible years went by, till the plight of
the citizens grew desperate. Pallid and lean from
famine and sickness, still they fought on with invincible
souls, in the midst of the deserted palaces and falling
towers of this city which, the chronicler tells us, no
longer seemed, as of yore, the seat of noble kings,
but rather a desolate Babylon. At last Lanzone
resolved to go to Germany and seek the help of Conrad’s
successor, Henry III. But the Emperor, mindful of his
father’s experience of Milan, would only grant it
25on condition that his army should occupy the city,
and that the people should swear fealty to himself.
But the new-born democracy, groping its way to
liberty through a thousand obstacles, instinctively rejected
these conditions, preferring its native tyrants to a
foreign yoke. Lanzone skilfully used the fear of
imperial interference to persuade the besiegers to agree
to a reconciliation. Peace was concluded, all mutual
wrongs being forgiven, the nobles restored to their
homes and possessions, and a share in the government
secured to the people.

The one sacrifice offered upon the altar of this new
covenant between the classes was the leader Lanzone
himself, who, at the first opportunity, was arrested and
put to death by the aristocratic party. But his work
was done, and the foundation of the future Republic had
been laid. Archbishop Ariberto, now ill and aged, had
taken refuge during the troubles at Monza, and returned
to his own city, only to die (1045). His career fitly
closes with the first signs of the collapse of the social
order which he embodied.

The revolt of the Milanese people against the nobles
was associated with the great agitation for the
reform of the Catholic Church, initiated and carried on
in the eleventh century by S. Giovanni Gualberto, San
Romualdo and his disciple, Peter Damiano, and by the
Cluniac monk, Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII.
This movement had its political aspect. The spiritual
supremacy to which these men aimed to restore the
dishonoured and discredited Papacy included domination
over the temporal powers. The first step to be
accomplished was unity of government within the
Church’s own body, and the suppression of the virtual
independence, based on feudal dominion, of the great
metropolitan Sees, Milan, Ravenna and others outside
Italy. Divining with sure instinct where the power of the
future lay, they allied themselves with those democratic
forces to which the Ambrosian Church was now fatally
opposed, in a fierce attack upon the great Lombard See.

Much laxity of discipline prevailed among the higher
clergy of Milan, whose pride and splendour was famous
throughout Europe. They lived like great feudal
barons; armed cap à pie, they led their vassals forth to
battle, nor in their domestic manners were they more
rigid. They were, moreover, obstinately attached by
long custom to the two practices which the severer
27spirits in the Church had condemned and fought against
for centuries, simony and marriage, both closely bound
up with their feudal constitution and polity. They
stoutly maintained that the ordination of married men
as priests was sanctioned by St. Ambrose himself in his
writings, nor did they demur to the marriage of those
already in Orders, though the sentence of the great
Doctor on this point was more doubtful. In fact, they
married with the same unconsciousness of sin as their
untonsured brethren did. The natural consequence
was that the offices and benefices of the Church were
bequeathed from father to son, and tended to become
hereditary in certain favoured families. It followed
as inevitably that bishoprics, abbacies and all offices
carrying with them worldly possessions, came to be
trafficked in like any other sort of estates. The investitures
of them were granted by the feudal superior
for fixed and regular fees, graduated according to the
value of the office, a practice resulting from the introduction
by Charlemagne of the system of feudal tenure
into the ecclesiastical body politic. Thus there were
few among the dignitaries of St. Ambrose who had not
paid, according to the current price, for their spiritual
rank and its accompanying temporalities, and the possession
of ecclesiastical benefices, either to be held or disposed
of at will, had become a form of wealth which,
vitiated though its origin might be, was wound in inextricably
with the complicated existence of Milanese
society.

It was natural that the successive decrees of the
Popes from Clement II. (1046-1047) onwards against
simony and marriage should have been disregarded in
Milan. The renunciation of the benefices which provided
them with a livelihood, and the putting away of
the wives and children to whom they were bound by the
ties of innocent and natural affection, were sacrifices too
28hard for men whose vocation was rather worldly than
spiritual. Nothing less than a social revolution could
overthrow the rooted customs of the Ambrosian Church.

Such a revolution, in the heaving and unstable eleventh
century, was, however, easily excited. The discontent of
the lower orders with the aristocracy increased as their
lately-won privileges generated the desire for a further
share of power, and their particular animus against the
ecclesiastical nobles was strengthened by a deep and
widespread aspiration for religious purity and truth
among many of the humblest people. The agitation
against the real and supposed scandals in the lives of
the clergy was taken up with fury in the poorest parts
of the city.

A revolutionary party grew up, which became
known among its opponents by the opprobrious name
of Patarini, a term used in Milan to denote heretics,
and derived perhaps from Patari, rag-sellers, who
with their customers represented the lowest class
of the people. And though the aim of the revolutionists
was a social and moral, not a doctrinal, reform,
there probably prevailed much freedom of thought and
religious opinion among them. The heresy of the
Catharists—better known under the name of Albigenses,
by which they were called later in the south of France—was
taking wide hold in North Italy at this time.
The strange Manichean ideas of these sectaries, who
believed in a dual principle of good and evil governing
the world, must have found ready acceptance in pessimistic
souls who saw the pride and luxury of the
great on one side, and the misery of the oppressed and
enslaved masses on the other. Their ideal of extreme
bodily purity, rising to an asceticism which, by denying
the flesh even the mere satisfaction of its needs aimed
at the liberation of the spirit from its thraldom to the
Devil by the self-extinction of the human race, contrasted
29their lives sharply with the luxurious habits of
the majority of the orthodox clergy, and by sanctifying
hunger and privation, gave a new dignity and self-respect
to the down-trodden poor. Moreover, their
stern rejection of all pleasure and selfish ambition gave
them leisure and courage to devote themselves to the
sick and suffering, so that many joined themselves to
their company from the impulse of gratitude. They
led in fact the evangelic life, though their dark and
despairing tenets were utterly alien to the spirit of
Christianity. They clung to their peculiar faith
with a lofty enthusiasm which persecution could not
subdue.

The confusion of the Catharists, or Catari, with the
Patarini probably arose from the similarity of the
names, and the natural tendency of the orthodox to
confuse the different forms of thought outside their
own dogmatic boundaries. The Patarini sympathised
with the Catharists only in their practice of purity and
evangelic simplicity of life. There is little doubt, however,
that the Catharists mingled with the poorer classes
of the city whence the Patarini were recruited, and
must have taken advantage of the confusion of ideas
resulting from the revolt against the old customs and
authority to spread their doctrines.

Among the Milanese clergy themselves there was
a small party zealous for reform. The first to raise
open protest against simony and ‘concubinage’ was
one of these, a noble ecclesiastic called Anselmo da
Baggio. Ariberto’s vacant throne had been filled by
the appointment of one Guido, a creature of the
Emperor Henry III., who in securing his election,
had partly recovered that sway over Milan which
Ariberto had wrested from Conrad. Guido was a
weak man, with an uneasy conscience himself about
simony, since he had paid the usual fee to the emperor
30as his feudal superior for the confirmation of his
election. Thinking to rid himself of the troublesome
zeal of Anselmo, he procured his election to the
bishopric of Lucca, and thus endowed him with new
power. Anselmo was one of the principal allies and
agents of Hildebrand, by whose influence he was raised
later to the papal throne, where, as Alexander II.,
he was able to wield all the arms of Rome against his
native Church. Another leader of a more popular class
soon rose up to take his place in Milan, a certain deacon
and student of letters named Arialdo. This man
became the soul of the movement. He was joined
by Landolfo da Cotta, one of the highest order of
clergy, like Anselmo da Baggio. Landolfo was a
fiery and eloquent speaker, a zealot whose body was
consumed by disease and his soul by enthusiasm.
The two went about preaching in public places and
stirring up the poorer classes, and soon gathered
together a formidable following. Invading the
churches, they drove the clergy from the altars, and
pursuing them with contumely and violence, sacked
their houses and forced them to sign an engagement
to consort no more with women. The whole city
was in an uproar; all the sons of disorder rushed to
join the rioters. Archbishop Guido summoned a synod
of his clergy at a safe distance from the city, and
thence fulminated an anathema against the ringleaders.
Arialdo and Landolfo immediately hastened to Rome
to make their complaint before the throne of Peter
(1057). They returned accompanied by the Bishop of
Lucca and Cardinal Hildebrand himself, sent by Pope
Stephen X. to examine into the accusations laid against
the Archbishop and his clergy. Their arrival raised a
new and tremendous uproar. The Milanese, deeply
jealous of the ancient episcopal glory and prerogatives
of their city, rallied to the side of their own clergy at
31this attempt of the Pope to interfere, and the legates,
having hastily and in secret condemned the Archbishop
as simoniacal, and all his practices as abominable,
departed, leaving matters worse than before.

As soon as the Roman attack had been driven off,
and the issue appeared to be confined within the city,
the masses again joined Arialdo. The clamour of
bells and trumpets filled the streets and called the
people to assemble in the great Roman theatre, where
Arialdo and Landolfo inflamed their minds to fury by
discourses against the clergy. There were daily riots
in the streets. The clergy were supported by the
nobles and by all the peaceable spirits, who, however,
had none of the energy and zeal of their opponents,
and soon wearied of the continual disorders and
tumults. The struggle continued with intermittent
uproar, and two years after the mission of Hildebrand,
the Pope made a new attempt at intervention (1059).
This time with the Bishop of Lucca there came
instead of Hildebrand, whose soul contained no balm
to pour upon angry passions, the famous Peter Damian.
The contemplative of Fonte Avellana, fierce ascetic
as he was, and inflamed with impatience and contempt for
luxurious priests, nevertheless possessed the gift of
persuading and winning men. The difficulties which
had defeated the earlier legation met him also. The
Ambrosian clergy stood out for the ancient freedom of
their Church and Diocese and the independence of its
jurisdiction. Enormous crowds gathered round the
episcopal palace, thirsting for the blood of the new
representatives of the papal pretensions, and the popular
fury rose to a height when at a great assembly which
Peter convoked to hear his message he placed the
Archbishop of Milan on his left hand, giving the place
of pre-eminence on his right to the Bishop of Lucca,
as delegate of the Pope. But the sound of his voice
32calmed the tumult as he rose and eloquently proclaimed
the glory of the Ambrosian Church and of the many
martyrs who had sanctified it with their blood, and so
skilfully and with such moving words did he reprove
its abuses, that before long Archbishop, dignitaries and
the whole immense throng of clerics, trembling with
emotion and penitence, were prostrate before the altar,
acknowledging their sinful practices and vowing to
renounce them for the future. The success of the
preacher was confirmed by the subsequent visit of
Archbishop Guido to Rome, in answer to a summons
from Nicholas II. There for the first time in history
the Primate of Milan was constrained to promise
obedience to the Pope of Rome, and to receive from
him the symbolic ring of investiture.

This humiliation of their episcopal prince was a
bitter grief to the noble party in Milan. Veneranda
est Roma in Apostolo. But Milan is not to be despised
in Ambrose, cries Arnolfo the chronicler. ‘It will
be said in future that Milan is subject to Rome.’
And though Rome had won a lasting advantage,
the moral effect of Peter Damian’s mission soon died
out. The old ecclesiastical system and usage was
not so easily overthrown. Two years later (1061)
the conflict was resumed with new fervour by the
Patarini, encouraged by the accession of their ally,
Anselmo of Lucca, to the Papal throne. Moreover, a
new champion of reform had arisen in Erlembaldo, a
warrior lately returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and brother of the now dying Landolfo. Bold
as a lion, breathing out fire and slaughter against the
Ambrosians, Erlembaldo was a formidable foe for the
timid Archbishop and his party, who were inspired by
no confidence in the virtue of their cause. He appeared
in the arena of conflict bearing the standard of the
Church, with which he had been solemnly trusted by
33Pope Alexander, who did not hesitate to rekindle the
flames of civil war in his native city.

The cruel scenes witnessed before were now renewed
in Milan. Blood was spilt in the streets, churches were
invaded and sacked, priests dragged bodily from the
altars, their houses burnt, their wives misused. But
when Arialdo and his lieutenant began to condemn the
ceremonial usages peculiar to the Ambrosian Church,
the citizens turned against them, and finding the opposition
too strong, the two missionaries appealed to Rome
and procured the excommunication of the Archbishop.
This only aggravated the wrath of the Milanese. The
Patarine leaders were abandoned by all but a few of
their most devoted followers, and when Archbishop
Guido appeared before the altar of the Cathedral
Church with the Bull of excommunication in his hands,
the fury of the immense assembly knew no bounds.
The reformers were set upon in the sanctuary itself,
and Arialdo was so badly beaten that he was left for
dead. Guido, taking advantage of the momentary
turn of the tide in his favour, laid an interdict upon the
city until it should rid itself of Arialdo. The zealot
was forced to fly, and a little later he fell into a snare
which had been laid for him, and was betrayed into
the hands of the Archbishop’s niece, lady of a castle on
Lake Maggiore, by whose command he was carried
in a boat to a lonely island and there cruelly done to
death.

The cause of reform was thenceforth glorified by the
memory and example of a martyr. Arialdo was shortly
afterwards canonised by Pope Alexander. His loss
inflamed his party to new zeal and drew to it a great
access of adherents. Erlembaldo and a priest called
Liprando di San Paolo now led the crusade, carrying
it on with such fury of sword and fire that they
became virtual masters of the city. The Archbishop,
34wearied out by the endless strife and the insidious
attempts of Rome to depose him, renounced his See,
and the nobles, outnumbered by the rioters, abandoned
the disorderly city and sought peace and safety in their
castles and country palaces.

The contest now centred on the election of a new
Archbishop. Neither of the rival claimants put forward
by the two parties succeeded in establishing
himself on the episcopal throne. Chaos prevailed in
the Ambrosian Church. Erlembaldo, strengthened by
the accession of Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII.,
usurped the whole authority in the city and throughout
the archdiocese. He swept far and wide like an
avenging sword, driving priests from their benefices,
and tearing them from the altars. Half Lombardy
cowered under his rude and noisy tyranny, and his
name became a by-word of terror throughout Italy.

But two appalling conflagrations, which followed one
another in 1071 and 1073, and laid waste the city, deprived
the people of all heart for the contest with the
aristocrats. Moreover, Erlembaldo’s tyranny was beginning
to produce a reaction. The nobles, regaining courage,
leagued together for a great effort to liberate the city
from his authority. By means of promises and gold,
they won a large number of the humble citizens to their
side, and at last they appeared one day in force in the
city, seeking their enemy. The populace, awed by
their numbers and magnificent martial array, were little
disposed to face them. Followed by a few only of the
most faithful and zealous of the Patarini, Erlembaldo,
mounted upon his war-horse, and in full armour, upholding
the banner of the Roman Church, flung himself into
the midst of his foes, and fell, pierced by a hundred swords.

With his death the war ended. There was none
to take his place. The city, exhausted by the long
strife, was glad to rest. The nobles returned to their
35homes and their old place in the city, and in spite of
the persecution which they had suffered for twenty
years, the Ambrosian clergy resumed their old practices
to a large extent.

Nevertheless, the design of the great Hildebrand was
achieved. The supremacy of Rome had been proclaimed,
and acknowledged in the hearing of the whole
world. The prestige of the greatest of the provincial
Sees had suffered a blow from which it never recovered.
So much was the episcopal power of Milan weakened
that Gregory VII. was able to subtract many of its
suffragan Sees and join them instead to other archdioceses;
and before the century was over, the victory
of the Pope over the Emperor Henry IV., in the
famous quarrel of investitures, obliged the Ambrosian
See to yield temporal as well as spiritual allegiance to
the successors of St. Peter.

And though the Milanese clergy still clung for a
while to their wives, and benefices continued to be
bought and sold, these doubtful practices fell more and
more into disrepute. Simoniac ecclesiastics gradually
disappeared. The accusation of this sin was, however,
long used by Rome as a means of gaining further advantages
over the See of Milan, or driving out a prelate
approved perhaps by the Emperor and obnoxious to
the papal interests. It was equally useful to the people
in making new encroachments on the privileges of the
aristocratic clergy.

The gradual concentration of authority in Rome was
greatly assisted by the influence of the monastic orders,
who belonged as bodies to no particular diocese, but
looked to the Pope as their supreme head, and were
little disposed to be submissive to the prelates in whose
jurisdiction a monastery might chance to be. In 1130,
Bernard of Clairvaux and his white-robed monks—who
seemed to the people, we are told, wonderful as angels
36from heaven—appeared in Milan, and gave an immense
impulse to the monastic movement there. The
rise of the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St.
Dominic a century later brought a vast increase of
strength to the Papacy. In Milan, as everywhere, the
friars gained immense influence among the masses of
the people. The See of Milan was by this time completely
subjugated. It was greatly diminished in
wealth and importance. The Pope exercised supreme
jurisdiction in the archdiocese, and his legates constantly
interfered in the government, assuming the
highest place and authority with the acquiescence of
the Archbishop. Deeply indeed had the See of St.
Ambrose sunk since the days of the great Ariberto!

But the same movement which had defined the
position of Rome, had by the process of strengthening
and raising the walls of the fold, thrust an enormous
number of Christians into the doctrinal wilderness outside,
and the Church was now menaced by the great
spread and increase of heresy. Heresy was, in fact, the
fatal legacy of Hildebrand’s policy. While the Papacy,
absorbed in its struggles with the Empire, could spare
no energy to check them, the great sect of the Catharists,
unhindered by worldly ambitions, had been quietly growing
in numbers and strength, till in the twelfth century
it was become a fully organised Church, divided into
dioceses and governed by its own bishops. These
sectarians were now generally called Patarini; the name
of Hildebrand’s old allies had become synonymous with
the enemies of the Church. The deep gulf between
the Catharists and the orthodox Church was crossed
by a chain of religious associations which had sprung
up all over Lombardy, in protest against the luxury and
scandalous manners of both clergy and laity, and were
founded, like the original Patarini, upon moral rather
than doctrinal principles. Many of them hovered
37indeed in thought upon the vague borderland between
orthodoxy and heresy, and were touched by that Northern
difference of religious sentiment which, after many temporary
ebullitions, produced at last the Protestant revolution.
In the thirteenth century fifteen different
sects are enumerated in the city—the Catharists, the
Believers of Milan, the Arnaldists, followers of Arnald
of Brescia, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and others
that were mostly local varieties of the same sects.
Poverty and humility were, as their name denotes, the distinctive
attributes of the Poor Men, while their doctrine
was suspect enough to forbid their adoption into the
Church. The large embrace of Rome succeeded,
however, in enfolding another association of kindred
type, the Umiliati, or Humble Ones, which was
destined to become enormously powerful in Milan.

This order is said to have been founded early in
the eleventh century by some Milanese nobles who
had been captives in Germany, and who, converted
to serious thoughts by the weariness of confinement,
vowed that on their return they would live a holy and
Christian life. It was a society of men and women,
living in their own homes with their families, but distinguished
from their neighbours by humility, industry
and devoutness. A century later, under the influence
of St. Bernard, they formed themselves into a regular
order, with a rule obliging them to strict moral virtue
and to the observance of all religious duties. They
devoted themselves especially to the manufacture of
woollen stuffs, one of Milan’s chief industries. Very
soon out of the first order a second was formed, which
adopted a monastic life of greater austerity, the men
and women, including many married couples, living
side by side in separate cloisters, and in course of time
a third order arose, composed of men only, who took
sacerdotal orders, and were called Canons. Thus the
38association, from a kind of religious guild, tended to
develop into a regular order. But its rule had never
been fixed or confirmed by any papal sanction, and it
remained for two hundred years practically independent
of Rome. Nor were its doctrines during this time
free from unorthodox thought; we find the Umiliati included
in the condemnation of heretical sects uttered
by successive Popes from time to time in the intervals of
their political cares. They shared the virtue of simplicity,
at least, with the various bodies of Poveri who hovered
half in and half out of the pale of Holy Church.

In the latter part of the twelfth century the order—in
obedience perhaps to that widely diffused evangelical
spirit which generated the great Franciscan movement
a little later—had been developing and spreading very
extensively. Its votaries went about preaching repentance
in the squares and open places of the different
cities, and persuaded numbers of noble persons, as well as
plebeians, to abandon the sins of the world and the flesh,
and to live according to the pious and simple vows of the
order, either in monasteries or in their own homes.
Their efforts were opposed by the bishops and regular
clergy, who were disposed to look upon all zeal as
heretical. But Pope Innocent III., recognising their
virtue and their influence on the people, resolved to
secure the somewhat loose orthodoxy of the brethren,
and to direct their fervour and piety to the service of
the Church. He extended his favour to them, and
bestowed upon them the doubtful blessing of a formal
rule, which, with the privileges, included the restrictions
and severe discipline of a regular monastic order. This
little pleased the Umiliati, and they made a touching
appeal to Innocent’s successor, Honorius III., to relieve
them from their new obligations, bringing forward an
ancient formula, given them, they declared, by St.
Bernard, to the observance of which they had already
39bound themselves. But the Pope absolved them
against their will from their old vows of obedience
and insisted on the observance of Innocent’s rule.

Thus the death-blow was dealt to the original spirit
of the institution. After a short period of increased
fervour and activity, in which they became the terror
of their old spiritual kinsfolk, the heretics, the order
followed the course of most other monastic bodies.
Humility and poverty were exchanged for papal favours
and honours, and for rich possessions, and before long
corruption and laxity crept in among the brethren. The
sacerdotal order became the first and most important,
while those who followed the original rule of simplicity,
humility and purity, living in their own homes, were
called the Third Order. The brethren acquired in
time great wealth from the woollen industry, which
they continued to pursue, and later on they were largely
employed in the public offices of the city, and especially
in its financial concerns. Thus they gradually became
very powerful, and under the tyrannies of the Visconti
and Sforza, provided Milan with many great statesmen.
In the sixteenth century the vast possessions of the
order, in the form of commendas and prebends, etc.,
were practically owned by a few great families, and the
actual number of the brethren had fallen to less than a
hundred. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo procured the suppression
of the ancient brotherhood in 1570, on the
ground of the vices and luxury of its members. He
risked his life by this step, since the degenerate brethren
were not ashamed to employ assassins to attempt the
murder of their spoliator. The possessions of the order
were distributed among other convents, and their principal
House, the Brera, which had belonged to them
since the twelfth century, was handed over to the Jesuits.

The desire to define and purify doctrine, and to
strengthen the Church, produced under a series of
40determined Popes a fierce outburst of persecution in
the thirteenth century. In Milan, where heterodox
opinions were held by many of the most powerful
as well as the lesser citizens, it was the signal for
repeated bouts of civil war and constant struggles
between the Pope and the rulers of the city. The
introduction of the Dominicans into Milan in 1220
gave an enormous advantage to the cause of orthodoxy.
As soon as the people saw the Christ-like virtues of
poverty and humility and evangelising ardour, hitherto
associated in their minds only with the condemned
Patarini, displayed by these approved Catholic orders,
they followed the Friars with enthusiasm, careless
indeed of doctrine, but believing and trusting those
who lived as they did themselves and mingled with
them freely, understanding their sorrows and needs.
It is doubtful whether St. Dominic himself was ever
in Milan, but his famous disciple, Peter of Verona,
was sent there in 1232 by the Pope, with full authority
to search out and punish heretics. Peter carried out
his mission with merciless zeal. His name, made
terrible by its unsparing use as authority for the infliction
of torments and fiery death, came to be feared
throughout Lombardy. So bitter a hatred did he
rouse by his stern interpretation of the awful word,
not peace but a sword, that he himself fell a victim to
the weapon of his predilection. On a morning in 1252,
as he was returning on foot with a single companion
from Como to Milan, two assassins sprang out upon
him from an ambush and smote him to death with a
sword. The sword, transfixing his skull, is familiar
to us all in mediæval and Renaissance art as the ornament
and emblem of the Saintly Inquisitor.

The murder of Peter Martyr was not inspired by
heretical revenge alone. Motives of worldly policy
had a share in the deed. The division of orthodoxy
41and heresy virtually followed that between the two
great parties in the State, the aristocracy and the
people, and the conflict between them repeated to
some extent the great Patarine struggle two centuries
earlier, though now, in the reversal of issues the Patarini
were associated with the aristocrats against Rome.
The murder of Peter was committed at the instigation
of some of the nobles. The Archbishop himself, Fra
Leone da Perego, a Franciscan, a man of notable
character and ambition, who hated Peter, both as
the agent of papal arrogance and usurpation in Milan,
and as the exalter of the rival order of the Dominicans,
was possibly not unaware of the plot. But
the political aspect of the doctrinal warfare belongs
to an epoch which we have not yet reached in our
story of the city. It is enough to say here that the
murder of Peter of Verona was of the greatest service
to the cause of orthodoxy and the Church. It
excited universal execration of the heretics, and the
Dominican, elevated to the ranks of the Martyrs, was
far more powerful with his cloven brow than even
when alive. From this time forward heresy rapidly
lost ground, and with the gradual quieting of party
passion, under the domination of a single family in the
city, it lost all political force, and died away in insignificance
and oblivion, till the great reawakening of
religious controversy in the sixteenth century.

After the blows and humiliation which the
Milanese Church suffered in the eleventh century
from the united attack of Rome and the people, it was
no longer able to stem the popular movement towards
freedom. Throughout the long civil war the incipient
Republic had been developing and gradually limiting,
more and more, the domination of the archbishop and
the nobles. This process, which was being repeated
everywhere in Lombardy, was greatly favoured by the
weakness of the Empire during the long minority of
Henry IV. The cities, freed from the intervention
of a foreign suzerain, were able to shake off to some extent
the rule of feudalism. The great war waged later
by Gregory VII. and his kindred spirit, the Gran
Contessa Matilda, against Henry IV. and the claims of
imperialism, promoted, with the power of the Papacy,
the freedom of the Communes, and showed in these two
great elements of the national life unity of aim, Italy’s
best defence against the stranger.

By the end of the eleventh century Milan was, in all
its external relations, practically a free city, owning
little more than nominal allegiance and a ceremonious
reverence to the Emperor, and allying herself now with
him, now with his resolute foe Matilda, or defying the
43one and the other, as it pleased her best. Within the
community itself the principle of popular freedom and
representation was recognised in the government, and
by means of constant insurrections the lower orders had
forced the nobles to recognise their rights. The Commune,
whose birth historians have dated from the great
revolution of 1066 when Lanzone kept Archbishop
Ariberto and the nobles in exile for three years, was
now in full being. The institution about this time of
elective magistrates, whose title of Consuls revived the
old Latin tradition of the city, marks the emancipation
of the young Republic from the archiepiscopal despotism.
But the share of the ordinary citizens in the
privileges of this Constitution was still much restricted.
The Consuls appear to have been chosen exclusively at
first from the higher class, whose hereditary habit of
authority fitted them to govern, and under a constitutional
form these officials tended to repeat the old
aristocratic oligarchy. But the nobles had no longer
any legal support in their attempts to tyrannise, and the
whole system of government was in a state of flux, and
subjected to ceaseless modifications and change by the
continual revolts of the people, who, by the simple
force of numbers, made their strength felt, and vindicated
their growing pretensions to a larger part in the
affairs of their city.

The same vitality which had won Milan her own
freedom impelled her to the oppression of the weaker
communities around her. Her first fulfilment of this
tragic law of progress was the destruction of her neighbour,
Lodi, a strong and flourishing community, whose
rivalry was a constant menace to her own trade and
prosperity. There was a long-standing hatred between
the two cities. The times lent abundant pretext to the
Communes to make war upon one another. The quarrel
between Empire and Church entangled them all in its
44immense web. Each, in embracing the one or the other
cause, was guided by its local sympathies and antipathies,
and reflected the general strife on a smaller scale in its
relations with its neighbours.

In 1111, Milan, ally of the Church, scarcely waiting
till Lodi’s protector, the Emperor Henry V., had
turned his back for the time on Lombardy, attacked
the smaller city in full force, and ruined it to the
foundations. The miserable inhabitants, sternly forbidden
to rebuild their old homes, made poor little
hamlets in which to shelter themselves in the vicinity,
and there dragged on a poverty-stricken existence under
the oppressive yoke of their conquerors, who jealously
deprived them of every means of recovery. Yet the
wonderful vitality which animated these young Italian
communities preserved Lodi from utter despair, and
smouldered in her, ready to burst out in revolt on the
first opportunity.

Milan’s next enterprise was the subjugation of Como,
which was fast developing into a rich and powerful
community, strong in the possession of a lake navy.
That city, however, resisted with great vigour, retaliating
with frequent success upon her aggressors, and
before she was finally subdued the war dragged on for
ten years. Nearly all the North Italian cities united
with Milan against her, and she was finally captured and
burnt down in 1127, and her inhabitants compelled to
swear fealty to Milan. During the quarrel for the
Empire between Lothair and Conrad, after the death of
Henry V., and the preoccupation of each of those
monarchs in turn with the affairs of Germany, the great
Lombard city pursued her sovereign way unchecked.
Pavia, the old royal city, and her chief rival, whose
subjugation was to cost Milan yet three centuries of
almost ceaseless warfare, now felt, as often before, the
strength of her arm, and was compelled to bow to
45her will in the general councils of Lombardy, and,
with powerful Cremona and the rest of North Italy, to
follow her lead.

But the aggressive and tyrannic conduct of the great
city was preparing for her an awful day of retribution.
In 1152, the death of the Emperor Conrad and the
election of his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, opened a
new era for Italy. The young monarch, half barbarian,
half Paladin, was resolved to restore the power of the
Empire in Italy. The first step towards this end was
the reduction of the chief vassal, Milan, to the obedience
which she had so long forgotten. Her sins against her
neighbours gave him a pretext. One day, at a Diet at
Constance (1153), two citizens of Lodi, bearing heavy
crosses upon their shoulders, to signify the grievous afflictions
which Milan had put upon their community, entered
the hall, and kneeling before the Emperor, besought
his protection and help. Frederick, having listened to
their tale, swore to punish their arrogant and usurping foe.
He straightway despatched an envoy, named Sicherius,
to the Milanese, commanding them to cease from oppressing
Lodi. But so little was the distant power of the
Empire feared, in comparison with that of the great Lombard
city near at hand, that when the two Lodigiani, who
had undertaken their mission without the knowledge of
their fellow-citizens, returned home, and proclaimed the
benevolent intentions of the new monarch, the people
were inexpressibly dismayed. With woeful countenances
they execrated the ‘most stupid men’ who had
brought them into this plight, and when Sicherius
appeared shortly after, they entreated him to abandon
his journey, lest he should bring the vengeance of Milan
upon them. The envoy, however, not daring to disobey
the imperial mandate, proceeded on his way, and
presented his letters in Milan. The Consuls read
them, flung them on the ground, and stamped them
46under foot, imperial seal and all, with fury and contempt.
Sicherius himself escaped with difficulty from their
hands. Returning to Lodi, he told his tale, and the unhappy
citizens prepared themselves for immediate ruin.

But Milan, having recovered calmness and begun to
contemplate her rash act with some trepidation, spared
them for the time, and awaited the development of
events. This was not slow. Frederick, deeply offended,
descended upon Lombardy in the following year, with
an enormous host, fully resolved to humble the arrogant
Milanese. He held a great Diet at Roncaglia. Hither
with the rest of the princes and magnates of Italy came
the Consuls of Milan, and offered all the ceremonial
tokens of submission and reverence. But the impossibility
of reconciling the differences between the monarch
and the Republic quickly became evident. Milan utterly
refused to release Lodi and Como from her rule. The
Emperor soon proceeded to open hostility against the city.
But he found his task no light one. Milan’s sister communities
were still withheld by fear from lending aid
to her foe, whose glittering show of authority they held
for transitory and insubstantial. Even Lodi was only
persuaded with difficulty to forswear her forced oath of
fealty to her oppressor and give credence to Frederick’s
promises of protection. Her diffidence was well justified.
Frederick contented himself with besieging and
destroying Milan’s faithful ally, Tortona, capturing a
few outlying castles and laying waste her territory, and
then, intent on compelling Pope Hadrian to confirm
his election by crowning him in Rome, he passed on
southwards (1155). The defiant Milanese immediately
proceeded to rebuild Tortona and to wage fierce war
with the Pavesi, who, true to their traditions, had given
enthusiastic obedience to the new representative of the
Empire. Meanwhile Frederick, having received the
imperial diadem, made his way back through the eastern
47parts of Italy, translating his heroic aspirations into a
reality of fire and blood and spoliation, and finally,
having exhausted his treasury, returned into Germany.
His unlucky protégés of Lodi were abandoned to the
mercy of their enemies. Their villages were surprised
and captured by the Milanese, and the people compelled
to flee in the darkness of night. ‘Who, seeing the
women stumbling along the way, with their little ones,
some in their arms, some clinging to their garments,
some falling behind wailing—who seeing them fall into
the ditches in the darkness and the rain, would not have
been sad and moved to compassion? Who would not
have been melted into tears?’ cries the chronicler
Morena. Many died from the hardships which they
suffered, and the rest took refuge in hamlets and in
friendly Cremona. For the second time the Milanese
destroyed their homes and razed their city to the ground.

The other allies of the Emperor also suffered the
vengeance of the arrogant city. Novara and Pavia and
other communes had to lament defeat and devastation.
Thus Milan prepared for the new coming of the
Emperor, who, all well knew, was but biding his
time and gathering strength for the work of punishment.
In 1158 he crossed the Alps again, followed by
a mighty host of vassals. He proceeded directly against
Milan. The citizens, who had fortified themselves
during his absence with an immense fosse and huge
earthworks which enclosed a much wider circuit than
the old walls, calmly awaited his attack. With his
company of tributary kings and princes and archbishops,
the Emperor sat down with all solemn preparation round
the city. To each gate was allotted a prince in command
of an army. Seeing the magnificent array and
the determined purpose of the invader, Milan’s fickle
allies, one and all, sent their forces to join him, anxious
to propitiate the stronger party, and not unwilling to
48strike a blow at their domineering leader. No less
than a hundred thousand fighting-men surrounded the
city. Milan was confronted with the fate which she
had pitilessly inflicted on others. Struck by sudden
dismay, or persuaded by treacherous counsels, she had
hardly endured the siege for a month before she surrendered
and humbled herself to acknowledge the
supremacy of the Emperor. Satisfied with her prompt
submission, Frederick confined his revenge to the
exaction of his full imperial rights, a penalty grievous
enough to a community so long accustomed to complete
freedom. She was compelled to take the oath of fealty
to the Emperor, to restore to him the regalia—which
consisted chiefly of the produce of certain taxes—to
renounce all pretensions of sovereignty over Lodi and
Como, and to accept an imperial legate as her supreme
magistrate.

Frederick’s victory was, however, little more than a
mockery. Milan’s vitality and spirit of independence
were too strong to be so easily subdued. As soon as
the Emperor had passed on to another part of Italy, she
boldly broke the newly-established peace and assaulted
the German garrisons left behind in Lombardy. Her
example fired many of the other cities to violate the
obedience which they had sworn to the Emperor, and
the whole of North Italy was soon in arms again. Too
rashly, however, had the Milanese disregarded the
nature of him whom they were defying. Vowing to accomplish
his purpose without mercy this time, Frederick
hastened back. Before attacking Milan again, he encamped
before her devoted ally, the small city of
Crema, which, after a siege conducted with barbarous
ferocity, he captured and burnt. Still delaying
his vengeance on the chief offender, he spent two
years in laying waste the Milanese territory and capturing
her castles, and having effectually destroyed her
49sources of supply, he sat down once more (1161)
before the city marked by his implacable will for
destruction.

The siege lasted for seven months. No noble deeds
of valour and chivalry distinguished the German
Paladin’s emprise; he accomplished his work by the
slow and cruel hand of famine. Every gate was closely
blockaded, and all compassionate bearers of food from
outside to the starving people were almost without
exception captured, and either ruthlessly scourged or
maimed of the right hand. Frederick showed the
besieged none of the respect due to gallant foes.
He strung up his prisoners on gallows, nobles and
plebeians alike, in the view of their kinsfolk and friends
within, or sent them back sightless into the city.
Within the walls, hunger reached such a pitch that in
their madness husbands and wives, fathers and sons,
turned upon one another. The hideous selfishness of
bodily need disfigured the gaunt faces in the streets, while
the spectacle of the mutilated wretches who had passed
through the Emperor’s hands, breathed into all hearts
dreadful apprehensions of their future fate. In their
despair the people cried out for surrender, and at last
the Consuls, aware of the inflexibility of the foe, and
fearing that to resist longer was to sacrifice the entire
people to the extremity of his vengeance, threw themselves
upon the mercy of the Emperor, and surrendered
the city at discretion (1162).

The scenes which follow paint vividly for us the
tragedy of the great city’s downfall. The magnitude
of the punishment which Frederick meted out to Milan
invests him with a kind of sublimity. This was his
opportunity to deliver a blow which should resound to
the four corners of the earth, and accomplish, once for
all, by the horror of its mere narration, the subjugation
of the rest of rebellious Lombardy. None knew better
50than this mediæval monarch how to surround his revenge
with all those awful aspects and illusions of terror that
impress the minds of men. Day after day, processions
of citizens, with bowed heads, and ropes round their
necks, presented themselves before him at his command,
as he sat enthroned in state in rebuilt Lodi, the Empress
Beatrice at his side, his vassal kings and princes on
either hand, and still the doom of the city remained
unspoken. The eight Consuls—some of the noblest
patricians of Milan—came, holding their naked swords
in their right hands, and swore to do the will of the
Conqueror. Next appeared three hundred cavaliers, and
kissing the Emperor’s foot, delivered up to him the
Milanese standards; while to Mastro Guitelmo, a
man much revered by his fellow-citizens, was committed
the bitter charge of laying the keys at his feet.
Still another mark of humiliation was demanded of
them, and a day or two later came the Sacred Car
itself, with the banner of the Cross, and all the most
venerable insignia of the Republic, to be surrendered
for the completion of Milan’s shame.

Then at last the voice from the throne spoke, commanding
that beside every gate of the city the fosse
should be filled up and the walls destroyed, so that he
might march in in triumph. Milan—who for centuries
had proudly claimed the right of keeping all sovereigns
excluded from the enclosure of her walls—was now
herself to lay low her defences to admit a victorious
monarch. A few days later Frederick made his
entrance with his army over the ruined walls, and the
dreadful fiat went forth, dooming the great city to complete
destruction. The inhabitants were ordered to
quit their homes, taking with them what they could
carry. No entreaty, no tears, even of his own followers,
could move Frederick’s resolve. The piteous spectacle
of the outcast people, huddled in masses outside
51the walls in the bitter cold of March, homeless, not
knowing where to go, and uttering loud lamentations,
could not change his inexorable purpose. With an
extremity of cruelty he committed the work of ruin to
Milan’s neighbours and bitterest foes—the men of
Lodi, Pavia, Novara, Como, Cremona—all burning to
retaliate a thousand wrongs. They threw themselves
with fury upon the doomed buildings, each community
satiating its vengeance on the quarter facing towards
its own city. In a very few days an incredible
amount of destruction was wrought. But it was the work
of months to raze to the ground the towers, the fine
palaces and public buildings, many of them surviving
from the days of the Roman Empire, and the crowded
habitations of a vast population. The churches and
religious houses alone were spared, and for a while the
campanile of the Cathedral, a tower of admirable beauty
and height, which had not its like, they say, in all Italy,
still rose untouched above the ruins, a beacon of consolation
to the despairing people. But at last, the
implacable decree of the conqueror pronounced its sentence,
and that, too, fell. Finally not more than a fifth
part of the fair city, which men called the flower of
Italy—the May City—was left standing.

From the spectacle of burning Milan, which he
watched with his own eyes, the magnanimous Avenger
passed on with his Empress to celebrate the Feast of
Olives at Pavia! Frederick was now the dread of
all Italy. The trembling cities of Lombardy crept to
his feet and kissed them. The crown of Italy,
hitherto withheld from him and now conceded by
fear, was set upon his head. As for the Milanese,
crowded in the poor villages and suburbs around their
ruined city, and barely able to exist, they were fain to
accept any conditions which he imposed.

But the great Emperor’s fortunes had reached the
52flood, and the turn was at hand. To have made his
triumph enduring he must have exterminated all
Lombardy. While the Milanese people breathed, the
Republic lived in spirit, only awaiting the least relief
from the pressure of the conqueror to take substance
once again. And now that its sins and arrogance
had been wiped out by such an awful expiation, the
hatred and jealousy of the sister Communes changed to
compassion. The deep roots of a common nationality
began to stir. Moreover, all were enslaved alike, all
groaned together under the intolerable oppression of
the imperial officers who had been substituted for their
old system of self-government. ‘They who had
been used to live without restraint at ease and in
liberty, and to dispose of their own affairs according
to their will, held this bondage as the deepest shame,
saying among themselves that it was better to
die than to suffer such shame, such dishonour,’
writes Morena. Ground down with grievous and
irregular taxation, their noblest citizens flung as
hostages into the governors’ dungeons, their industry
and commerce strangled, they began to regard war
even with the terrible Barbarossa as preferable to this
degradation and slow ruin. Their spirit of revolt was
encouraged by that great counterbalancing power to
the Empire, the Papacy, which after a period of schism
and depression was lifting its head once more. In
Alexander III., now completely victorious over the
rival Pope Victor, nominated by Barbarossa, the Communes
found that inspiration and direction which it
was Rome’s traditional part to give to the cause of
freedom and nationality. The papal excommunication
laid upon their oppressor gave the consecration of
a religious cause to rebellion. Fomented by secret
emissaries from Rome, the movement grew and
gathered head. Disturbances broke out everywhere
53in North Italy, and culminated in a meeting of envoys
from five Communes—Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona,
Mantua, Ferrara—with the delegates of Milan at a convent
near Bergamo (1167), and the formation of a defensive
alliance, which was to become the famous Lombard
League. The first thing resolved on by the allies was
the rebuilding of Milan and the protection of the city
from every foe until she should grow strong enough to
defend herself. A week or two later the unhappy
Milanese, huddling together in their wretched hovels,
and momentarily expecting a second destruction from
their old enemies of Pavia, were rejoiced at the sight
of the horsemen of Bergamo, with their banner displayed,
riding swiftly to their succour. Troops from the
other friendly cities followed. The Milanese were
solemnly conducted into their ruined city on the 27th
April 1167, and the work of restoration began. With
marvellous rapidity new walls and dwellings grew up.
Gathering confidence and strength every day, the
League soon broke into active hostility against those
communities which remained faithful to the Emperor,
and the castles occupied by his garrisons. Lodi was
compelled by force to join the new fellowship. Fresh
accessions came continually, and by the end of the
following year the League numbered twenty-three
cities, all sworn to resist the usurpations of the emperor
with the sword. Pavia, almost alone, remained aloof,
faithful to her hate of Milan.

Frederick, returning hastily from a campaign against
the Pope, found his castles captured, Milan re-risen
defiant from her ashes, and all North Italy armed against
him. The Emperor was not equal to this new situation.
His former triumph had, in fact, only been achieved by
the aid of a part of the cities themselves, and his
German levies, diminished by fighting and pestilence,
were powerless to contend with a vast hostile combination
54of all together. His army and his very person
were in utmost peril. There was one way only of
salvation for him—retreat. In a manner very different
to the majesty of his coming, with furtive haste, unknown
even to his allies, he stole back to Germany
early in 1168.

Six years passed before the Emperor felt himself
strong enough to confront his rebellious vassals again.
In his prolonged absence the Lombard League had
acquired mighty strength. Milan had arisen from her
chastening of shame and sorrow stronger and more
honourable than before. Renouncing her old vexatious
claims upon her smaller neighbours, she now contented
herself with the dignity of leadership among the Communes.
The League gathered itself together to meet
the new onslaught of Barbarossa, and though he spread
terror and desolation throughout the land, his effort to
subdue the steady resistance of the cities was fruitless.
His purpose was contrary to the laws of nature, and the
stars in their courses fought against him. Pavia, Como
and the Marquis of Montferrat supported him alone of
all North Italy. In May 1176, impatient to strike a
crushing blow against the rebels, Frederick was marching
with new reinforcements from Germany to join his
Lombard allies when, a few miles from Milan, between
Busto Arsizio and Legnano, he encountered the
Milanese army, which had come forth with the Sacred
Car in its midst to stay his progress. A great battle
took place. Driven back at first by the Teuton cavalry,
the Republican soldiers, who had taken a desperate vow
to conquer or to die, rallied around the Caroccio, and
fought with such obstinate courage that they beat back
every assault of the foe, and at last, with a sudden rush,
utterly routed them and drove them into flight. The
slain, the captives, and the fugitives drowned in the
Ticino could not be numbered. The monarch’s treasure-chest
55fell into the hands of the victors, and a more
precious booty still, his shield, his banner and his lance.
His very person was missing after the battle, and the
Empress, waiting in the Castle of Baradello, clothed
herself in black and mourned him for dead. He had,
however, escaped in safety, and a few days later made
his way to Pavia.

The splendid victory of Legnano decided once and
for all the fate of Lombardy. Frederick realised at
last the strength of the despised citizen forces, and condescended
to seek for peace. In the following year
(1177) at Venice was held that famous meeting of Pope,
Emperor and the Consuls of the Lombard Communes,
at which legend and art express the humiliation of the
invader and the triumph of Italy, by picturing the monarch
prostrate beneath the foot of the Pope. A truce
of six years was agreed upon at this Congress, and at
the end of that period the famous Peace of Constance
(1183) finally confirmed to the cities all the privileges
for which they had so nobly fought. The right of self-government,
of war and peace, the possession of the
regalia, with other minor prerogatives, were secured to
them in perpetuity, and the only dues to be paid by
them to the Emperor were a ceremonial fealty, an
annual tribute, certain supplies when he visited the
country in person, and the acceptance of his legate as
the ultimate judge in the courts of judicature.

Thus did Lombardy win freedom. For reborn
Milan, her new position and dignity was signalised in
1186 by the appearance of her late foe and oppressor
in the character of a gracious guest, and the celebration
of the marriage of his son, Henry, King of the Romans,
with Constance of Sicily, in the basilica of St. Ambrogio.
But the narrow crooked streets that had grown hastily
up around the churches, and the few surviving fragments
from the destruction of 1162, were no image of the imperial
56Milan of the past, nor did the fair words and
mutual promises of friendship which passed between
Frederick and the citizens express the real feelings of
either party. When, sick at the failure of his worldly
projects, the yet vigorous warrior turned his ambition to
that holier enterprise, the conquest of the Sepulchre of
Christ, and leaping one hot day into an insignificant stream
in Syria, was drowned in its shallow flow, all Milan
broke into rejoicing. Nor was there ever kindness between
the Republic and his descendants. The Milanese
consistently opposed and thwarted the policy of Henry
VI., and after his early death did their utmost to depress
the House of Suabia by warmly supporting Otho IV.
against the interests of Henry’s infant son Frederick.

During the reign of Otho, while the political field
was divided between him and the young Suabian prince,
the disputed imperial authority had no power to harm,
and Milan was free to resume the interrupted process
of development and expansion. As before, this process
was not a peaceful one. The subsidence of the Teutonic
flood had left behind bitter dregs in Lombardy
in the shape of new causes of feud and animosity
between individual Communes. Relieved from the
pressure of Frederick’s tyranny, the cities readjusted
themselves on the lines of their former divisions. The
Lombard League broke up into warring elements, and
the restless land fermented with a cruel internecine strife.

57

ATRIUM OF ST. AMBROGIO

58But when, some years later, Frederick II., grown to
manhood, had cast off the bondage in which the Pope
had fettered his youth, and seated on the imperial
throne proved himself indeed the third blast of Suabia,
heir in spirit as in blood of his mighty grandsire, the
Communes proved true to one another, and to the newly
threatened cause of freedom, and the great Lombard
League, with Milan at its head, sprang to life again to
face the tyrant. During the long and desolating wars
59which Frederick’s ambition inflicted upon North Italy,
Milan steadfastly fought against him, even when most
of her fellows had been induced by fear or self-interest
to desert the good cause. Late in 1237 her army,
which had marched to the aid of the Brescians, was
surprised by the imperial host at Cortenuova and
suffered a crushing defeat. Multitudes of her soldiers
perished, and the Sacred Car itself, stuck fast in
morasses, had to be abandoned in the retreat. Its
defenders were able, however, to save the Cross and
Banner, and break the car to pieces. Frederick’s exultation
over these fragments, upon which he bound the
captive Podestà of Milan, Pietro Tiepolo, son of the
Doge of Venice, and dragged him, in imitation of a
Roman triumph, through the streets of Cremona, is a
measure of the importance which he attached to his
victory over the Lombard city.

With the defeat of Cortenuova the cause of the
Communes seemed lost. All trembled beneath
the heel of the conqueror, save Milan and the
‘lioness’ Brescia, and one or two others. To the
Emperor’s summons to surrender at discretion the
Milanese returned messages of defiance. They had
the support of the Pope, whose emissaries, the mendicant
friars, mingled everywhere with the masses of the
people, exhorting them to resistance. In 1239,
Gregory proclaimed a crusade against the oppressor,
whose destruction thus became a sacred obligation upon
the faithful. The Cross and the Sceptre, irreconcilable
emblems, now confronted each other with a clear
and definite issue.

A year and a half passed after Cortenuova before
Frederick actually invaded the Milanese territory.
The Republic, heartened by the magnificent example of
Brescia, whose successful resistance to a nine months’
siege had delayed the Emperor’s designs against the
60chief city and greatly dimmed his military glory, went
boldly forth to meet him. A noble of gigantic stature,
named Ottobello da Mandello, towering in his mail of
proof over friends and foes alike, led the citizen knights
undauntedly against Frederick’s Saracen troops from
Sicily, whose dark faces and infidel garb, joined to
ferocious courage, made them a name of terror
throughout Italy. With the Milanese fought Gregorio
da Montelungo, papal legate, and the Franciscan Fra
Leone da Perego, afterwards Archbishop of Milan,
besides a great number of friars, Minor, Preaching
and Umiliati, who not only, girding themselves with
swords and putting on helmets, displayed the false
image of soldiers, but also excited the citizens to the
conflict by promising absolution to all who offended
the person of the Emperor or of any of his followers,
as Frederick himself complained in a letter to the King
of England. No regular pitched battle, however, took
place. The Republicans fought with the stratagem of
those attacked in their own country, and by cunningly
entangling the enemy amid their streams and canals,
opening dams and loosing the waters upon him, plunging
him into hidden pitfalls, and surprising him with
sudden attacks in his most embarrassed moments, drove
him by the aid of sword and flood out of their
territory.

Six years later (1245) the Emperor again invaded
the Milanese country, which in the meanwhile had
been laid bare by a desolating war of several years with
his ally, Pavia. But fortune was still against him. His
son Enzo, newly created King of Sardinia, encountering
a citizen force one day, ventured himself too boldly
in single combat with a Republican knight, and was
overthrown and made prisoner. Frederick, having
obtained his release, withdrew his army, and made no
further attempt to subdue the great Lombard city.

61Thus was Milan’s account with the House of Suabia
closed for ever. With the failure of Frederick’s
fortunes and his death in 1250 was extinguished the
last appearance of that great mediæval idea—the Holy
Roman Empire—as a dangerous element in Italian politics.
The imperial tradition might linger on and cause a
temporary disturbance from time to time in the peninsula,
influencing the vicissitudes of its internal quarrels,
but it had no longer power to revolutionise or molest
the settled constitution of the free Lombard Communes.
The mediæval triumph of Italy over the foreigner was
accomplished. In the course of the last two centuries,
Milan, in whose development is mirrored that of all
Lombardy, had completely asserted and defined her
nationality. In her Church, in her constitution, law
and sentiment, she was now one at last with the rest of
Italy. It remained for her, leader in the long struggle
now happily determined, to produce in the epoch of
Strong Men which was about to succeed the epoch of
the People, the man strong enough to overthrow all
rivals and to weld the many independent cities and
States of the peninsula into a united Italy under an
Italian king. How she tried to do this and failed will
be seen later.

So wrote a Milanese chronicler in the sixteenth
century. Had the people but one mind, he adds,
assuredly no city would be more pleasant and fortunate
than theirs. His complaint holds equally good for the
thirteenth century. The presence of a foreign invader
did indeed produce a temporary union of heart and hand,
and so far the earlier generations show a noble contrast
to their descendants of three hundred years later. But
even while Frederick II. was still in the land, and in
response to opportunities of selfish advantage offered by
alliance with him, there were constant defections from
the League, and we find the whole of North Italy
seething with the warfare of city against city. After
his death, when the mutual rage and hate was no longer
checked by any fear of a general oppressor, the strife was
continued with worse fury under the diabolical names of
Guelf and Ghibelline, to use the expression of a contemporary
writer, the divisions between city and city
being repeated within each community itself. The
Lombard scene dissolves into a whirling confusion of
fratricidal war, in which beneath the cross-currents
and blind purposes of individual passion and greed, we
may distinguish the two steady principles of the Church
and democracy on the one side, and the aristocratic and
feudal element, deriving its right from the Empire, on
the other. In Milan the issue, which had long before
63defined itself as a struggle between nobles and people,
remains fairly clear. The plebeians had forced their
way more and more into the government. Their right
to share in the election of the Consuls had been long
conceded, and some among them had even taken a
place in that august body. In 1198 they had acquired
the strength of union and organisation by forming themselves
into an association calling itself the Credenza di
Saint Ambrogio, with elective magistrates and officers
of its own, and a certain share in the government and
the revenues of the community. This body consisted
of the lesser trades and guilds, but excluded the mass
of poorer artisans and labourers. The merchants,
bankers, traders in wool, etc., had their corporation
also; the lesser nobles were banded in a society called
the Motta, and the great nobles formed the Società dei
Gagliardi, so that no less than four factions existed in
Milan at the opening of the thirteenth century, besides
the populace, which threw its weight on one side or
another, with the quick inconsistency of irresponsibility
and impulse. Each faction had its separate claims and
ambitions, but the tendency of the three lower ones
was to unite against the great nobles, who, amid continual
uproar and conflict, were gradually stripped of
their exclusive power and privileges. And in 1258
the last and most sacred enclosure of their caste was
stormed and carried by the Vulgar: a decree of the
Republic threw open the highest offices of the Ambrosian
Church to plebeians. The twelfth and thirteenth
centuries were, in fact, the Epoch of the People,
and though all classes, high and low, fought loyally
together against Barbarossa and Frederick II., it was the
democratic preponderance in the city which determined
its steady opposition to the imperial pretensions. The
same principle threw Milan on the Guelf side, which
she upheld with ardour in the general Lombard warfare,
64manifesting her party zeal especially in a fierce
intermittent war with Pavia. That city was as necessarily
Ghibelline, though the party cry on either side
was but the excuse for the efforts of the one to hasten
and the other to delay the inevitable absorption of the
lesser by the greater.

With the power of the people was associated as of
old the predominance of papal influence in the city
and the depression of the archiepiscopal See. St. Peter
had now completely subjected St. Ambrose. The
assumption of supremacy in temporal as well as
spiritual matters on the part of the Popes, their
constant interference by means of legates, the activity
of their innumerable and ubiquitous agents, the friars,
had indeed reduced the seat of Ariberto to comparative
insignificance, while the decay of feudal power and
the depression of the aristocracy had robbed it of its
wealth. But even assisted by the Pope, and at the
height of their strength and triumph, the popular
forces were impotent to establish any enduring order
in the city. The nobles were still too powerful
to submit peaceably to political inferiority. Moreover,
as the offices and honours once confined to them became
open to all, the successful and wealthy plebeians tended
to join the upper class, which began to lose distinction
of race in that of wealth and ability. The aristocracy,
thus continually replenished with new blood, received
fresh vigour and life, and the old divisions gradually
merged into two classes, the milites, who fought on
horseback and in armour, and the plebs, or general mass
of citizens, who, little trained and lightly armed,
accompanied the horsemen into battle on foot. The
struggle between these two radical orders transformed
Milan’s short period of republican liberty into a scene
of anarchy and civil warfare, leading to the inevitable
end of faction and strife, the tyranny of an individual.

65Already by the end of the twelfth century the
struggle of the factions over the annual election of the
Consuls occasioned so much tumult and bloodshed,
that the citizens in despair agreed with one accord
to submit themselves to the government of a Podestà
chosen from outside. But this device for peace ended
by aggravating the strife. The faction uppermost for
the time appointed a fierce partisan from another city,
perhaps the leader of an exiled faction, who embroiled
Milan with his own Commune, and exalted his sympathisers
within her walls at the expense of the other
party. The general discontent and disorder was
reflected in constant changes in the Constitution. In
the absence of any stable principle of government the
power tended to fall into the hands of individuals.
This was the opportunity of the nobles, from whose
order the leaders of men naturally sprang. Taking
advantage of the forces ready to their hands, these put
themselves at the head of aristocrats or plebs, without
much regard for principle, and in so doing resumed
their ancient pre-eminence in the community, and
initiated the new Epoch of Great Men, which was
to succeed the failing Epoch of the People.

This process, at work throughout Lombardy, is
shown in the second half of the thirteenth century in
Milan by the gradual narrowing of the general party
issue into a struggle for predominance between two
great Houses, who represent and sum up in their
mutual quarrel the diverse aims of the factions, and
divide the community into two sharply defined and
bitterly hostile bands, which fall inevitably, though by
no means very precisely, into the wide general division
of Guelf and Ghibelline. These were the Houses
of the Della Torre, or Torriani, and of the Visconti.

In the race for supremacy the first far outstripped
the second. The Della Torre were country nobles,
66who had, however, long been subjects and citizens of
Milan, and though living usually on their estates in the
Valsassina, they often appeared in the city and took
part in its government and politics. They are named
among the Capitani—the great secular nobles of Milan—from
early in the twelfth century. They had from
the first aided and protected the cause of the people
against their own order, and it was this sympathy
which lifted them to greatness on the democratic wave
of the thirteenth century.

The power of this House in Milan arose first out of
the gratitude of the city for the compassionate succour
which Pagano della Torre, head of the House in 1237,
gave to the wounded and starving fugitives from the
disastrous battle of Cortenuova, whom he sheltered
and tended in the Valsassina, and afterwards helped to
get back safely to Milan. The Commune rewarded
him with offices and with gifts of houses, and from
that time the Torriani became regular inhabitants of the
city and the principal leaders of the people’s faction.

Pagano the Good himself died in 1241, but left a
numerous kindred to inherit his popularity. In this
year Frate Leone da Perego was elected Archbishop
of Milan. The new Primate secretly aspired to raise
his See to its old power and importance, and to shake
off the tutelage of the Pope, and though but a year or
two before he had fought loyally, as we have seen,
beside the papal legate in the ranks marshalled against
Frederick II., he now put himself at the head of the
aristocratic party, and even invoked, it may be suspected,
the aid of the powerful forces of heresy. But
against the nobles was ranged Martino della Torre,
nephew of Pagano, as leader of the people, who, in
1249, elected him their head with the title of Anziano,—Ancient—of
the Credenza, and the Franciscan Leone
was more than matched by the Dominican Pietro da
67Verona, whose zeal, sanctity, and awful inquisitorial
powers were the strongest support of the Papacy in
Milan. The murder of the Inquisitor in 1252 was
almost certainly prompted by partisan motives. But
it failed signally in its political as in its sectarian purpose,
and for Papacy, people, and the Dominican
Order alike, the bloody crown of the Martyr became
an emblem of united strength and triumph. His death
was followed by insurrections of the people. After
a few years of comparative peace under the strong
Podestà Manfredo Lancia, the feud between the two
parties broke out afresh, and the Archbishop and nobles
were driven out of the city. The following year a reconciliation
took place (1257), and was solemnly confirmed
in a treaty called the ‘Peace of St. Ambrose.’
In this the privileges already won by the popular party
were formally conceded to them. All dignities and
offices in the Commune, from the highest minister down
to the town-trumpeter, were to be equally divided
between the nobles and the Plebeians. Both sides
swore to observe the peace in perpetuity. Yet two
months later it was broken, and the nobles once more
banished by the all-powerful Della Torre. They
united with the Ghibellines of the other cities, and
even treated with the terrible Ezzelino da Romano,
whom the trembling populations of North Italy believed
to be the son of the Devil. They promised him the
Lordship of Milan if he would aid them, and in 1259,
the last desperate year of his evil course, the Trevisan
chief, issuing forth from Brescia, made a sudden
stealthy dash with his famous horsemen upon the city.
Martino della Torre, deceived as to the invader’s
movements, had led the Milanese to meet him in
another direction, and the city was undefended for the
moment, and must have fallen into Ezzelino’s hands
had not warning reached Martino just in time for him
68to hasten home and man the walls, thus defeating
Ezzelino’s purpose.

The growing power of the Della Torre began before
long to rouse suspicion and distrust in Rome, in spite
of their steady championship of the popular cause.
The hold of the Papacy upon Milan was in fact somewhat
uncertain. The people still remembered with
pride the ancient tradition of their Church, and were inclined
at times to resent the constant interference of
the Pope and his inquisitorial friars. In this feeling
lay the possibility of a union between the Archbishop
and the democratic party, which it was the policy of
Rome to avert, even at the cost of prolonging and
aggravating the miserable state of civil war in Milan.
On the death of Frate Leone in 1257, the Della Torre
sought to raise Raimondo, a son of Pagano the Good,
to the archiepiscopal throne. Their intention was
defeated by the opposition of the nobles, secretly instigated
by Urban IV., and after some years of controversy
over the vacant seat, Urban, thinking to hold
the balance of parties in his own hands, appointed to it
Otto Visconte (1263). The paradoxical spectacle of
the Pope raising a Ghibelline noble to power, and the
noble accepting it from the Pope—one of those strange
eddies constantly occurring in the political current of
the day—was completed by the alliance of the Della
Torre with the celebrated Captain, Oberto da Pellavicino,
protector of heretics, close comrade once of
Ezzelino and the Ghibellines, and mortal foe of the
Church. Into the hands of this typical figure of the
North Italian drama, Martino, pressed by the hostility
of the nobles and the secret machinations of the Pope,
had in 1259 surrendered the Lordship of Milan for five
years. Under his leadership the Torriani oppressed
the friars, drove out the papal legate, Cardinal Ottaviano
da Ubaldino, and on the elevation of Otto Visconte to
69the See, seized upon all the episcopal territories and
revenues, and kept the new prelate for years out of his
ecclesiastical capital. Pope Urban retaliated with
spiritual thunders, and Milan lay long under the heavy
spell of the papal interdict.

The Visconti and the Torriani were already deadly
foes. The House of the Snake, which in Archbishop
Otto, was now about to begin its great ascent, to the
overthrow and destruction of the Tower of its rivals,
probably derived its origin and name from one of the
Viscounts of the Carlovingian rule, who had succeeded
in converting the territory entrusted to his administration
into an hereditary appanage. It was, in any case, of great
antiquity in the city. The famous cognizance which
its later career invested with a peculiar terror, is said to
have been won by a noble crusader of the House, also
an Otto, in single combat with a Saracen, who carried
a shield emblazoned with the device of a seven-coiled
serpent devouring a child. Otto slew the Saracen and
adopted the device, which he transmitted to his descendants,
and with it who knows what mysterious and
persistent curse of guile and cruelty?

It is with Archbishop Otto, however, that the real
fortunes of the House begin. Strong, crafty and determined,
with a power of biding his time observable
in a singular degree in all the notable members of his
race, Otto was the right man to foster and direct the
gradually reviving power of the nobles in Milan and
lead them to victory over the Della Torre and the
people. But for fifteen years he fought and intrigued
in vain, leading his fellow-exiles and the forlorn hope
of the Ghibelline party in Lombardy against the swelling
tide of Guelf success, which the death of Ezzelino
da Romano, the overthrow of the House of Suabia in
Manfred and Corradino, and the ascendency of Anjou in
the South, had brought to the full. The domination of
70the Torriani seemed to become every day more assured.
Heads of the Lombard League, Martino and his family
were all-powerful in North Italy. They drove the
Ghibellines out of the surrounding cities, and established
their own sympathisers in power everywhere. Many
of the Communes accepted the actual sway of the great
House. Martino died in 1263, and was buried in the
Monastery of Chiaravalle. He was succeeded by his
brother Filippo, on whose death, two years later, Napo,
a son of the good Pagano, assumed the chieftainship.

CHIARAVALLE

Meanwhile the capital itself, spared, under the protection
71of these great lords, the bloody succession of
sieges and captures which laid waste its neighbours,
where the more evenly balanced parties caused revolutions
with bewildering frequency, increased rapidly in
wealth and luxury. The narrow, tortuous streets overflowed
with the full, rich-coloured, sharply chequered
life of the thirteenth century. Some terrible scene of
Ghibelline prisoners slaughtered in the market-place,
and dragged, mangled and bleeding, at the tails of horses
through the streets, with yelling crowds of children after
them, is succeeded by a May-Day holiday, when the
most illustrious youths and maidens of the city, splendidly
adorned, ‘weave joyful dances’ beneath pavilions
spread in all the open spaces. And the blue sky roofing
the sunny squares is suddenly darkened by the smoke
ascending from the death-pyre of a heretic, while lean
mendicant Brothers look on with triumph, certain that
the cry which comes from that breaking chrysalis is
the voice of the Devil discomfited. Now troops,
knights and men-at-arms in clanking armour, with
tattered banners held high, trample in over the drawbridge,
returning from some exploit against the Ghibellines.
Or it is a multitude of moaning Flagellants, in
white shrouds stained with blood, whose self-inflicted
lashes can scarcely fall fast enough to keep time with
the pangs of their guilty consciences, as they hurl themselves
against the gates, which the stout captains of the
city keep shut, judging that fifteen different sects within
their walls are enough, without admitting these crazy
penitents to upset the unsteady minds of the people.

The narrow streets were filled with the hum of busy
industries. Fine palaces and comfortable dwellings
abounded, with wells and mills and all the necessaries of
a prosperous existence. But wealth and its pleasant
habits were causing the Milanese to forget the liberty
for which they had once made all sacrifice. That word
72of sinister omen—Signore—was heard without protest
among them. They had granted the title voluntarily to
Martino della Torre, and both he and Filippo called
themselves Perpetual Lords of Milan. The people
preferred a domination which at least secured them
peace, to the loss and suffering caused by continual
civil struggles. Moreover, absorbed in trade and in
peaceful industry, they had no time or inclination
for the rapidly developing art of war, and a class
of highly trained professional soldiers, fully equipped
with weapons and armour, who engaged themselves for
hire to any Commune, were superseding more and more
the old city militia, composed of all the able-bodied
men. These mercenaries, who owned no allegiance except
to the master who paid them, lent enormous power to
the ruler of a city, who, by means of them, was able to
overawe discontent in the people. Thus, aided by the
conditions of the times, the Torriani gradually established
a virtual despotism over Milan, though careful
not to alarm the popular mind by any grander sounding
titles. It was not long, however, before they abandoned
even this degree of caution, and in 1273 Napo persuaded
the Emperor Rudolph to grant him the title of
Imperial Vicar of Milan, thus obtaining a legal sanction
for his usurpation.

73

VIA DEL PESCE

74Napo was a wise and prudent man, but in this step
he went too far. The Della Torre fortune was even
then on the wane. The Milanese might rejoice in the
peace which despotism bestowed, but they loudly resented
being called upon to pay for it by new and heavy
taxation, and all the lovers of liberty feared the novel
and arrogant title of Imperial Vicar. Among the supporters
of the ruling House themselves, the long course
of power enjoyed by the Torriani had bred envy and
enmity. Dissensions arose, and the discontented were
punished by spoliation and banishment. Numbers abandoned
75the party and joined Otto Visconte. Tumults
shook the city once more, and sedition secretly gathered
head. Napo, feeling his power slipping from him, used
the cruel and tyrannous measures of despair to save
himself and his House. Otto and the exiles, on the
other hand, braced by adversity and clinging together
in a determined band, were daily gaining strength.
They were aided by the other Ghibellines of Lombardy,
especially by the Pavesi, and with continual attacks and
raids upon the Milanese territory they strove to vex and
weaken the party in power. Nevertheless, for some
years still their cause seemed hopeless. The Della
Torre, who had cast off Oberto da Pellavicino when
they were strong enough to do without him, had
reconciled themselves with the Papacy in 1274, and
their great prestige was apparently strong enough to defy
defections and subdue discontent.

But time and circumstance were steadily undermining
the great House, and with a sudden crash it fell. On
a certain January night in 1277, the wife of Matteo
Visconte was delivered, we are told, of her first son,
who, because he was born ad cantu galli, as the
cocks were crowing—heralding a false dawn, as their
habit is in winter midnights—was named Galeazzo,
first of the many of that name who were to crow over
Milan. It was at this very moment that Otto Visconte—who,
with his great-nephew, father of the new-born
babe, and the rest of his kinsmen, had been making
desperate attacks upon various points in the Milanese
country, with little success so far—was creeping stealthily
in the darkness, at the head of a strong body of fighting
men, towards Desio, a village ten miles from Milan,
where the Della Torre, disdainful of their oft-beaten
foe, were sleeping encamped, with but a small force and
under a careless watch. Awakened by the noise of
attack, these latter rushed to arms; but too late. The
76enemy was in their midst. Francesco della Torre, son
of Napo, fell pierced with wounds. The chief himself,
overthrown in his weighty armour, lay grieving helplessly
upon the ground, and with a crowd of sons and kinsmen
was made captive. All was over. Otto Visconte
rode victorious at last into Milan, where the citizens,
who had heard of the discomfiture of their lords as they
were starting with the Caroccio to the rescue, suited
their faith to the occasion, and with immense applause
and jubilee proclaimed the prelate Lord of Milan.

Thus, by the hazard of a moment’s battle, the long
supremacy of the Torriani was overthrown. Napo was
imprisoned in the terrible Tower of Baradello, whose
ruins still crest a hill a mile or two on the Milanese
side of Como. Here, within the bars of a cage, the once
mighty chief languished for a year and a half till he died.

Meanwhile, the change of ruler had brought the city
none of the relief from war and its burdensome cost,
which the people had fondly expected. The kinsmen
and adherents of the exiled family in the city were very
numerous and strong, and the whole Guelf party in
Lombardy was anxious to bring about the restoration
of the Torriani. The new Lord of Milan was attacked
with fury, and could only maintain himself by the energetic
use of the sword, and by those same methods of
proscription and banishment with which his predecessors
had made themselves odious.

Otto was now, however, an old man, and worn out
by the ceaseless struggles of his life. His mind was
beset with the fears and suspicions of one who, under
the stress of ambition, had himself practised overmuch
deceit and treachery, and some years before
his death, in 1295, he had surrendered the chieftainship
to the young and ambitious Matteo. With
extraordinary prudence and sagacity, Matteo steered
his way amid the rocks and stormy waves of his
77course, beating back the open attacks of his enemies,
matching their plots and snares with an invincible
subtlety, and so ingratiating himself with the citizens
by a show of moderation, piety and benevolence, that
in a few years his somewhat unstable authority had
transmuted itself, in accordance with the apparent will
of the people, into virtual sovereignty. By force of
craft rather than arms he had made himself master in
Como, Alexandria, Novara and the Montferrat territory,
and his conciliatory policy towards the opposite
party won for him enormous influence as arbitrator in
the disputes which ever racked Lombardy. He even
propitiated Pope Boniface VIII. by politic concessions,
which in no way lessened his own power. In 1294
his gifts and flattery prevailed upon the Emperor
Adolfo to grant him the potent title of Imperial Vicar
of Lombardy.

But the stealthy march of the Visconte’s ambition
did not go unchecked. His pretensions roused the
Guelf party to new efforts against him, and the impetuosity
and recklessness of his sons as they grew up
wrecked his careful plans, and excited once more to
fiery heat those party passions which it was his aim to
smooth and allay. His love for the splendid Galeazzo,
born at the cock-crow of the Viscontean day,
was the father’s undoing. In pursuance of his policy
of tranquillising the party strife which forbade all stable
and settled government in North Italy, Matteo made a
marriage for this son with Beatrice d’Este, widow of
Nino Visconte, Judge of Gallura, and sister of the
Marquis of Ferrara, recognised chief of the Guelf
party in Lombardy. The marriage was of evil omen
for the Visconti. We all know those sad words on
the little durability of woman’s love which fall from
the ghost of the forgotten husband in the Purgatorio.^[1]

78The foreboding of disaster which they contain was
justified; for though in the end the Viper was able to
give Beatrice as fine a sepulture as the Cock of Gallura
could have done, yet the events which soon fell out
might well have made her regret the bende bianche
which she had exchanged for the bridal garland. The
marriage, far from reconciling the two political parties,
had only thrown together a pair of extremely hot and
indiscreet heads in Galeazzo and Azzo VIII. of Ferrara.
The vast ambitions which both were suspected
of nourishing roused the fear of Guelfs and Ghibellines
alike. Appointed Captain of the Milanese people,
Galeazzo only succeeded in alienating the citizens and
strengthening his enemies by his injudicious and unfortunate
military enterprises. The Torriani and their
partisans, who had long suffered eclipse, had begun to
regain influence and allies, and a formidable league was
formed in Lombardy to overthrow the Visconti. A
long struggle followed, and day by day Matteo’s power
waned in the city. The people, whose inveterate distrust
of the nobles his sagacity and conciliatory measures
had been unable to overcome, grew more and more
discontented. Jealousy of the Visconte’s power, and
resentment at his policy towards the Guelfs, had alienated
many of the nobles themselves. The day came
when Matteo perceived that his position was no longer
tenable. Without waiting for a catastrophe which might
have ruined his House for ever, he quietly abandoned
the city to his foes and took his departure (1302).

The Guelf supporters of the Della Torre now entered
Milan, and were received with a great outburst of popular
joy. A short period of anarchy followed, caused by
the nobles, who had helped to drive out the Visconti,
but had no desire to see the Della Torre in their place.
After a few months, however, the sons of Napo succeeded
by the favour of the lower classes, to whom their
79name was still dear, in restoring themselves to power,
while in all the surrounding cities, whose fortunes were
always bound up with Milan’s, their partisans drove
out the Ghibellines and reinstated the Guelfs.

Mosca, Guido, and Enrico della Torre now ruled
the city, at first with a show of deference to the will of
the Republic, but after a few years with a sovereignty
fuller than that which the Visconti had enjoyed. The
people were, in fact, accustoming themselves to a single
rule. In 1307 Mosca died, and Guido assumed sole
authority. Meanwhile the Visconti were dispersed in
various directions. Galeazzo and his wife Beatrice
had taken refuge with her kindred at Ferrara, and the
other sons of Matteo had found places of safety where
the powerful alliances of the family secured them from
pursuit by the Della Torre. The shrewd chief himself,
after vainly attempting to reverse the fortune of
war, had withdrawn to a remote country villa on the
Lake of Garda, and having apparently renounced all
public activity, was passing his time in the innocent
pastimes of fishing and thinking. But his keen eye
watched every movement on the field of politics. He
had spies and agents everywhere, and was but waiting
the moment for a spring upon his foes. With cynical
satisfaction he noted the inevitable course of the new
tyranny in Milan; the jealousy and suspicion awaking
within the city itself, and in the subjects and allied
communities around at the growth of Guido’s despotism,
the disloyalty of his near kindred and dependants,
greedy for a share of power, and all the embarrassments
of a chief in whom a noble and generous temper was
not seconded by the sagacity and self-control which
distinguished the observer himself. An oft-told story
relates that Guido, at the height of his prosperity, sent
a messenger to his fallen rival to ask him derisively
how he fared, and when he hoped to see Milan again.
80Matteo was wandering beside the lake, discoursing with
a companion. ‘You see how I live,’ he said to the
envoy, ‘suiting myself to my fortunes. Tell your
Lord that I am waiting till the sins of the Torriani
have reached the measure of mine to return to my
country.’ The expectation of the philosopher was
justified as time went on, and Guido began to resort to
cruel and oppressive means of preserving his power.
In 1309 he imprisoned his cousin Cassone, Archbishop
of Milan, and his nephews, the sons of Mosca, on
suspicion of plotting against him, and was only withheld
from further revenge by the protests of his own
friends. The subsequent banishment of these kinsmen,
who thenceforth sought his ruin, helped to prepare the
disasters which were soon to fall upon his House.

The Guelf party was indeed fast losing its hold once
more on Lombardy, owing to the hostile feeling in the
cities towards King Robert of Naples, who, as champion
of the Church and head of the Guelfs, was seeking to
establish his sovereignty over North Italy. At the
same time a new turn of the wheel was preparing in
Germany, where, in 1310, Henry of Luxemburg was
elected Emperor, and immediately manifested his intention
of descending into Italy to exercise the imperial
authority for the purpose of restoring order and peace
in the factious Communes.

Matteo Visconte in his hut of exile saw that his
moment was come. With characteristic insight he gauged
the noble soul of the new Emperor, with its lofty ideals
and conviction of a divine mission as peacemaker. His
agent, Francesco Garbagnate, made his way to the
imperial Court, where he insinuated himself into Henry’s
favour, and ever at his ear whispered of the woes of
Lombardy, and of Milan, the splendid city, groaning
under a despotic oppressor; of thousands of exiles
languishing in poverty; of their chief, patiently enduring
81his evil fortunes without attempting retaliation or
revenge.

The anticipation of the Emperor’s coming was by no
means so pleasing to Guido della Torre and his friends.
The mere thought of this spectre of imperialism, which,
when men believed it was well laid at last, ever rose to
disturb the settlement of the turbid elements of Italian
life, seems to have stirred the Republican chief to uncontrollable
indignation. ‘What have I to do with
Henry of Luxemburg?’ he cried, stamping furiously,
in a great assembly of his party convoked to deal with
the situation. To his experienced and unillusioned
mind the Emperor’s purpose was simply the exaltation
of the Ghibellines and the destruction of the Guelfs.
With passionate entreaties and prophecies of impending
peril, he sought to raise a league against Henry, but
nearly all his former supporters and allies, tired of his
ascendency and afraid of the King of Naples, had
pledged themselves to welcome the new-comer.

In November 1310 the Emperor arrived at Asti,
whither almost all the magnates of North Italy, both
Guelf and Ghibelline, hastened to do him homage.
One day there entered the Court a man who, by the
simplicity of his attire and following, appeared a person
of little consequence. Throwing off his hood and
cloak, he ran and knelt before the Emperor, and kissing
his feet, saluted him as the longed-for peacemaker and
consolation of the exiles, and implored his compassion.
The suppliant was Matteo Visconte, who, for fear of his
enemies, had come thus disguised and secretly. Henry
welcomed him with the greatest kindness, and having
listened earnestly to his recital of the wrongs which
he and his had suffered, promised to give them speedy
relief. Matteo then turned to some of the Guelf nobles
present, his fiercest enemies, and with the most admirable
display of a meek and forgiving spirit, offered to
82embrace them. But they, knowing well the perfidy of
his fair seeming, repulsed him with scorn and heaped
revilements upon him. To all of which the Visconte
replied with perfect mildness and goodwill, pointing to
the Emperor—‘Here is our king, who is come to give
us peace; the end of all our woes is at hand.’ His
foes, perceiving how completely he had put them in the
wrong and won the Emperor’s confidence by his show
of magnanimity, began to misdoubt them of the future
and wish that they had heeded Guido della Torre’s
warnings. The game was now, in fact, despite Henry’s
good intentions, in the hands of the wily Ghibelline
chief. Besides all the barons and magnates of his own
faction, the exiled Archbishop Cassone della Torre and
a number of other Milanese Guelfs, whom Guido had
offended by his tyranny, ranged themselves under
Matteo’s leadership, and by the advice of this greatly
preponderating section of his Italian vassals, Henry was
persuaded to turn his steps early towards Milan.

He sent officers before him to prepare for his reception
in the ruler’s palace, which as sovereign he expected to
occupy. But he had forgotten Milan’s traditional privilege
of keeping the Emperor outside her gates. Relying
upon this, Guido della Torre refused to give up the
palace. Nevertheless Henry proceeded on his way,
and as he neared the city, the Milanese, who had heard
the rumour of his great goodness, came forth in multitudes
to meet him. At his right hand rode Matteo
Visconte. The obsequious bearing of the Ghibelline
chief contrasted strangely with the grudging welcome
offered by the Lord of the city, who appeared last of all
to greet the monarch, and forgot to lower his standard
before the Imperial Eagles. This omission was roughly
remedied by some of the German soldiers, who seized
the defiant banner and flung it in the mud. His pride
met only a mild rebuke from the Emperor, who, having
83entered in state with his queen, took up his abode in
the archiepiscopal palace. At first all went well. The
Archbishop and all the other exiles were restored to
their homes and possessions, and Henry made the
Visconti and Torriani swear perpetual peace. The
reconciliation was celebrated in the eyes of all the
people by a ceremony in the Piazza of St. Ambrogio,
where the Emperor appeared seated on a great throne,
with the members of the two rival Houses placed side
by side at his feet. An Imperial Vicar was appointed
to keep peace in the city, and the factions in the
neighbouring Communes having been pacified in like
manner, Henry was crowned in Milan by Archbishop
Cassone, amid extraordinary joy and festivity.

Not for long, however, did the lion and the lamb
thus couch together. Even while the Emperor still
lingered in Milan, suspicion and discontent began to
seethe among the citizens. The old fear and hatred
of the Empire, which still lived in the descendants of
Barbarossa’s victims, was fanned by the heavy exactions
of the imperial officers, who demanded an enormous
sum as a coronation gift from the already exhausted
citizens. The German troops were also a continual
vexation to the people. The Torriani did all they
could to foster the growing spirit of revolt. Guido
and his cousin the Archbishop forgot their feud in their
common desire to get rid of the Emperor, and the
Visconti themselves were found ready to sympathise
with the general discontent. It was rumoured in the
imperial palace that Galeazzo Visconte and Francesco
della Torre had been seen joining hands in sign of
amity at a meeting outside the gates. But whatever
the other members of his House might be doing, the
Head of the Visconti sat aloof, peacefully unconscious,
apparently, of what was going forward.

Henry and his ministers grew uneasy, as the hostility
84of the city became ever more visible and menacing.
At last, on a day in February, the storm burst. The
whole of Milan rose suddenly in wild tumult, crowding
and clamouring round their old leaders, the Torriani,
who appeared with all their followers in full armour in
the market-place. Before long Galeazzo Visconte also
arrived upon the scene, mounted on his war-horse and
arrayed for battle. But to the surprise and dismay of
the conspirators he ranged himself with the imperial
troops, who came charging down upon the Torriani and
their disorderly host. Meanwhile, at the first sound
of tumult, the Emperor, suspecting treachery, had despatched
officers to arrest Matteo Visconte. They found
that veteran sitting in the quiet loggia of his palace,
most innocently occupied in reading a book. Hastening
with them to the Court, he cast himself down
before the Emperor, protesting his perfect loyalty and
innocence of all offence, and offered his best services to
aid in subduing the rebellion. The adherence of the
Visconti was the Emperor’s salvation. By the powerful
assistance of Galeazzo and his followers, the Germans,
after a brief, fierce battle, completely overcame
the rebels. The Torriani perceived too late that they
had been outwitted and ruined by the cunning of the
rival House, on whose help they had been led to depend.
Simone and Francesco, Guido’s sons, fled at
a gallop out of the city, while the old chief himself rose
with difficulty from a bed of sickness and crept over a
garden wall into the precincts of a nunnery, whence he
was able after a while to escape into safety. Their
adherents were put to the sword, and their houses were
sacked and utterly destroyed by the Germans, who
with vindictive fury, swept through the streets, slaying
and spoiling without mercy.

Thus was the power of the Della Torre in Milan
for ever overthrown. The Visconti, having cleverly
85disposed of their rivals, had now to rid themselves of
the Emperor, in order to regain their old sovereignty.
Henry, vexed at the bloodshed which had already
stained his fair white banner of peace, and beginning to
realise the secret strength of the spirit of faction, sent
Matteo and Galeazzo into exile, lest he should appear
to have favoured the Ghibellines in the late affair.
But the fall of the Torriani had filled the Guelfs with
distrust and fear of him. He passed on his way, to
find the cities of Lombardy arming against him and
his task of peace-making growing more and more difficult
of accomplishment. Hardly was he gone from
Milan before the Visconti returned, and in a very short
time Matteo succeeded in making himself once more
all-powerful. A year later the wisdom of the Milanese
Serpent appeared to have completely charmed the Imperial
Eagle, when in return for a timely supply of gold
to support the Emperor’s enterprise, Matteo won the
legal confirmation of his authority over the city, with
the title of Imperial Vicar of Milan.

The Visconti had now firmly established their
dominion in Milan, a dominion destined, in the
story of the unstable mediæval governments of Italy,
to be equalled by few in duration, and by none in extent.
For good or for evil the great city, with her
command of the chief passes of the Alps for war
and commerce, her wealth as the capital of the vast
alluvial plain of Lombardy, was delivered into the
hands of a race singularly fitted to use these natural
advantages for the creation of a mighty State. The
Visconti, as a family, were characterised by exceptional
ability and tenacity, and above all, by a subtlety of
brain and suppleness of conscience which, under the
stress of ambition or necessity, induced a perfidy so quiet
and so effectual that the Snake upon their shields became
for all Italy a symbol of their political methods, and
an object of horror and fear. The vices and weaknesses
which ruined other Italian dynasties seemed to
have little power over these Milanese princes. Hot
and rash of blood in the earlier generations, they rarely
allowed passion to override prudence; those of them
who did were quickly rooted out. Even that most
fruitful disorder in a reigning House, the jealous rivalry
of its own members, could not avail to overcome their
political coolness or sagacity, or sunder their union
against a common enemy. With time this self-control
87became a habit of cold and passionless judgment, all-powerful
in the management of men and States. Even
the fatal weakness of remorse and superstitious fear, to
which they were all prone, could not undermine them;
they were able to parry their consciences, and delay repentance
until their successors were old enough to carry
on their unscrupulous policy. Nor did the arrogance
and cruelty which tyranny bred in this sovereign race
prove their overthrow. In spite of its record of crime,
no retributive catastrophe ended the dynasty. It died
out of itself, and we shall see the last of the Visconti
sink into the grave under the burden of an empire
greater almost than any other in Italy.

Il Gran Matteo, as posterity named the founder of
the dynasty, was the prototype in character of all the
great sovereigns who were to follow him. He ruled
from the cabinet rather than from the saddle. Statecraft
was his victorious weapon, and his calculating and
passionless nature had its complement in a humanity
remarkable for his time. But it needed not only his
incomparable prudence and foresight, but also the strong
arms of his three elder sons, Galeazzo, Marco, and
Luchino, to assure his dominion and restore it to its
old extent. The remaining years of the chief, as head
of the Ghibelline party in North Italy, were spent in a
constant warfare with the Guelfs and their allies, King
Robert of Naples, and the Church. The awful papal
ban fell again and again upon the Visconte and his subjects.
Nevertheless Piacenza, Bergamo, Lodi, Como,
Cremona, Alexandria, Tortona, Pavia, Vercelli, and
Novara were brought one by one beneath his sway by
the victory of diplomacy or arms. His success was
embittered, however, by estrangement from his beloved
first-born, Galeazzo, who coveted his father’s supremacy,
and jealously resented the rivalry of his brother
Marco. But Galeazzo’s hot temper had been chastened
88by exile and time, and in spite of their mutual anger,
he supported his father’s policy with a wise loyalty.

The fortunes of the Guelf party sank low before
the rapid growth of the Viscontean power. Its hereditary
leaders in North Italy, the Marquises of Este,
were entangled in an unnatural struggle with the Papacy,
which was itself enfeebled by the exile of Avignon,
and by the operations of its own selfish greed. But
in 1319 the party gathered itself together once more
for a mighty effort to overthrow the Ghibelline domination
in Milan. The Cardinal Legate, Beltrando del
Poggetto, in the name of Pope John XXII., formed a
great league of the Guelfs against the Visconti, and
hurled at them afresh the spiritual weapons of the
Church. Matteo was summoned repeatedly to answer
for his sins at the feet of the Pope. In 1322 he was
cited finally before a tribunal of the Inquisition at
Alexandria. Instead of him, his son Marco appeared
there at the head of an army with banners spread.
The Inquisitors hastily retreated to Valenza, where in
security they solemnly cursed Matteo for twenty and
five different crimes and heresies, and invoked every
conceivable penalty upon him and his House, even to
the fourth generation. Full remission of sins was
offered to all who took arms against them.

The old Ghibelline chief, weakened by age and
bodily infirmity, quailed before this onslaught. Many
of his own adherents and kinsmen were deserting him.
Milan, trembling under the ban of the Church and
excited by the papal agents, was verging on revolt.
Matteo summoned the offending Galeazzo, forgave
him, and resigned to him the chieftainship. Retiring to
a village at a little distance from the city, he died
shortly after, full of years and sorrow.

Galeazzo and his brother Marco, bitter rivals, forgot
for the time their mutual wrongs, and with the other
89sons of Matteo stood up in manful union against their
foes. For fourteen days they concealed their father’s
death from the Milanese, while Galeazzo calmed the
city by conciliatory measures, and assumed the supreme
power. The storm broke heavily upon them now. Immense
numbers from all North Italy joined the standard
of the Legate, which, impiously displaying the Cross in
a worldly quarrel was carried towards Milan, with the
avowed purpose of overthrowing the Visconti and restoring
the Torriani. Monza and Piacenza fell (1323), and
the capital itself was attacked, the suburbs sacked, and
the walls closely blockaded. The straits of the Visconti
appeared desperate. But the brothers fought with
invincible spirit, and they were supported by the Emperor,
Louis of Bavaria, who sent succour from Germany.
The papal army itself began to dissolve through
rivalries and dissensions, and sickness. The siege was
soon raised, and early in the following year (1324) the
Visconti took the offensive and inflicted a signal defeat
upon the allies at Vaprio. Their fortunes now revived.
Within the next few years they recovered many of the
lost cities of their father’s State, and the Pope, realising
the impossibility of overthrowing them, began to listen
to emissaries from Galeazzo with suggestions for peace
and reconciliation.

But the desire of the Visconte for a settlement of
the long and exhausting strife was baffled by his own
party and his own household. The other Ghibelline
chiefs, especially the great Can Grande della Scala,
viewed unwillingly the increase of the Milanese power.
Marco Visconte, a splendid warrior, more skilled and
daring in arms than any other Lombard of his day,
but unlike the rest of his House none too wise—savio
non fu troppo, says Villani—could not brook his elder
brother’s supremacy. Their kinsman Lodrisio fiercely
resented his own subordinate position. The citizens
90groaned under the heavy taxes exacted to pay Galeazzo’s
great army of German mercenaries. Complaints of the
Visconte’s arrogance, and information of his negotiations
with the Pope, were carried by intriguers to the Emperor.

Louis descended into Italy early in 1327, at the
general call of the Ghibellines. Galeazzo Visconte
alone was silent, foreseeing that the Emperor’s appearance
would inflame anew the partisan strife. Louis appeared
shortly in Milan, followed by the Ghibelline lords
of North Italy, chief among them Can Grande. He
was received with great homage and ceremony and
crowned in St. Ambrogio by two schismatic bishops,
who alone dared to anoint his excommunicated head.
The Visconti appeared to enjoy his full favour, and as
vassals of the Empire were confirmed by him in
various honours and privileges. But intrigue was busy
at work, and the fair seeming was suddenly broken by
a tragic event, if the chroniclers tell us true. Stefano,
the youngest of Galeazzo’s brothers, as he was offering
the cup to the Emperor at the banquet one night, was
called upon by the suspicious monarch to taste the
wine. Having put his lips tremblingly to it, he was
struck with mortal sickness, and died shortly after.
This evidence of intended treachery naturally inflamed
Louis’ resentment against his hosts. The next day
he summoned Galeazzo to a council, and seizing as a
pretext the refusal of the prince to demand an enormous
coronation gift from the almost revolting citizens, he
arrested him, with his son Azzo and his brothers, all
except Marco. The Visconti, surprised, could make
no defence, and were carried off to Monza and thrown
into the dungeons of the Castle there which Galeazzo
himself had lately built.

Thus did the Visconti once more lose Milan. A
governor, appointed by Louis, reigned in their stead.
Marco, if he owed his escape to disloyalty, soon
91rued his mistake. The ruin of his house involved
him too, and he wandered in poverty and exile. Louis’
high-handed act was, however, displeasing to many of
his Ghibelline supporters, and he found it prudent to
release Galeazzo at the end of a year, at the request
of Castruccio, Lord of Lucca, the most powerful member
of the Ghibelline party at that time. The Visconte,
broken by his sufferings in prison, and unable to recover
his State, joined his friend Castruccio, and died a few
months later. His son and brothers succeeded soon
after, through the intervention of Castruccio, in making
their peace with the Emperor. For the promise of
sixty thousand golden florins, Louis granted to Azzo,
the dead prince’s heir, the title of Imperial Vicar of
Milan, and the Visconti once more took possession of
the city with the full approval of the people (1329).

Once restored to power, they were at little pains to
pay the stipulated sum to the Emperor, who by this
time was fast losing prestige in Italy. They reconciled
themselves with the Church instead, and when
the enraged Louis presented himself with an army
beneath the walls of Milan, he was received with
derision and jeers. The Emperor, enfeebled by the
contempt and desertion of nearly all his partisans, was
helpless against the renewed strength of the great Milanese
House. He was glad to compound with Azzo and
to reconfirm him in the position of Imperial Vicar.

From this moment began the unbroken prosperity of
Matteo Visconte’s sons and of the great city which
they ruled. Secure in the weakness of both Empire
and Church from further interference, Azzo was able
to devote himself to the expansion and development of
his State. The short reign of this prince, who had
won great fame for his prowess in the Tuscan wars
with Castruccio, was wholly fortunate. The menace
offered to its prosperity by the rebellious attempts of
92his uncle Marco was overcome by the death of that
turbulent warrior, who was killed in 1329 apparently
by a fall from a window in his nephew’s palace, though
it was generally believed that he had been first strangled
and then flung out by order of his kinsmen. The other
enemy within the House, Lodrisio Visconte, was not so
easily disposed of. Abandoning Milan, he allied himself
with the Scaligeri of Verona, with whom the Visconti
had come into inevitable collision, now that the weakness
of their common Guelf foe had left the field of
North Italy open to the rival ambition of these two great
Ghibelline powers. In 1339 Lodrisio, with forces supplied
by Martino della Scala, invaded the Milanese territory,
and approaching the capital, spread terror and
desolation everywhere. At Parabiago they encountered
the Milanese, under Luchino Visconte, who, after a tremendous
struggle, won a complete victory. Lodrisio
was captured with his two sons, and imprisoned in a
strong castle. A few months later Azzo died of gout,
at the age of thirty-seven. In the brief years of his
reign he had completely restored the power and prestige
of his House. He left Milan fortified by new walls,
beautified by new palaces, churches and towers, a city
fairer and greater than that ruined by Barbarossa, and
full of a rich, industrious and joyous life.

Azzo had no heir. He was succeeded by his uncles,
Luchino, and the ecclesiastic Giovanni, who was now
Archbishop of Milan. The two brothers thus held
the whole dominion, spiritual as well as temporal.
They worked together with rare unanimity for the
aggrandisement of their House and State. Luchino
pressed with his arms energetically against the Scaligeri,
whose empire was fast receding before the attacks of
the rest of the Ghibelline powers of North Italy, who in
uniting with the Visconti to crush this predominant
member of the party, were but smoothing the way for
the rise of a State destined to be far greater than Verona
ever was. The Milanese prince added many cities to
the dominion of his House, and was the first to carry
the fear of the Visconti across the Apennines into
Tuscany, where he had almost acquired Pisa when
recalled to Lombardy by the outbreak of war there.

93

TOWER OF S. GOTTARDO FROM THE CATHEDRAL

95Luchino was a careful ruler, thoughtful for the welfare
and progress of his subjects, and just towards the
lower classes. He promulgated new laws for the protection
of the poor and weak, and for the encouragement
of industry, and refrained from excessive taxation.
Nevertheless, he had the same violent temper as his
elder brothers, Galeazzo and Marco, and soon developed
the characteristic vices of tyranny—lust, cruelty and
suspicion. In Giovanni, on the contrary, all the rarer
qualities of the Visconti appeared, the subtle brain, the
self-control and power of biding their time, combined
with a benignity which was never disturbed except to
good purpose, so that while steadily pursuing ends as
vast and ambitious as his brothers’, he still kept the
respect and love of the people. He well knew how
to influence the course of events without falling foul
of his suspicious brother.

The younger princes of the House, however, the
three sons of the dead Stefano, were less cautious, and
soon incurred the wrath of their despotic uncle. He
discovered, or perhaps invented, a conspiracy on their
part to oust him from power, and drove them mercilessly
into exile and poverty. The eldest, Matteo,
took refuge with his wife’s family, the powerful
Gonzaga of Mantua, but Bernabò and Galeazzo had
to fly to France to escape from the tyrant’s snares.
A confederate in their plot, Francesco della Pusterla,
head of one of the great Milanese Houses, whose
wealth and influence were necessarily a menace to the
power of the Visconti, was betrayed into Luchino’s
96hands and beheaded, with his sons and his beautiful
wife Margherita, who, according to the chroniclers,
had rejected the unlawful love of the tyrant.

Luchino is said to have come himself to an unnatural
death in his old age, through poison administered to him
by his third wife, the young and lively Elisabetta della
Fiesca, in whose hearing the suspicious husband, enraged
by a report of light conduct on her part, had declared
that he would light a fine fire and do the greatest act of
justice which he had ever done in Milan. The accusations
against this lady may, however, have been trumped
up to justify the persecution which she and her son,
Luchino Novello, and all the dead tyrant’s children,
who had grown too arrogant for the peace of the State,
had to suffer from the Archbishop after their father’s
death. Giovanni imprisoned or banished them all.
Towards his other nephews, the banished sons of
Stefano, whom misfortune had chastened, Giovanni
used a different policy. He won their loyalty and
obedience by recalling them from exile, granting them
lands and honours and making them his heirs, and
about this time he obtained a solemn act from the
General Council of the people, still nominally the ultimate
authority in the community, recognising him and
his nephews after him as the true, legitimate and natural
Lords of the city, district, diocese and jurisdiction of
Milan. Thus was the hereditary dominion of the Visconti—already
an established fact—formally legalised
by the will of the Commune.

Under the able rule of the Archbishop the power of
the Visconti advanced steadily, but more by the
gentle pressure of a scheming and cunning statesmanship
than by the brute force of arms. His apparently
peaceful temper had lulled the jealousy and fear of the
other powers, when in 1350 they were thunderstruck
by his secret acquisition of Bologna—the great object
97of contention between the two parties in North Italy—which
Giovanni de’ Pepoli sold to him for a large sum.
Corio, the fifteenth century historian, relates that
Clement VI. sent a legate to the Visconte to demand
its restoration to the Holy See, and to bid him renounce
either the spiritual or temporal jurisdiction of
Milan, since his exercise of both together was a scandal
to Christians. The high-hearted Archbishop for
answer unsheathed his sword in the midst of the
Cathedral, and raising the Cross in his other hand,
cried—This is my spiritual weapon, and with this sword
will I defend my temporal empire undiminished. Summoned
to defend his contumacy before the Pope, he
sent his people to Avignon to provide lodgings and
victuals for twelve thousand horsemen and six thousand
foot soldiers. But when Clement heard of these preparations
he called the envoys, and hastily reimbursing
them with their charges, sent them back with a message
to Giovanni excusing him from coming. Later historians
throw doubt upon this circumstantial tale. And
certainly it seems strange that the Pope should condemn
the union of spiritual and temporal dominion. There
is no doubt, however, that the Papacy was powerless to
check Giovanni’s ambition, and was glad to confirm
him in possession of Bologna for a price.

Giovanni’s method was to inflame by unseen agencies
the party spirit in the cities which he coveted, and
when both factions were exhausted, to step in with his
money-bags and quietly establish his own dominion.
Thus by a skilful manipulation of the vast wealth with
which Milan supplied him he succeeded with little
expenditure of blood in embracing more and more
territory within his coil. In 1353 Genoa was yielded
to him, and Milan for a short time became a naval
power, defying the fleets of Venice. The importance
of securing maritime outlets for a commercial community
98turned the Archbishop’s attention on the seaport
of Pisa also. But here Florence interposed a barrier
against both fraud and force, and though he plagued the
Tuscan Republic grievously by invading her territories,
raising the Barons of the Apennines against her and
intriguing with her foes in Pisa and Lucca, she successfully
prevented him from gaining a footing in Tuscany.

While the Visconti were thus extending their
dominion far and wide and creating a sovereignty
more powerful than any in Italy, the capital itself was
making corresponding strides in wealth and civilisation.
The strong and single government, though involving
so much cruel sacrifice of rival interests and pride, and
carried on by crafty and often iniquitous means, was
for the general advantage of the people. The citizens
lacked only freedom, and this very lack saved them
from the awful faction struggles which hindered the
progress of the neighbouring Communes. Under Azzo,
Luchino and Giovanni Visconte, the city enjoyed an
unexampled length of peace. No hostile banner was
seen from the walls, no blood was spilt in fratricidal
strife within. The Visconti employed foreign and professional
troops in their wars, thus weaning their
subjects from the habit of arms, dangerous to a
tyrannic supremacy, and sparing them for more profitable
work. All classes, noble and plebeian, engaged
in commerce and industrial arts, and produced an ever
increasing flow of wealth, wherewith these princes were
able to pay handsomely for the hired support of their
tyranny. Finding no opportunities of sedition or
turbulence, the more restless spirits abandoned the city,
and, joining the bands of military adventurers which
roamed the country, they fought for any prince or
community that chose to hire them. The general
security of life and property in the Milanese State
was assured by the severe and, on the whole, impartial
99justice of Luchino and his brother, and the wise statutes
which they formed aided the development of trade and
industry. Safe from depredating troops and robber
bands, the fertile territory was brought to high cultivation,
and wildernesses, untilled before, now submitted to
the husbandman. The engineering art was actively
practised in draining and irrigating the country and connecting
the city by canals with the great river waterways.

One of the chief sources of Milanese wealth was
the breeding of war-horses in the rich and well-watered
pastures round the city. At the same time the Milanese
merchants were travelling all over England, France
and Flanders, buying fine wool, ‘with which in this
city,’ says the fourteenth century chronicler Fiamma,
‘very fine and beautiful clothes are woven in great
quantities and dyed with every different colour and sent
to all parts of Italy.’ Silk was also manufactured here
after 1314, when the silk-weavers of Lucca, disturbed
by the invasions of Uguccione da Faggiuola and of
Castruccio, abandoned their city for Milan. The
constant wars abroad encouraged the armourer’s craft,
of which Milan became one of the greatest centres in
Europe. With wealth, a love of luxury and the soft
pleasures of life grew in the people. Fiamma notes
with disapproval the changes in the antique costume,
the superfluous embroideries, the gold and silver and
pearls, and the broad fringes used in dress, the richness
of the meats, and the esteem in which masters of the
culinary art were held, things conducive, according to
him, of the soul’s damnation.

Both Luchino and Giovanni lived much in the
sight of their subjects, keeping open Court and sharing
in the public feasts and pleasures. The benevolent
Archbishop was much beloved. One of his first acts
of undivided sovereignty had been to release Lodrisio
Visconte from the dungeon in which he had dwelt
100ever since Parabiago, a resounding generosity which
covered many quiet deeds of harshness and oppression.
He died in 1354, leaving his dominions to Matteo,
Bernabò and Galeazzo II., to the entire exclusion of
Luchino’s sons.

The new sovereigns had much ado at first to preserve
their great heritage. Many cities, patient under the
Archbishop’s yoke, rebelled against his successors, including
Bologna. The Guelf enemies of Milan tried to
enlist the new Emperor Charles of Bohemia against the
Visconti; but that monarch preferred the large sum
which they offered him for his sanction of their rule as
Imperial Vicars, rather than the hostility of princes who
could assemble six thousand men-at-arms and numberless
foot soldiers beneath his window as a spectacle for
his entertainment when he visited them in Milan. The
Gonzaga of Mantua, once their allies and now their
bitterest foes, leagued, however, with the Church and
the hereditary foes of the Visconti and dealt them
some heavy blows. The German company which the
Mantuan princes employed invaded the Milanese
territories under the formidable Count Lando, and
penetrated nearly to the capital. But the citizens, in
spite of their softness and lack of military practice,
went forth with the courage of despair and defeated
and drove away the Count, who was greatly surprised,
since he nothing esteemed the Milanese. In other directions
the Visconti suffered great losses. Genoa revolted
in 1356, and to secure peace they were compelled to
surrender Parma and Asti two years later.

The eldest brother, Matteo, had died in 1355.
Weak, injudicious and a glutton, he was only a hindrance
to the progress of his House. General report
laid his death to his brothers’ charge. Bernabò and
Galeazzo made a fresh division of the State, and Milan
itself was split up between them. They worked together,
101however, with a single aim, in spite of mutual
hatred and jealousy, to repair the losses of their State.
Pavia had set up a free government, headed by the friar,
Giacomo de’ Bussolari, who, an earlier Savonarola,
sought to purge his city from tyranny and sin at once.
Steadfastly beset by Galeazzo’s army, it had to yield at
last to famine and sickness. Further afield Bernabò
spent years in a desperate struggle to recover Bologna,
under a tempest of papal anathemas, and though baffled
himself, he prepared the way for his successor. He
was constantly in fierce conflict with the Marquises of
Este, whose rebel kinsmen he sheltered while they
employed Luchino’s disinherited sons against him.
Galeazzo on his side had to sustain the assaults of
Savoy and Montferrat, which came near to ruining him.

But multitudinous and determined as their enemies
were, the inimitable statecraft which was the Viscontean
heritage, backed by their vast resources, enabled them to
restore their power and to make Milan feared and respected
everywhere abroad. These princes rarely took
the field themselves, but entrusted their enterprises to the
foreign companies by whom the Italian wars were now
chiefly waged. These bands of hardy and unscrupulous
adventurers, who were proof against the enervation
which wealth and civilisation had induced in the
Italians, were become powerful factors in the politics
of the country. Most formidable of all was the company
of Sir John Hawkwood. These English mercenaries,
says Azario, were more excellent robbers than
any of the other plunderers of the Lombards. By day
they mostly slept and waked by night. And so diligent
and skilful were they in capturing towns that their
like had never been seen. After suffering much from
Hawkwood’s zeal against him in the service of the
Pope, Bernabò bribed him to his own side; but after a
few years the great captain, faithful only to caprice,
102suddenly deserted the Visconte, with disastrous results
to the latter. Later on, Bernabò tempted him again
by the gift of one of his own daughters in marriage,
with a large dowry. Nevertheless, the later part of
Hawkwood’s career was spent in the pay of Milan’s
inveterate foe, Florence.

Milan, unaffected by the quarrels of her sovereigns, was
now the richest, most populous and luxurious city of
Italy. The capitals of the great European kingdoms
had no such splendid palaces, such comely-paved streets,
such fair-fountained gardens and pleasaunces trodden by
beautiful exotic beasts and birds, as this seat of citizen
princes. The Visconti assumed the dignity and state
of royalty. Galeazzo was himself married to a princess
of the ancient House of Savoy, and both brothers
pursued the sagacious policy of making alliances for their
children with the sovereign Houses of Europe. Bernabò
made statesmanlike use of his ten daughters and five
sons by his wife Regina della Scala, and his score or
so of illegitimate children, wedding them, according to
the conditions of their birth, to royal princes and great
Italian potentates, or to lesser nobles and successful
soldiers, such as Hawkwood and Count Lando. Galeazzo
married his one son and daughter with even greater
splendour, and endowed them so lavishly that it was
almost the ruin of his State. For his heir, Gian Galeazzo,
he obtained the hand of Isabella de Valois, for
a sum of five hundred thousand florins. The maiden
Violante he gave to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of
Edward III., with two hundred thousand florins and
many fair lands and castles in Piedmont.

This last marriage was celebrated in 1368, with unexampled
magnificence. The bridegroom arrived in Milan
accompanied by the Sire le Despencer and a train of two
thousand Englishmen. A splendid cavalcade went forth
to meet him. First came Galeazzo himself, who was
103said to be more beautiful in person than any other man
in Italy, wearing, as his custom was, a wreath of roses
on his flowing golden hair, and attended by his greatest
vassals. With him was his wife, Bianca of Savoy, and
his daughter-in-law, the young French Isabella, and
other noble ladies, followed by eighty damsels apparelled
in scarlet, with sleeves of white cloth embroidered with
trefoils, and girdles so richly worked that their worth
was eighty florins each. Gian Galeazzo, a boy of
fifteen, came next, leading a company of knights on
steeds caparisoned as if for a joust, and after these followed
the officers of State and of the household with
their pages, all gorgeously arrayed. At the marriage
feast the very meats were gilded, and with each of the
sixteen courses splendid gifts were offered to the guests—highly-bred
hounds with velvet and silken collars and
leashes of silk; falcons with chains of gold and hoods
of velvet, and silver buttons enamelled with the Snake;
richly ornamented saddles and other horse furniture;
suits of armour fashioned by the famous Milanese smiths;
brocades of gold and richest silk, silver flagons worked
with enamel, silver-gilt basins, mantles and doublets
thickly sewn with pearls for the prince, and seventy-six
splendid coursers and war-horses, each more generous,
beautiful, and gorgeously caparisoned than the one
before; and last of all twelve fat oxen. Galeazzo and
the bridegroom sat at one table with the noblest of the
guests, among whom was Messer Francesco Petrarca
the poet, in the most honourable place. At another
were placed Regina della Scala and a number of ladies.
Such scenes as these are dimly pictured for us in
primitive frescoes here and there, in which we see assemblages
of ladies in jewelled robes and lofty peaked
head-dresses, and gentlemen correspondingly fine stiffly
seated at narrow boards, or pacing with slow and stately
step through the dance within some spacious pillared hall.

104Though extravagantly lavish for State purposes, the
Visconti did not keep open Court like their predecessors.
No tables were set out in the streets for the
common people on holidays, no oxen roasted whole or
wine-vats broached for all who liked to drink. The
chroniclers complain of the avarice of their Lords.
The taxes were continually increased. Pressed by the
huge cost of their wars and their alliances, the Visconti
were in fact always in need of money, and so assured
was their supremacy in Milan, that they no longer
feared the discontent of the citizens. With the development
of their despotism the social gulf between
the Visconti and the rest of the community had grown
wide. Both brothers were proud, suspicious and cruel.
But the severity of the silent Bernabò, and his terrible
fits of rage and strange capricious temper, made
him the most feared. He was laudably resolved
to maintain justice and order, so that a man might
go unarmed through any part of his dominions, and
to suppress the old faction hatreds, but his methods
were intolerably harsh. No one was allowed to call
himself Guelf or Ghibelline on pain of having his
tongue cut out. To be found abroad in the city
at night, for any reason whatever, was to lose a foot,
and so forth. Moreover, on mere suspicion people were
put to cruel death or torment. This arbitrary severity
was, however, of little avail, and crime was far more rife
in the city than before Bernabò’s time. The tyrant’s
passion for dogs was as extravagant as his disregard for
human suffering. He had five thousand hounds, which
his subjects were compelled to keep and tend for him,
and if one were found to be either too fat or too lean
for the chase, or to have come to any harm, woe to its
guardian. Every sort of game was sacred to the
prince’s sport, and the peasants who slew wild boars or
other forest creatures for food during a severe famine,
105were hanged or blinded. Two Franciscan brothers,
who dared to expostulate with the prince for his harshness,
were burnt as heretics, an act something ironical
on the part of one who himself spent nearly all his life
under the ban of the Church. There was a certain
grim humour in some of Bernabò’s fierce deeds, as in
his treatment of two dignified Benedictine abbots,
who were sent to treat with him by the Pope. The
prince met them on a bridge over the Lambro, where,
with due reverence, they presented to him the pontifical
Bulls. Bernabò read them, and looking up,
eyed the legates grimly, and asked them whether
they would prefer food or drink. Perceiving a sinister
meaning in the question, the trembling clerics glanced
at the deep river flowing beneath, and said that they
would rather eat. Whereupon the papal missives,
parchment, seals, silk cord and all, were crammed down
their throats.

Galeazzo was not so capriciously cruel as his brother,
but his rule was equally oppressive. To add to the
afflictions of the people, the country was devastated
by the foreign Companies, who robbed friends and
foes alike; and years of famine and pestilence came,
which their Lords took no more thoughtful measure to
relieve than hanging some of the chief ministers.
To both brothers clings the horrible reproach of a
decree, condemning prisoners of State to the so-called
Quaresima, a series of tortures lasting forty days.
Yet Galeazzo was conspicuous for domestic virtues,
and both princes were very devout, and founded many
churches and convents, and gave largely in alms. One
has to remember in judging these sovereigns that
the Florentine chroniclers, who have always held the
ear of the world, hated them as the enemies of their
city. They depict them as barbarous and ignorant
tyrants, sunk in gross vice. Yet Petrarca, the recognised
106sovereign of thought and letters in fourteenth
century Italy, spent several years at Milan, in the
service first of Archbishop Giovanni, and afterwards of
Galeazzo, and speaks of the city and its Lords with
great affection and respect. The high honour which
the Visconti paid to the poet shows their regard for
the things of the spirit. Their capture of Petrarca
was felt to be as great a triumph as the conquest of a
province. Boccaccio and other Tuscan writers inveigh
fiercely against their countryman for his adherence to
the Visconti, pretending that he who loved freedom
had been deluded by the vulgar worship of riches and
luxury, and had become a slave. But Petrarca, whose
close acquaintance could judge better of his hosts,
probably appreciated the large and far-reaching political
ideas which were the heritage of the Visconti, and
perhaps saw in Milan a hope for Italy, outside the
conception of the Florentines, the possibility of a larger
freedom in national union, which should restore the
successors of the Romans to their lost glory.

The Visconti, moreover, took great pains to advance
learning and culture in their dominions. They founded
the University of Pavia, the once celebrated school of
jurisprudence there having long decayed, and richly
endowed its chairs, and it was Galeazzo who started
the famous library at Pavia, to which all students were
allowed access. Bernabò was something of a scholar
himself, and had studied the Decretals in his youth; but
the anxiety of constant wars and the cares of State
hindered him from doing all that he would willingly
have done for the intellectual welfare of the capital.

The bitter jealousy which prevailed between the two
brothers divided them much in later years, though it
could not disunite them in the face of their foes, and
Galeazzo had left Milan and removed his Court to
Pavia, though still keeping his share of the government
107of the capital. He died in 1378. His son,
Gian Galeazzo, was delicate of constitution, of retiring
habits, and much given to study. The gentleness
with which he began to rule, remitting taxes and
seeking to propitiate his subjects, excited the scorn of
the grim Bernabò, who readily accepted the proposal
of the young widower—Isabella de Valois having
died—for the hand of his daughter Caterina, thinking
thus to get an extra hold upon him. Little did the
veteran prince suspect that this mild recluse, who was
hardly ever seen out of his palace at Pavia, was the
very quintessence of that subtlety, tenacity and ambition
which had made the House of the Visconti the most
dreaded in Italy. Gian Galeazzo’s genius for statecraft
had been carefully trained by his father. While
Bernabò regarded him as of little account, he was
strengthening his position both at home and abroad by
quiet diplomacy, and evolving mighty schemes in his
mind, while he patiently waited the ripe moment for
their accomplishment.

There is nothing more dramatic in all the sensational
story of mediæval Italy than Gian Galeazzo
Visconte’s sudden spring to power. Seven years
had passed since his father’s death, and Bernabò’s
tyranny had grown ever more oppressive, in sharp
contrast to his fellow-ruler’s. One day in 1385 Gian
Galeazzo set forth from Pavia for Milan, escorted by
four hundred men-at-arms, having announced his intention
of visiting a holy shrine near Varese and his
desire of embracing his honoured uncle on his way.
He had arranged not to enter the capital, but to skirt
the walls till he reached the castle beside Porta Giovia,
recently built by his father. Laughing at the young
man’s caution and his pusillanimity in bringing so large
an escort, the elder Visconte sent two of his sons on
ahead, and swinging himself into the saddle, galloped
108off, with two or three servants only, to meet his nephew.
The two Sovereigns had but exchanged greetings when,
Gian Galeazzo signed to the captain of his escort,
Jacopo dal Verme, who laid his hand upon Bernabò’s
shoulder, and in a moment the tyrant found himself a
prisoner. With his sons he was hurried into the Castle
of Porta Giovia. Gian Galeazzo entered the city and
was received with immense joy. Not vainly had he
counted upon the terror and hatred which his uncle had
excited. The people, rushing to the houses of the fallen
tyrant and his sons, sacked them from end to end, fired
and tore them down, and razed them to the ground. In
a General Council of the citizens the sole and absolute
dominion of Milan was unanimously conferred upon
Gian Galeazzo and upon his male heirs.

Bernabò was removed soon after to the Castle of
Trezzo, and died seven months later, of poison, it was
said. His sons, except the two captured, had fled in
all directions, and were doing their utmost to raise help
against the usurper. But so perfectly had Gian
Galeazzo conceived and accomplished his great stroke,
and with the exercise of such consummate diplomacy
and such victorious arms did he secure himself afterwards,
that not one of Bernabò’s children, in spite of
their princely alliances, were able, with all their constant
efforts, to overthrow him or recover any part of
their heritage.

The usurper’s one excuse for his treachery was that
his uncle and cousins had been openly intriguing against
him. Immediately after the capture of Bernabò he
drew up a solemn indictment against him, charging him
with a catalogue of appalling crimes, and with insidious
designs against his, Gian Galeazzo’s, life, and
sent it to all the Courts of Europe. This characteristic
attempt to give legal justification to his action deceived
nobody. Italy at large regarded the young ruler with
109an admiration and dread which events soon proved well-founded.
The brain which had shown such sovereign
dissimulation cherished ambitions before which whole
cities and states were to fall. It was not long before
his schemes began to be fulfilled. The story of Gian
Galeazzo’s military enterprises is one of almost unbroken
conquest. He was no soldier himself, but he
knew how to choose his generals, and he got the best
out of them by interfering with them little and rewarding
them very generously. The chaotic state of Italy
at the time gave him his chance. So extraordinary
was his success, that he was regarded as something
almost diabolical. It seemed to his terrified enemies
that he fascinated those whom he marked for destruction,
so that they fell with eyes open into his snares.
Francesco da Carrara, Lord of Padua, was persuaded
to aid him to overthrow the Scaligeri of Verona. That
city having been conquered in 1387, Gian Galeazzo
picked a quarrel with his ally, besieged and captured
Padua (1389), and sent Francesco to die in the dungeons
of Monza. Master now of Verona and Padua, the Visconte
had touched the Adriatic shore. Meanwhile
Mantua and Venice looked on stupidly and awaited their
own destruction as if paralysed. General fear possessed
Italy at the rapid progress of the conqueror, who, unseen
himself, directed his instruments with such unfailing insight
to his desired ends. The Visconte’s policy was to
strike at the weak first and gradually prepare the way for
greater enterprises. The Church was at this time in
the throes of the Great Schism, and Gian Galeazzo,
protesting conscientious difficulties in deciding to which
Pope he owed spiritual obedience, played them against
one another, while he seized the papal fiefs in the
Romagna. His armies climbed the mountains and
poured into Umbria and Tuscany. Aroused at last by
the example and exhortations of Florence, Italy shook
110off her stupor, and a general effort was made to stem
the advance of the Visconte. Yet still he crept on,
remedying the checks to his arms by his stealthy
diplomacy. The King of France, in answer to the
appeal of Florence, sent an army to invade his States,
but it was routed by Jacopo dal Verme, and Charles
VI. was himself converted into an ally by the Visconte’s
flatteries and promises. In 1399 he triumphed over
Florence again by acquiring Pisa, without a blow, from
Gerardo d’Appiano, while Perugia, Siena and Assisi
submitted to his generals.

Already in 1395 Gian Galeazzo’s great increase of
power and prestige had been marked by his elevation
to a new dignity. His untiring negotiations, backed
by the offer of an enormous sum, persuaded the Emperor
Wenceslaus to constitute the Milanese State, including
a number of conquered cities, into a Duchy, and to
invest the Visconte and his male heirs with it in perpetuity.
The ceremony of investiture took place in the
Piazza of St. Ambrogio, where upon a great throne the
imperial legate robed and crowned the new duke in the
sight of all the people, in the midst of every pompous circumstance,
while in the basilica afterwards the Bishop
of Novara, destined to become Pope Alexander V.,
preached the sermon and lauded the subject of his oration
for his illustrious blood, his conspicuous beauty of person
and the virtuous tranquillity of his mind.

Gian Galeazzo was as great an administrator as
statesman and conqueror. By wisdom, economy, careful
distribution of taxation and supervision of finances,
he relieved the people from the cruel and ill-considered
burdens imposed by the bad management of his predecessors,
while increasing his own resources enormously.
He was the very genius of order. He saw that the law
was properly and effectively carried out, justice done to
all, and perfect rule maintained throughout the State.
111It was by his generous, just, and wise government of
the cities which he conquered that he consolidated his
vast dominions.

In these favourable conditions Milan flourished exceedingly,
and could contribute without overwhelming
distress her share of the duke’s annual revenue of
twelve hundred thousand florins, and of the extra levies
for special purposes, amounting sometimes to eight
hundred thousand florins in one year—sums far exceeding
those commanded by any other Italian prince.

Gian Galeazzo’s rule, though sometimes oppressive,
was not carried on by the harsh methods of his predecessors.
Violence and wanton cruelty were probably
repugnant to his sensitive physical temperament and
despicable to his unimpassioned mind. He was never
bloody, except for a purpose, as in the awful sack of
Verona after her revolt and recapture in 1390. But
for a refined and ingenious cruelty which exercised
itself in long worming plots ending far off in some unexpected
catastrophe, Gian Galeazzo seems to have
had an artistic predilection. It was he, men said, who
by Iago-like suggestions drove Francesco Gonzaga of
Mantua to slay his wife Agnese, one of Bernabò Visconte’s
daughters, in a frenzy of jealousy, that he himself
might be first and loudest afterwards in proclaiming
the innocence of the lady and exciting general execration
of the murderer. The beheading of young Obizzo
d’Este at Ferrara has been also attributed to evil suspicions
which the Milanese prince instilled into the Marquis
Alberto for political ends. The Visconte’s influence
is plainer still in the hideous treachery and ingratitude
of Jacopo d’Appiano, who, with a kiss of peace, slew
his protector and friend, the noble Pietro Gambacorti,
and made himself Lord of Pisa for Gian Galeazzo’s
benefit, as very shortly appeared.

The Duke’s piety was as marked as his less estimable
112characteristics. He did not doubt his own righteousness
or hesitate to invoke the aid of Heaven for all his enterprises.
He was assiduous in his devotion to the Saints
and observance of the Church’s rites and ceremonies.
The Cathedral of Milan, the vast Certosa of Pavia, and
many other great buildings, were planned and founded
by this prince. These works were not done solely for
a spiritual reward, but also to proclaim his own glory to
the world and to encourage art and industry. All
Gian Galeazzo’s greatness of spirit showed in his buildings.
His engineering schemes were as mighty and
daring in conception as undaunted and patient in
accomplishment. To subdue Padua and Mantua he
undertook the gigantic task of diverting the Brenta and
Mincio. But here he measured himself too audaciously
against natural forces. One night the Mincio, ‘in
piena,’ hurled its waters at the huge dam and swept
away the work which had cost untold labour and gold.

With all his occupations of war and statesmanship,
Gian Galeazzo found time to continue his father’s
patronage of Letters. He had as a youth studied
deeply himself in the University of Pavia. An early
fresco at Pavia, now long lost, represented him as a
child standing in a crowd of nobles and distinguished
men in his father’s palace, and in answer to the
question, who was the greatest man present, pointing
to the poet Petrarca. This allegory recorded the
honour which he paid all his life to intellect and
learning. He called the greatest scholars to the
Chairs of the University, including Emanuel Chrysoloras,
who thus brought to Milan the newly reviving
knowledge of Greek. He made these men his
councillors and familiar associates. They read poetry
to him and discussed the new discoveries of antiquity,
so that his castle has been called a temple of wisdom.
Architecture, sculpture, painting were equally fostered
113by him. There was no sort of human activity which
he did not seek to stimulate for the advantage and
glory of his State.

Though its operations meant destruction to lesser
powers, Gian Galeazzo’s brain was essentially kingly
and creative. This was the moment in Italy of the
formation of great States. The old faction struggles
of the era of freedom had come to an end with the
establishment of tyrannies, and of these the lesser were
now being swallowed up by the greater. In this
process Milan under the Visconti was the leader.
Its natural outcome seemed to be the foundation of a
great settled kingdom in the peninsula, like France
and England in the North. The patriotic spirits of
the time dreamed of such a kingdom as the redemption
of Italy from her woes of constant dissension and warfare.
The idea took practical shape in the mind of the
great Matteo’s descendant and heir, in whom character
and circumstance united to carry the large political
thought and ambition of the Visconti nearest to its
supreme fulfilment. And it was to Gian Galeazzo that
the dreamers looked for the realisation of their desire,
as perhaps Petrarca had looked to the earlier generation.
Fazio degli Uberti, the fourteenth century Florentine
poet and exile, who lived long at the Viscontean
Court, in one of his canzoni makes Rome cry—

To such a single crown Gian Galeazzo undoubtedly
aspired. And though he was defeated in the end, it was
114by no mortal means. All the efforts of the hostile league
of Florence, Venice, the Pope, and the lesser Italian
Princes, could not hinder his advance. His dominions
at the beginning of the fifteenth century embraced
nearly the whole of Lombardy and the Romagna.
The Umbrian cities Perugia and Assisi were his. Lucca,
Pisa and Siena obeyed him. The tide of his success
crept on. He foresaw and discomfited every move of
his opponents. In 1401 Bologna, long an obstacle in
his path, was surrendered to him by the Bentivogli.
His bravest and most obstinate foe, Florence, lay
virtually at his mercy. On every side of her he was
supreme. Cut off from all help she waited his deadly
attack. The moment of his triumph was at hand.

In July 1402 the Duke instructed his armies to
close round the city of the Arno. Retiring from Milan,
where the plague had appeared, to his villa at Melegnano,
he had the mantle, sceptre and diadem prepared
for his coronation as King of Italy. He had nothing
to fear now from mortal enemies. There was one power
only which his arms and calculations could not defy.
On the 10th of August he was seized with the deadly
contagion, and a few days later he died, at the age of 49.

Who can tell the thoughts of the man as he lay on
his death-bed, in his hands at last all that he had
laboured for day and night without ceasing, and they
powerless to close upon it. Who can measure the
passion of that defeated brain? His death caused
infinite joy in Florence, and in Italy generally. Yet
there were many who, with an anonymous poet of the
time, wept for the loss which had deprived

Their lament was justified. The direct result of the
115tyrant’s death was the release of all the elements of
disorder and reaction in Italy, the revival of angry
faction, the break-up of a great organised State among
a host of greedy and warring pretenders, and the
terrorism of military adventurers over the whole country,
ending in the establishment of a dynasty in Milan
destined to sell Italy to her final shame and ruin.
What if Gian Galeazzo had lived a few years longer?
Florence would probably have fallen before him,
Florence whose incurable spirit of individualism had
been the one barrier between him and his ambition.
But was that single little torch of liberty, which itself
was soon to waver and be spent, worth the sacrifice of
a united and peaceful Italy, strong enough to resist all
outside foes, forward enough to lead all Europe in the
path of progress?

Yet if that noble fruition of art and civilisation
which glorifies the fifteenth century in Florence was
conditional on her independence, then Italy through
all the tears of her after centuries of sorrow and humiliation
might well answer Yes.

THE SNAKE OF THE VISCONTI

Gian Galeazzo’s three sons by Isabella of
Valois had died in infancy, leaving him with one
daughter only, Valentina, whom in 1387 he had married
to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of
France, an alliance of immense immediate advantage to
the Visconti, but of fatal issue for Milan and Italy generally,
in days beyond even his far vision. After some years
of marriage, his second wife, Caterina Visconte, had borne
him a son, whom he had named Giovanni Maria, decreeing
that every one of his descendants should thenceforth
bear the name of Maria, as a token of his gratitude
to the Virgin, to whose intercession he attributed the
birth of his heir. A second son, Filippo Maria, was
born later. At the time of the Duke’s death the elder
was only fourteen, and the younger ten. In addition to
their youth, they had the enduring disadvantage of
issuing from parents both of the same stock, which
already, in the ferocity and capriciousness of Bernabò
and the physical timidity and weakness of Gian
Galeazzo himself, had shown signs of vitiation. This
taint in the blood became in Giovanni Maria a moral
disease, amounting to mania, and in his brother an exaggerated
misanthropy and timidity.

Giovanni Maria succeeded to the dukedom, and
Filippo became by his father’s will Count of Pavia, which
117had been erected into an appanage of the sovereign House.
The charge of the young Duke’s person and state immediately
became the object of a wild scramble among
the different parties in the city. The dead man’s will,
appointing his widow regent, was utterly disregarded,
and she and her adviser, Francesco Barbavara, were
driven out by Estorre and Carlo Visconte, two of Bernabò’s
sons, who now reappeared after long exile, hoping
to recover their heritage. The Duchess died in
1404, poisoned, it was believed, by her son. But
this unhappy lady, who had seen her father entrapped
and murdered and her whole family ruined by her
husband, and whose sons were now helpless in the hands
of robbers and foes—who had been driven hither and
thither in the whirl of faction and was already paralytic—might
well sink beneath her sorrows, without the help
of this unnatural crime, which there seems to have been
no better reason than his general wickedness for laying
to the young Duke’s charge.

Meanwhile Bernabò’s sons were swept away by other
faction leaders, to return and be again overthrown, as
the fortunes of the struggle surged backwards and
forwards. One after another of Gian Galeazzo’s
great captains snatched and held the city for a time.
Now Ottobuono Terzo—now Carlo Malatesta—now
Facino Cane, the most famous of them all, ruled in the
name of the utterly incapable Prince, while out of the
ruins of Gian Galeazzo’s vast State, which Venice,
Florence and the Church had hastened to dismember,
each faithless governor seized some remaining fragment
wherewith to create a small independent dominion for
himself. Thus while the great Duke’s conquests,
further off, were quickly lost, cities close to the capital
and long subject to the Visconti fell to these lesser
depredators. Pavia and other towns were captured by
Facino Cane, who kept the young Filippo a virtual
118prisoner, and Monza became the stronghold of Estorre
Visconte and his spirited sister Valentina.

The confusion and struggle in Milan continued
throughout the ten years of Giovanmaria’s reign. The
condition of the city was lamentable. Peace and order
were destroyed, and the names of Guelf and Ghibelline
were heard again in the streets, inflaming household
against household and awakening the horrors of civil
war. The Duke made no attempt to rule for himself.
His only share in the government was the execution of
State prisoners, whom he caused to be torn to pieces,
under his own eyes, by dogs trained for the purpose.
The extraordinary passion for dogs, together
with the hatred of humankind, visible in Bernabò and
others of the Visconti, had become an extravagant ferocity
in this degenerate member of the race. The story of
Milan during his reign is like some dreadful dream, in
which, when sleep has fallen on the incessant riots and
fighting, through the darkness of the night stalk the
awful figures of the maniac Prince, gloating in his sport,
and his huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, beside him, with
their terrible hounds in leash, on the scent of human
blood.

The Duke’s appetite for blood was rewarded with
Dantesque fitness. He died in 1412, suffocated in his
own blood in the precincts of the palace, under the
daggers of three Milanese nobles, who had sworn to
rid the world of a monster, and his body, lying in its
blood in the Cathedral, whither it had been carried and
left alone by the general horror, had for its only pall
blood-red roses strewn upon it by a harlot.

At the moment of Giovanmaria’s murder, Facino
Cane, who for some years had dominated Milan, lay on
his death-bed. Filippo Maria Visconte, whose youth
had passed in confinement at Pavia, now found himself
at one stroke free, and in nominal possession at least of
119the Dukedom. He was twenty years old. The astute
young man’s first step was to marry Beatrice Tenda,
Facino’s widow, through whom he became at once
master of Pavia and the State which the Condottiere had
conquered for himself, and of Facino’s fine army and
immense treasure. He then led his troops to Milan,
where his entry was opposed by Estorre Visconte and
a strong faction. The great stronghold of Porta Giovia
was, however, held for the legitimate prince by the
Castellan, Vincenzo Marliano, who roused the citizens
against Estorre. That brave soldier, the Hector of
his race, was overthrown, and he and his nephew
Giovanni Carlo, with all their supporters, were compelled
to fly after a few days. The young Duke
marched in without opposition and was received with
enthusiasm by the people.

The city felt at once the presence of a master.
Order was restored, factions calmed, peaceful industry
protected, and punishment inflicted on Giovanmaria’s
murderers. Filippo proceeded to engage the most successful
Condottieri of the day to defend and restore his
State, seconding their valour and generalship in the
field by the most careful and industrious diplomacy in
every Court of Italy and the principal European kingdoms.
The rebel Visconti were subdued by the death of
Estorre and the surrender of Monza (1412), which the
brave Valentina relinquished, making honourable terms
for herself and the remaining descendants of Bernabò.
Lodi, Como, Piacenza and Brescia were recovered in
the course of a few years, and in 1422 Genoa was won.
Filippo’s rapid progress awakened the old terror of the
Snake once again in Italy. The third Duke of Milan
had indeed many of the successful qualities of his race,
the craft, the patience, the untiring industry. But they
were vitiated by his timidity of mind and body, which
made him both suspicious and superstitious. Supremely
120perfidious himself, he dared trust no man, and constantly
laid snares for his own agents, and ended by
falling into them himself. Thus in 1424, fearful of
the glory of his great general, Carmagnola, who had
been the chief means of restoring his fortunes, he
offended and alienated the Condottiere, with disastrous
consequences. In his fear and dislike of all men he
shut himself up in the innermost recesses of the Castle
of Porta Giovia, and maintained as many precautions
as if he dwelt in a city of traitors. He tolerated few
persons around him, except his astrologers, who ruled
him through his fears. He dared take no step without
consulting them. He was never seen by his subjects
except upon some rare State occasion, surrounded by
guards, or when some peasant, working in the solitary
fields, spied him slipping hastily in his barge along the
canals between Milan and his favourite country palace
of Abbiategrasso.

This dark habit of life made him odious to the
sunny-tempered Milanese. They shuddered at this
pale fat man, who increased their horror by condemning
his own wife to death in 1418. To Beatrice
Tenda and her vast dowry Filippo owed almost entirely
his possession of the Dukedom. Her years much exceeded
her second husband’s, though the Duke, like
his father, had never been young. Because he was
tired of her, or because she was cross and avaricious,
as the chroniclers variously aver, or more probably
because she had served her purpose and was no longer of
any use to him, Filippo accused her of infidelity. She
was arrested and carried to the Castle of Binasco, together
with her supposed lover, a handsome young
knight, Michele Orombello, who had solaced her
dreary existence with his skill upon the lute, and after
having resisted torture inflicted to make her confess
herself guilty, she was beheaded. Orombello and two
121of her ladies shared her fate. Ten years later the
Duke married, for political reasons, the Princess Maria
of Savoy. This poor lady was hardly less to be pitied
than Beatrice. The Duke neglected her himself, yet
jealously kept her secluded from all but her own
women, allowing no man to appear in her presence.
Meanwhile Agnese del Maino, the lady who had
secured the tyrant’s affections, reigned in the Castle as
his wife in all but name. Filippo’s love for Agnese,
a woman of spirit and culture, and his devotion to the
daughter she bore him, his only child, Bianca Maria,
were human traits in his otherwise unamiable character.
Though no lover of learning, Filippo continued, as
much as circumstances allowed, the Viscontean patronage
of culture and letters, the tradition that had descended
from his ancestors, the hosts of Petrarca. He kept up
the University of Pavia and called great scholars to
its chairs. The celebrated humanist, Pier Candido
Decembrio, was for many years his secretary. He
employed artists of renown, including Brunelleschi and
Pisanello, in various works. To his daughter the
Duke was careful to give the scholarly training which
with the revival of learning had become a necessary
ornament for the women as well as the men of the
great Italian Houses, and Bianca Maria added the accomplishments
of Latin and Greek to the beauty and
spirit with which nature had endowed her.

But the Duke had neither means nor leisure amid
the struggles of his ambition and the pressure of his
fears for much attention to the peaceful arts. He was
entirely occupied in redeeming his heritage and preserving
it from the greed of Venice, the inveterate hate
of Florence, the envy of the smaller States, and, from
what he feared most of all, the ambition and intrigues
of the Condottieri in his own employ. The fortunes
of Italy were now, in fact, in the hands of the great
122military adventurers. After a century and a half of
physical lassitude, during which her wars had been
carried on by foreign mercenaries, she had bred a race
of warriors who had learnt their craft so well in the
camps of the German and English Condottieri that
they had now superseded the foreigners. With hosts
of trained and disciplined soldiers at their command,
who knew no faith except to their leader, they took
service now with one sovereign, now with another, and
with their fickle arms and policy made and unmade
States at their will. Facino Cane and Jacopo dal
Verme had already played their parts, to the disruption
of the Milanese State. Carmagnolo, after serving Duke
Filippo for many years, went over to Venice, and for
long balanced the two States one against the other, by
his crafty conduct of the war, till he fell a victim to
the superior cunning of the Doge and his councillors
in 1432. And now, in the midst of the noise of battle
and the ferment of intrigue, in which all the years of
Duke Filippo were wrapped, the great name of Sforza
is first heard in Milanese story.

With the first Sforza and his son Francesco on the
one side, and Braccio Montone and Niccolò Piccinino
on the other, the age of the Condottieri culminated.
The whole of Italy was plunged into strife by these
great leaders, in whom the old faction divisions of the
country were revived, and cities and States split up
once again into hostile parties, Guelfs and Ghibellines
reappearing under the new names of Sforzeschi and
Bracceschi. These rival forces were at once the
salvation and the torment of Duke Filippo. The hope
of succeeding to the heirless man’s dominions—an
elevation not beyond the attainment of an obscurely
born individual, in an age and country in which men
made themselves, and everything was possible to strength
and ability—was a bait which drew them to his service;
123and with all his cunning and perfidious diplomacy he
manipulated them for his own advantage, pitting them
against each other, now encouraging one, now compassing
his downfall by means of another. But they,
too, were cunning. It was a game of wits, and Filippo
often found himself outdone. Yet to the very end,
though plagued, cajoled and defeated on all sides, he
succeeded in circumventing all the efforts of either
party to seat itself securely in Milan, preferring, with
his strange spite towards mankind, to leave his kingdom
to anarchy rather than adopt an heir.

In spite of him, however, destiny had raised up in
a rustic race hailing from Cotignola, in the Romagna,
a regenerator for the worn-out tyranny of the Visconti.
Muzio Attendolo, the founder of the Sforza family, is
pictured by legend as a peasant boy, who, when twelve
years old, flung his woodman’s axe into a tree, and ran
away to the wars. He appears to have been really the
son of a small landowner, rich only in the possession of a
progeny mighty in number and in strength. The name
of Sforza is said to have attached itself to him, in consequence
of some signal effort of his extraordinary
strength and will. These qualities, joined to his great
energy, raised him to the highest military fame. His
life was chiefly spent in the wars of Naples and the
Church, but he had just accepted service with the Duke
of Milan, when one day he plunged into a swollen river,
under the arrows of the enemy, to save a drowning boy,
and sank beneath the weight of his armour (1424).

His son, Francesco, though only twenty-two, took
command of his army, and soon showed equal valour
and much greater ability. Engaged, in 1425, by Duke
Filippo, he rapidly became a power in Milan, where
he struggled with the rival Condottiere, Niccolò
Piccinino, for supremacy in the councils of the Prince,
and in the favour of the people. In 1432, Filippo gave
124him the highest mark of favour by promising him the
hand of Bianca Maria, and with all solemnity the little
girl of eight years old was betrothed to the great
general. But no sooner had the Duke thus exalted
Sforza, than he hastened to depress and humiliate
him in every way. Niccolò Piccinino was given the
chief command of the Visconte’s forces, and Francesco
was fain at the time to abandon Milan, and his hopes
of eventually possessing the Dukedom in his promised
wife’s right, and to accept the standard of Pope
Eugenius IV., Filippo’s bitter enemy. For many
years the brilliant genius of Piccinino and the subtlety
of the Duke were victorious over all enemies, and
baffled every effort of Sforza to obtain his little
princess and regain his footing in Milan. The climax
of Filippo’s success came in 1435, when his Genoese
fleet defeated the Neapolitans at Gaeta, and brought
back captive the Kings of Naples and Navarre and a
great company of lords and gentlemen. The Duke
on this occasion completely belied his usual character
and astonished the whole world by his kingly spirit.
He received the two monarchs with the utmost honour,
and immediately granted them their freedom. Moreover,
he entertained them and their trains for a whole
month, with great splendour and a joyous festivity, rare
indeed in Milan during his reign. His generosity was
doubtless calculated; in Alfonso of Naples he disarmed
an enemy and made a lasting friend, and by
cunningly rousing in that monarch a hope of succeeding
to the Milanese state, he raised up an aspirant who
might be useful as a weapon against the conflicting
pretensions of Piccinino and Sforza.

Before long, however, fortune turned against the
Duke. Sforza, at the head of the League of Venice,
Florence and the Church, routed his generals and captured
his provinces and cities. In this predicament,
125Filippo appealed to the great Condottiere’s ambition,
and allured him once more by offering him his bride at
last with a rich dowry of territory and gold. Francesco
thereupon ceased to press the attack upon him, and the
war became little more than a languid pretence.
Having thus nonplussed his foes, who were completely
dependent on the caprice of their general, the Duke, with
his interminable negotiations, continually delayed the
accomplishment of his promise, and meanwhile secretly
endeavoured in every way to entangle and overthrow
Francesco. In this he was only baffled by the almost
equal craft and caution of his would-be son-in-law.

But as time went on, the Duke began to grow old
and to weary of the eternal struggle. He was oppressed
with languor and excessive fat. The fear of
total blindness came upon him. Nearly all Italy was
armed against him. The parties in the State grew
ever more clamorous, his captains more unmanageable.
Each of the latter seized upon one of his cities and
domineered over it as its Lord. Disasters accumulated
upon him in the field. Piccinino’s daring raid into
Florentine territory, in 1439-40, ended in the great
defeat of Anghiari, and Sforza, enraged by the Duke’s
duplicity, was capturing his cities for the League and
devastating his territories far and wide. Meanwhile,
the peace which all Italy sighed for was delayed by
the great Condottiere, who, having triumphed over all
his rivals, would not sheath his sword till he had secured
Bianca Maria and the enormous dowry which he demanded
with her. At last, yielding to the persuasion
of his only friend, Niccolò III. of Ferrara, the general
peacemaker, Filippo agreed to the marriage, and the
maiden of seventeen was conducted to the city of
Cremona, which was to be her rich portion, by the
fatherly Marquis Niccolò, and there wedded to her
mature bridegroom.

126Sforza’s purpose was, however, only half accomplished.
Though the lady was won, the Dukedom
remained to be secured. But he had to reckon with
his father-in-law’s antipathy, doubtless originating in a
deep-seated pride of race, and also with the hostile
party—led by Niccolò Piccinino and his sons—which
was all-powerful in Milan and virtually ruled the now
decrepit Filippo. The Milanese armies before long
moved once more against Sforza, who retaliated
by accepting the command of the Venetian forces and
carrying fire and sword right up to the walls of
Milan. The terrified Filippo was compelled to seek
reconciliation with his offended son-in-law, and to the
chagrin of Venice, Sforza abandoned her side in the
hour of success and rapidly won back for the Visconte
the Milanese territories which he had just
conquered for the Republic. At this juncture the
Duke, plagued by the irreconcilable importunities of
the two parties, used the only resource left to him
wherewith to baffle them both. Without confirming
his promises to Sforza he fell sick, and, obstinately
refusing all remedies, let himself die (1447), reiterating
with his last breath a wish that after his death everything
might fall to ruin.

And so it did. The city was immediately plunged into
confusion and uproar. Pretenders sprang up on every
side, and the old faction trouble threatened to overwhelm
all order. The cities subject to Milan rebelled,
and once more the great State of the Visconti broke
up into independent fragments. Meanwhile, in the
midst of the tumult in the capital itself, the beautiful
word Liberty, still remembered from the glorious
days of Milan’s Republican freedom, was breathed by
a few noble and disinterested citizens. It was acclaimed
by the people, who thought it meant relief from taxation,
and was accepted by the various factions, each
127hoping to make profit out of it. Amid enormous enthusiasm
the Golden Republic of St. Ambrogio was
constituted, and the supreme authority delegated to a
few leading men, who were called Captains and Defenders
of the Liberty of Milan.

The first act of the Republic was to sweep away the
Castle of Porta Giovia, stronghold and symbol of hated
tyranny. The people exulted to see it fall, but many
thoughtful men, remembering the predatories who
coveted the rich city, were dismayed. Nor did the new
Constitution prosper. The Milanese had lost all capacity
for self-government under the long-continued despotism
of the Visconti. ‘Nothing could make Milan free,’
pronounced Macchiavelli later, ‘being altogether corrupt,
as was seen after the death of Filippo Visconte,
when desiring to establish liberty she neither was able,
nor knew how, to maintain it.’ The tyranny of
hostile factions triumphed over the best intentions of
the Republicans, and the thoughtless people arrayed
themselves one against another, behind leaders whose
only aim was to subjugate them. Those who had
really pure motives were drawn hopelessly into the
whirlpool, and the Defenders of Liberty oppressed each
other, and the citizens generally, with every cruelty and
injustice.

Meanwhile the Duchy was claimed by the Guelf
party for Alfonso of Aragon, on the strength of a
will which his supporters had extracted from the
dying Filippo. A pretension—first threat of the misfortune
that was to fall later on Milan—was also advanced
by the Duke of Orleans, son of Filippo’s
sister, Valentina Visconte. The Emperor claimed the
Duchy as a vacant fief. More dangerous than any of
these pretenders was Venice, greedy to extend her
empire. But strongest of all was the resolution of
Francesco Sforza, who mended the flaw of illegitimacy
128in his wife’s claim by the strength of his good sword.
General of the Milanese armies at Filippo’s death, he
used his power to defend the State from the attacks of
Venice, and to subdue it gradually to his own sway.
But his enemies were strong. The Piccinini, Francesco
and Jacopo, warred against him with arms and
intrigue, in alliance with the old Guelf faction. They
held Milan against him, but their councils were confused
by passion and divisions, and the great general
drew steadily nearer to the city. He defeated the
Piccinini in the field, and outwitted their perfidious
diplomacy with an equal craft. He leagued with
Venice and Florence against the new Republic, defeated
the Duke of Savoy, whom Filippo’s widow,
Maria of Savoy, had enlisted against him, and cutting
Milan off from all friends or help, laid siege to the
capital itself.

Yet still the citizens clung to their illusion of liberty,
and obstinately refused to submit to a new master.
Amid fierce tumult they appointed fresh magistrates
from the lowest ranks, persecuted and proscribed the
nobles, and put an enormous price on the head of the
‘perfidious’ Francesco Sforza, decreeing death to any
who breathed his name without a curse. But their
resolution was useless. For some time they kept the
invader at bay with great spirit, aided by his party foes;
but the death of Francesco Piccinino at this juncture
was a serious blow to the defence. All trade was
stopped by the siege, and general ruin threatened this
community, long used to wealth and ease. The city
was now reduced to grievous straits by famine. The
desperate struggles of the democratic leaders, Gio.
Ossona and Gio. da Appiano, to maintain their rule by
blood and torture in the face of the growing discontent
and the ceaseless intrigues of Sforza’s partisans, made
them odious to all. Tumults broke out, and everywhere,
129says Corio, were heard lamentations, weeping
and cries. The Captains of Liberty were no longer
feared or obeyed. When in desperation they began to
parley with Venice, the citizens unanimously agreed
that submission to Sforza was a lesser evil than falling
into the jaws of San Marco, and a rising of Ghibellines
and friends of the Condottiere succeeded in sweeping
away the Republic of St. Ambrogio, and opening the
gates at last to the victorious Francesco, and to a
new era of peace, prosperity and servitude (1450).

Amid the wild applause of countless thousands, the
great warrior rode in, followed by his soldiers, whose
necks and shoulders were hung round with loaves of
bread. It was a fine thing to see—in Corio’s words—with
what eagerness the people snatched off the bread,
and with what voracity they devoured it. So enormous
was the throng, all shouting Sforza and Duca, that the
conqueror and his horse were literally lifted up and
carried on men’s shoulders. But even yet one or two,
among them the high-hearted Ambrogio Trivulzio, opposed
his entrance, demanding of him guarantees for
the liberty of the city. They were overpowered,
however, by the multitudes, and Francesco Sforza
was proclaimed Duke by general consent of the
citizens.

Milan had immediate consolation for her lost liberty.
By the wise provision of the conqueror, such generous
abundance flowed in after the herald loaves of the
soldiers, that in three days it seemed as if there had
been no siege at all. Order was restored with a firm
and kindly hand, and the splendid feasts and tournaments,
continuing for nine days, and drowning the
memory of past afflictions, hid no cruel deeds of vengeance
upon the Duke’s political opponents.

Italian historians generally agree in a favourable estimate
of Francesco Sforza. Corio, the historian, whose
130father was a gentleman in the service of the Sforza, and
he himself from his youth up, attached to the ducal
household, describes the first Duke as liberalissimo, full
of kindness, a lover of justice and religion, and declares
that none observed faith better than he. This last, in
fifteenth century Italy, was not saying much. More impartial
writers, while praising his courage, ability and
general humanity, recognise that his triumph was due as
much to perfidy and political suppleness as to valour. He
was a man of his time, and his moral standard was that
expressed by Macchiavelli later, who, writing of the
Sforza, excuses him on the ground that great men are
ashamed to lose, not to gain, by deception.

As Duke of Milan, Francesco still resorted to the same
practices. The long tyranny of the Visconti, the strange
cruelties and mysterious misanthropic habits of the later
princes, the intercourse of the last Duke with astrologers
and necromancers, which had wrapped him in a sort of
diabolical atmosphere, made the idea of a despot repulsive
and awful to the people, apart from their fear of
oppression. But the brave, robust presence, the frank
and genial manner of this lord of the battlefield and
camp, who nothing esteemed astrologers, did much to
overcome their prejudices, and his rejection of the
gorgeous symbols of sovereignty prepared for his entry
as superstitioni dei Re, and unfit for a simple soldier,
was carefully calculated to win their confidence. But
he dared not trust them. No sooner was he seated on
the throne than with false assurances that his only
motive was the safety and embellishment of the city,
he began to rebuild the castle of Porta Giovia, and to
fortify it with enormous walls, and with two huge
round towers commanding the habitations of his subjects
themselves, an ever visible warning against
rebellion. The Milanese, however, made no attempt
to shake off the yoke. The bulk of the people resumed
131with joy their industrial occupations, too content
with relief from immediate afflictions to question of
the future. They might well, too, recognise that submission
to the successful soldier was Milan’s only hope
of salvation as an independent State.

In Italy, as a whole, the elevation of Francesco Sforza
meant the boon of peace. It enrolled on the side of
order and stability the chief element of disturbance in the
country. For more than a century continual strife had
been kept up by the Condottieri in their own interests.
But now that the greatest of them all had attained a
solid throne, the era of their irresponsible energies was
over. The splendid title and wealth of the Visconti,
and the immense resources of the Lombard capital,
united with the military skill and renown of the Sforza,
could consolidate and safeguard once again that great
empire of the Snake, whose decrepitude had been the
chief opportunity of the Condottieri, and the provocation
of the late wars. On the part chosen by Milan depended
largely the fate of the whole peninsula. The
far-eyed ambition of the Visconti had chosen war.
The new dynasty, on the contrary, preferred to develop
the vast wealth of the State which it had won rather
than increase its bounds, and was content to relinquish
for the sake of peace all pretensions to the cities once
belonging to the Visconti, and now usurped by Venice.
Neither Francesco nor his successor sought the aggrandisement
of their dominions. And where the Visconti,
aggressive though they were, had studied the peace of
Italy in the larger sense, they were nobly followed by
the two first Sforza. Gian Galeazzo’s national policy—Italy
for the Italians—his care to keep those Alpine
gates, whose keys had been committed to Milan’s charge,
locked against a possible invader, was adopted and carried
on by the Sforza, through nearly half a century;
and when it was reversed, and the flood of disaster and
132ruin let loose upon the country by Francesco’s younger
son, the brilliant prince to whom Fate had denied no gift
except just those two qualities which had made the
Visconti great—judgment and knowledge of men—there
is reason to believe that fear rather than ambition
was the motive.

During the last century of the Viscontean domination,
Milan, which had suffered little herself from the
wars of Gian Galeazzo and Filippo Maria, and had
never been taxed beyond her strength by those able
tyrants, had grown into an enormous centre of trade.
The rich produce of the East, transmitted from Venice
and the other Italian ports, and the exports of the
country itself, passed through the Milanese warehouses
to the marts of the North. The Milanese woollen
fabrics clothed all well-to-do Europe, and her smiths
forged the panoply of the knights and men-at-arms on
every battlefield and in every jousting-list of Christendom
and of civilised Heathenesse as well. So great
were the workshops of the master armourers that
two of them alone are said to have armed on one
occasion four thousand horsemen and two thousand
foot soldiers for Duke Filippo in the space of a few
days. The abundant products of the fertile plains
around flowed into the capital, and with increasing
population and wealth new industries arose, adding to
the general prosperity, so that this city could with ease
keep up an army which would have beggared Venice
or Florence. In her almost inexhaustible resources
lay the secret of her power in Italy, and of her great
influence even in the Councils of Europe.

The new Duke laboured to breed, by all the arts of
peace, yet greater wealth, and to secure its full advantage
for the State. Especially he desired that Milan
should have a due share in that splendid patrimony of
light and learning which Italy was now inheriting
133across the chasm of the Middle Ages from her rediscovered
Past. This man of war, bred up from
childhood in the camp, entertained all the liberal ideals
of the day. He particularly honoured virtuous and
learned men, Corio tells us, and to his encouragement
of art the city owed many beautiful buildings. In his
patronage of the humanities, as in all his affairs, the
Duke was nobly supported by his wife, Bianca Maria
Visconte. This lady—donna d’animo virile—had been
from their marriage-day the prop of his ambition and
resolve. Her invincible spirit had never allowed him to
flinch a moment from his task of conquest, had restored
his courage under misfortune, and had even inspired
him by donning helmet and cuirass, and herself leading
troops to his succour on the battlefield. Aided by her
clever mother, Agnese del Maino, Bianca Maria had
acted for him in critical moments in his absence, with
invariable constancy and promptitude, so that he was
wont to declare that he had more confidence in her
than in his whole army. In the acquisition of Milan
she was his chief councillor, and now that the throne
of her ancestors was won, she claimed her full share of
it. One may suspect that this conqueror of men—not
alone in history—was somewhat mastered by the young
woman at his side. Bianca Maria is celebrated by
the chroniclers for her goodness. ‘This lady,’ says
Cagnola, ‘in piety, compassion, charity, and beauty of
person, as well as every other virtue, surpassed all the
women of our age, and was the splendour and mirror
of all Italian women.’

Francesco left the government of his sons entirely
to this notable lady. She herself superintended their
Greek and Latin studies. But instruction in the art of
ruling was the chief feature of her training, and that
famous pedant, Filelfo, the Florentine, who was one
of their tutors, had to remember that his task was to form
134princes, not merely men of letters. She was careful to
have them taught chivalrous exercises, habits of courtesy,
and the good manners proper to princes; and so rigorous
was her discipline that no boys were ever better behaved
than the ‘fantastick’ of after days, Galeazzo Maria,
and he who was to betray Italy, Lodovico il Moro.

With the change from the worn-out domination of
the Visconti, rooted in the Middle Ages, to the rule
of the soldier of fortune, who owed his success to
personal genius and character, the Renaissance era,
that opportunity of individual talent, may be said to
have opened in Milan. The aspect of the city soon
showed the operation of a new vitality and enthusiasm,
in the splendid buildings which now arose, and in the
activity of all artistic and industrial employments. But
Duke Francesco’s designs for the improvement of his
State were hampered by the last convulsive struggles
of the long-continued wars of North Italy. It was
some years before Venice, Savoy, and the rest of
Milan’s enemies were quieted and propitiated by the
arms and the prudent diplomacy of the new ruler, who
with time found means of overcoming all the dangers
which threatened him. An alliance with Louis XI.
of France protected the Duke from the pretensions of
Orleans. With Cosimo de’ Medici he maintained a
loyal friendship, and thus disarmed Florence, and with
Naples he concluded a treaty of peace, which was
sealed by the marriage of his daughter Ippolita to
King Ferdinand’s son, Alfonso of Calabria. Francesco
was well aware, however, of the secret hostility harboured
against him by a strong party in the city, and
was ever on his guard. The death of Jacopo Piccinino,
in 1465, rid him of the last survivor of the great
family of Condottieri, who had been his most formidable
foes and rivals. Historians have charged Francesco
with a share in the horrid deception by which
135this brilliant captain was decoyed to his destruction at
the hands of Ferdinand of Naples.

A year later (1466), when the Duke himself died, his
dynasty seemed to be securely founded in Milan. Yet, in
the absence of the heir, the Duchess and her councillors
hastened to put the Castle into a state of defence, and to
take every precaution against rebellion. Galeazzo Maria,
was hurriedly summoned from France, where he was
fighting for Louis XI. in the Barons’ War. His return
was accomplished with the utmost speed and secrecy,
and the story of his passage through the dominions of
Savoy, disguised as the servant of a travelling merchant,
the attempt to capture him as he passed by a certain
castle in the mountains, his escape into sanctuary, and
thence, after three days’ concealment, into the fastnesses
of the hills, where by difficult ways he was conducted
into his own territory, strikes at once that note of
romance and extravagance which accompanies the
strange personality of Galeazzo Maria Sforza throughout
his short course to the grave.

Once in his own dominions the new duke had
nothing to fear. The habit of servitude had become
only too confirmed in the Milanese, and they sealed
their submission to the House of Sforza by accepting
Francesco’s son without protest as their Lord. Galeazzo,
born too late to remember aught but the triumphant
days of his House, or to have known any interruption
in the flattery, servility and fear which waited on
princes in the fifteenth century, found himself at
twenty-two monarch of a great State and vast
riches, lord of the lives and destinies of large
populations, and master, in all the vigour and freshness
of his youth and of the unexhausted Sforza
blood, of that incomparable treasure of delight and
varied human experience which the Renaissance of
learning, of knowledge, of beauty, had added to the
136heritage of power bequeathed to the Italian tyrants by
their immediate ancestors. Is it a wonder that the
princes of that bright new day, in all the pride of
the restored faith in human greatness and possibility,
should have believed themselves more than men, and
like the old Roman emperors, whose histories they
read and whose heirs they considered themselves,
should have assumed the proud appellation of Divi—Gods?
These favourites of Time and Fortune lacked,
however, one thing: that discipline of the will—more
rigorous than the self-mortification of the apostles of
asceticism—which the religion of beauty and joy requires
in its followers.

In Galeazzo Maria Sforza the characters of a
Renaissance tyrant appear in an exaggerated light. A
strain of the bizarre, inherited from his Visconte
ancestors, working in the strong new blood of the
Sforza, produced in him an extravagance of temperament
which ruled all his thoughts and acts. He had
been instructed in the new learning by Filelfo and
other humanists of repute; but from the classic
example and precept thus set before him by men who
themselves often abused the ideals which they taught
his unbalanced nature had learnt only licence. His hot
passions, romantically shown in youth by his love for
Lucrezia Landriani, and his adoration of the child she
bore him, that famous Caterina, afterwards Lady of
Forlì, developed rapidly into unbridled lust. His
vanity was nothing less than preposterous, and his care
for his tall and splendid person, and in especial for his
beautiful white hands, was a sort of idolatry. His insatiable
appetite for gorgeous surroundings and rich
display glutted itself with an orgy of colour and ornamentation,
rioted in costly fabrics and priceless gems
and gaudy equipages. Never before in Italy had such
pomp been seen as accompanied his journey, in 1471, to
137visit Lorenzo de’ Medici, who, as head of the Florentine
Republic, had been entertained a short time before in
Milan. With him went his consort, the beautiful
Bona of Savoy, the princess who was to have married
Edward IV. of England, had not her fickle suitor
fallen in love with Elisabeth Woodville instead.
Bona became Galeazzo’s wife in 1467.

Besides his Duchess, all the great feudatories and
ministers of State, arrayed in cloth of gold and silver,
accompanied the Duke, himself a magnificent figure in
royal crimson. The courtiers wore velvet and finest
silk, the dresses of the chamberlains and pages were
exquisite with needlework, the lackeys were in silk
and cloth of silver, and the very cooks and scullions
in velvet and satin. An immense train of horses, with
trappings of silver and gold, carried grooms in silken
liveries of the Sforza colours, purple and white.
Mules, with housings of white and purple damask
embroidered with the devices of the Sforza in silver,
bore litters hung with gorgeous stuffs, and containing
beds of cloth of gold. Huntsmen leading five hundred
couple of dogs, falconers with highly trained hawks
upon their wrists followed, and a host of trumpeters,
pipers, musicians and jesters played their lively part in
the procession. The description of this gallant train,
winding out in all its fresh new bravery into the green
Lombard plain from the serrated walls and gates of the
mediæval city, in the radiance of a May morning, suggests
something of what Milan once was and of the lost beauty
of Renaissance pageantry. The luxury and extravagance
of the Milanese visitors greatly impressed the
Florentines, and, according to Macchiavelli, helped to
corrupt them and induce them to abandon their sober
habits for pleasures and vanities.

Galeazzo’s love of decoration vented itself in the
adornment of his palaces with paintings and works
138of art. He employed a host of artists, and in his impatience
and excitement demanded miracles of them.
He would have marble palaces and painted chambers
rise as at the stroke of a magician’s wand; and an oft-told
tale relates how he commanded a certain artist to
decorate a whole wall with portraits of the ducal
family in a single night. And woe to those who displeased
him. The glittering, gaudy figure of this
prince, with the great black eyes and hawk nose, and
the white effeminate hands, dressed in the motley
parti-coloured dress, red and white, used by the Dukes
of Milan, moves through the pages of history in an
alternation of black shadow and garish light. He
was pointed out in whispers as the murderer of his own
mother. It is true that his imperious temper had
quickly resented Bianca Maria’s attempt to share in
the government and to retain the power which her influence
on her husband had given her. A short
struggle had ensued between the mother and son, and
ended by the defeated Duchess resolving to withdraw
to her dower city of Cremona and there exercise her
lawful authority. But neither did this division of the
State suit the new Duke, and he detained her in the
Castle of Melegnano, where, devoured by anger and
grief, she fell sick after a few months and died,
poisoned, according to common belief. But the
accusation appears to rest only on Galeazzo’s general
reputation for wickedness, and the ingratitude and
want of filial piety which he had already shown himself
capable of towards his mother. He is not a singular
instance, however, of a young sovereign disagreeing with
a dominant queen-mother. With as scant evidence,
the death of his first betrothed, Dorotea Gonzaga,
which freed him to make the more advantageous
alliance with Bona, is laid to Galeazzo’s charge.

GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA, BY PIERO POLLAIUOLO (UFFIZI, FLORENCE)

To face p. 138]      [Alinari, Florence

139To such a personality as this prince’s, so conspicuous
and so frenzied, legend readily clings, even in his own
lifetime, and the imaginations which peered into the
secrets of his dungeons carried, perhaps, some of their
morbid visions with them. We must, however, believe
the contemporary writers, who record hideous deeds
committed by the Duke even in the light of day, grim
pranks of punishment and devices of cruelty inflicted
upon offenders, under his own eyes. There was a
strange touch of imagination in his adjustment of
torments to offences, and often a kind of wild
justice and sympathy for the oppressed, horribly
manifested, as when he punished a priest, who had
refused the funeral rites to a poor man, by burying
him alive in the same grave as the corpse. Galeazzo
Sforza was in fact an embodied paradox—a monster
of vices and virtues, as he has been called, or
better still, in his daughter Caterina’s word, a ‘Fantastick.’
This mad, bad prince had the theoretic admiration
of his age for virtue, and was possessed with a very
rage for cultivating it in his subjects. Abuses, such
as bribery of magistrates, corruption in the public
administration, oppressive restrictions on trade and
commerce, were vigorously put down. He allowed
none but himself to take money from petitioners, or to
seize other people’s property. His passion for justice
and good government had planted so many gallows in
his realm, that when his young bride came to Milan
she trembled at the spectacle and fell on her knees,
imploring pardon for prisoners and offenders, a boon
immediately granted to her compassionate beauty.
Though greedy of treasure and guilty of robbing his
rich subjects, Galeazzo was punctual and exact in
paying his servants—a rare virtue in an Italian prince.
So trustworthy was his word as a sovereign that men
regarded it as if it had been money. He had great
personal attractions, was merry, affable and familiar
140with those around him, and willingly gave audience to
his subjects. The courage which the populace expect
of a prince was conspicuous in him—a man who never
knew fear, as his fearless daughter Caterina proudly
describes him.

Better still, Galeazzo Sforza knew men. No one
of proved worth and activity had to fear his caprices.
Cecco Simonetta, his father’s faithful minister, was retained
in the highest offices throughout his reign; and
his chief engineer and architect, Bartolommeo Gadio,
kept undisturbed command of the great works of the
Castello. Nor did the Duke’s heated temper affect
his political judgment. He reconciled himself with
Savoy, and with Lorenzo de’ Medici and Ferdinand of
Naples formed that triple alliance which gave Italy her
most splendid period of peace. In the cordial relations
which he maintained with France he never forgot
Milan’s appointed task of guarding the gate of Italy.
Within his own dominions he held party passions in check,
and followed his father’s prudent policy of employing
in the important offices of State foreigners like the
Sicilian Simonetta, and men who owed everything to
the House of Sforza, and of diminishing the influence
of the great nobles.

141

BRIDGE OVER NAVIGLIO NEAR SAN MARCO

With peace without and order within, the tide of prosperity
rose ever higher in the populous city. The vast
lands of the Duchy were everywhere being brought to
full fertility by irrigation works and the draining of
wastes. Palaces surrounded by beautiful gardens and
fruitful orchards and vineyards were springing up where
before had been wilderness. Great schemes for new
waterways between the different cities of the State were
in hand, and all the immense increase of the country’s
resources, resulting from improved agriculture and
greater facilities of traffic, flowed by a thousand streams
into the coffers of the capital. An extraordinary vitality
seemed to possess all classes in this morning of the
Renaissance. The larger horizons revealed to the spirit
by the revival of ancient literature and thought, the
multiplicity of new interests created by increased knowledge,
the joy of the release from the mediæval sense
142of guilt and sorrow, gave to this age the vigour and
enthusiasm of a regenerated world. Milan was one vast
hive of vivacious energies, busy in commerce, in art and
all kinds of handiwork, in learning, poetry, music. The
Duke’s excited spirit was eager for all intellectual and
artistic novelties. His Court was thronged with scholars
and philosophers. Not content with the magnificent
library of Pavia, he formed a fine collection of books
in Milan, and printing-presses were set up in the city
at this time. But above all else Galeazzo loved music.
Milan had been from early times the resort of troubadours,
minstrels and those skilled in ‘divers musicks,’
but never before had such beautiful singers been heard
there as the Duke summoned from Flanders and all
parts of Europe to compose the choir of the ducal
chapel in the Castello. Music and the chase were
Galeazzo’s favourite diversions; and the vast hunting-grounds
and deep forests of the Duchy, full of wild
boars and stags and all sorts of beasts and birds, the
wide meres and watery channels crowded with waterfowl,
were continually visited by gallant hunting and
hawking trains. The picturesque interest of that far-off
princely life, rich in all the adornments of rarest art,
and fresh with the springing joy of that hopeful age, is
enhanced for us by its dimness. It has all the poetic
charm of a half-obliterated fresco. These historic figures
appear to our vision in that stiffness and innocence and
decorative grace, that mingling of mediæval romance
and Renaissance beauty with which they were doubtless
represented by the primitive painters who covered the
walls of Galeazzo’s palaces in Milan and Pavia with
scenes of the ducal life—frescoes, alas! long perished.

The picture of the city at this time would be bright
indeed but for the plague-spots of vice and cruelty in
the ruler, and of corruption in the people. Acquiescence
in tyranny, and the new luxury of life, had bred
143effeminacy and servility in the citizens. But there were
some among them who could not forget their shame.
This motley prince, himself an early and crude product
of the still undisciplined spirit of the Renaissance, was
destined to perish by the operation of that same spirit.
The very arrogance of blood and brain which drove him
to excess swelled the indignation of the youths who assembled
in the school of the humanist Cola Montana, and
followed the finger of their preceptor as he pointed with
scorn to the spectacle of the Duke passing with extravagant
pomp across the Piazza dell’ Arengo, and to the
obsequious train of nobles and magistrates in gorgeous
attire attending him, and contrasted the degradation and
pusillanimity of these courtiers with the noble simplicity
of the Carthaginian and Roman patriots who had won
immortal fame by giving their lives for their country.
Cola, who was himself secretly envenomed against the
Duke on account of personal wrongs, never ceased to
hold up before his pupils the example of Brutus and
the lofty ideal of virtue and self-sacrifice which inspired
their classic ancestors. Inflamed by his eloquence and
by a mingling of pedantic pride and youthful enthusiasm,
these sons of fathers who remembered the brief hope
of the Ambrosian Republic formed a resolution to rid
the State of the monstrous tyranny which oppressed it.
Girolamo Olgiati, Gio. Ant. Lampugnano and Carlo
Visconte were the chief conspirators. The lofty indignation
of the two latter was aggravated by personal
grievances, but the motives of Olgiati, whose sensitive
mind had been moulded for years by Cola Montana,
seems to have been pure of all egoism except a beautiful
self-conceit. They communicated their plot to a
few trusty comrades, and went about the city secretly
stirring up discontent. In spite of the general prosperity
poverty existed, and it happened that the season had
been bad and scarcity threatened. The populace could
144not see beyond this immediate evil, and all groaned together
under the taxation which they supposed went
only to provide for the limitless luxury of the Court.
Many citizens were hereditary Guelfs and foes of the
Sforza. The idea of rebellion was familiar enough in
every North Italian city, and the conspirators received
so much sympathy and so many promises of adherence
that the excited vision of young Olgiati pictured the
whole city awaiting the signal of the great deed to rise
and set him and his fellows at the head of a Republic
as noble as those of antiquity. Day and night Lampugnano’s
house was crowded with enthusiasts for
liberty. All preparations were made for the rising,
deputies were appointed to ensure the safety of the city
in the confusion which was sure to follow the overthrow
of the government, and the day and the particulars
of the great act of judgment on the tyrant
were carefully arranged.

On St. Thomas Day (1476), Duke Galeazzo entered
early in the morning into his capital, after a short victorious
campaign against the encroachments of Burgundy
in the mountains of Savoy. Let it be remembered
of him that his last deed was thus to beat back invaders
of Italy. As he rode to Milan from his Castle of
Abbiategrasso, in the bitter cold which had numbed
the streams and fogged the air, three ravens slowly
rose and flew across his path, one after the other,
uttering hoarse croaks. The Duke seized a gun and
fired at these evil augurs, and was half-minded to turn
back. He went forward, however, but a heavy presentiment
of ill had fallen on his soul. As he rode in,
welcomed by the nobles who had thronged the city to
do him homage, the conspirators noted his heavy
countenance, and knew that the hour was at hand.
Instead of mirth he carried gloom into the Castle, all
prepared for his coming, and though it was the season
145of joy, he ordered the ornaments of the chapel to be
draped in black, and bade the Flemish priest, Cordiero
and his thirty fellow-singers from beyond the mountains,
chant every day in the Mass a verse from the Office of
the Dead. Nevertheless the great Christmas festivities
took place as usual, and the tall figure of the Prince, robed
to the feet in crimson damask, and accompanied by the
fair Duchess and a crowd of nobles, stalked gesticulating
though the splendid chambers of the Castello, vaunting,
in the midst of a strange and mournful oppression,
his own magnificence, and the glory and enduring
strength of his House.

The next day was the Feast of St. Stephen. Very
early in the morning, Gio. Antonio Lampugnano and
Girolamo Olgiati knelt and heard Mass together, like
knights entering into battle. A great crowd gathered
in S. Stefano, where the Duke was to attend Mass later.
Some of the conspirators mingled with the people,
while the three leaders waited in a house close by.
The slow moments passed. At last the appointed hour
arrived and the procession was at hand. Girolamo,
in his confession, tells the rest in breathless words.
Soon a noise; it is the Prince. We hide our daggers, and
in an instant stand in the church. The Duke passes, I
transfix him, he falls and expires.

Corio, who was one of the Duke’s chamberlains
and was present in the church, describes how Galeazzo
entered between the Ferrarese and Pisan Envoys,
preceded by a pompous train of guards and servants.
The writer saw the daggers flash from the little group
of conspirators and bury themselves in the gaudy
body of the Prince, and heard his one cry, O Nostra
Donna! as he fell back in a pool of blood. In the
uproar which immediately arose, Lampugnano was killed
as he fled through the press of shrieking women; but
Girolamo and Carlo Visconte, with their accomplices,
146succeeded in escaping from the church. The mangled
body of the tyrant was carried into the adjoining
Canonica, and its gory dress was exchanged for a robe
of white cloth of gold, and all the ducal ornaments and
insignia set upon it. Meanwhile Girolamo, hounded by
the rage and terror of his father out of his home, whither
he had fled, took refuge with a priest and waited in
violent agitation, his exalted brain seething with hopes
and fears. The people must be even now rushing to
arms. His friends must be coming to find him and
place themselves under his command. They would
sack the palaces of Cecco Simonetta and the hated
ministers, seize the gates, abolish the taxes, proclaim a
glorious Republic. The hours went by and nothing
happened. Hearing a great noise, he looked eagerly
out and saw the lacerated remains of his comrade
Lampugnano being dragged along by yelling children
with every hideous insult.

Hope began to desert him. He was sought, not by
friends and admirers, but by officers of justice, and
fleeing miserably from one refuge to another, was soon
captured. In his dungeon, the mind of the young man—he
was twenty-three—maintained its exaltation, though
it was a wonder, says Corio, that amid such torments
as he underwent, the afflicted spirit did not abandon
the agonised body. He managed to compose a long
relation in Latin of all the circumstances of the plot, a
document of poignant human interest which shows the
effect of the prevailing enthusiasm for antiquity upon
a serious and lofty soul. Even at the last frightful
moment, when the iron of the executioner was at his
breast, the fainting youth had courage to animate himself
in the tongue of Brutus and Cato with the words—Collect
thyself, Hieronimo. The memory of thy deed
shall live long. Mors acerba, fama perpetua!

If the great movements of history could ever be said
to turn on the existence of an individual, one
might regard as the paradoxical result of Galeazzo
Maria’s death the loss of Italy’s freedom. The young
Milanese Brutus, in his noble rage against tyranny,
little foresaw the three centuries of dark and hopeless
servitude which by the unimpassioned workings of
fate his blow would indirectly bring upon his country.
The exclamation of the cynical Sixtus IV. at the
news of the murder—To-day is the peace of Italy dead,—showed
a clearer vision. The scheming Pope saw and
gauged the unstable elements in the situation—the
ambition of Naples and Venice, the helplessness of
Duke Galeazzo’s ten-year-old successor, the contagion
of disorder throughout Italy; remembered the aggressive
Turk in the east, the adventurous Frank in the north,
and forthwith set to work to precipitate the inevitable
upheaval in the interests of his own family.

The trouble ahead was, however, as yet hidden.
Milan kept calm. The air-bubble expectations of the
conspirators had perished at the touch of reality.
There was no attempt at a rising. The widowed
Duchess assumed without opposition the supreme
authority as regent for her son, the child Gian
Galeazzo, with Cecco Simonetta as her chief minister.
148The dead Duke’s brothers, Sforza, Duke of Bari,
and Lodovico il Moro, were absent in France, Ascanio
the priest in Rome. But the situation was pregnant
with danger, as Simonetta well knew. He suspended
all Galeazzo Maria’s works of embellishment in the
city, set the engineers and builders to construct new
defences, threw a strong garrison into the Castle, and
adopted every precaution against revolt. The chief
menace came from the nobles of the old Ghibelline
party. They hated Simonetta, who was a Sicilian and
the creature of Francesco Sforza, with no interest
apart from his master’s House, which he strengthened
by depressing the great feudatories. The veteran
minister was unpopular with the people too, because he
was a foreigner, and because of the heavy taxes.
Sforza and Lodovico, hurrying back from France, and
joined by Ascanio, found a powerful party, headed by
the fiery and restless soldier, Roberto di San Severino,
ready to support them in overthrowing the government.
But Simonetta was on the watch. He seized one of
the chiefs of the disaffected party, and filled the city
with troops. San Severino promptly fled to Naples,
and the three princes retreated to a little distance,
ready to escape. Their youngest brother, Ottaviano,
a youth of eighteen, who was involved in their plot,
also rode hastily out of the city, and finding himself
pursued, leapt into the swollen Adda, and was washed
off his horse and drowned. A formal decree banishing
the elder princes was issued, and for the moment the
danger was over and Simonetta triumphed.

Naples, however, ambitious for a foothold in Milan,
embraced the cause of the exiles, and sent San Severino
with an army to worry the ducal territories. The
brothers themselves, from their different places of
refuge, kept up communications with their partisans in
the city, and intrigued against the government.
149Simonetta’s power depended upon the will of the
Duchess Bona, a lady ‘of little good-sense,’ according
to Commines. Though she left the guidance of
affairs entirely to the minister, his influence could not
compete with the charms of her handsome Ferrarese
secretary, Antonio Tassino, to whom she could deny
nothing. The inordinate presumption of this favourite
soon conflicted with Simonetta’s authority. Lodovico
Sforza, who far away had eyes and ears everywhere,
was quick to profit by the dissension between these two
powers at Court. The death, in 1479, of the elder
brother Sforza—from excessive fat—helped to clear
the path for the ambition of the Moro, who was now
created Duke of Bari by the King of Naples, in succession
to Sforza. To him the rebellious spirits in
Milan looked henceforth as their leader. A number
of the great nobles, the Borromei, the Da Pusterla—those
old foes of the Dukes of Milan—the Marliani
and others, aided the upstart Tassino to turn the
Duchess against her husband’s faithful old servant.
Beatrice da Este, wife of Lodovico’s half-brother
Tristan, and other ladies in her intimacy, plied her
with complaints of Simonetta, and entreated her to
dismiss him and recall the banished Moro, who with
the mercenaries of Naples was now preying on her
territories. Tassino whispered the same persuasions
between the endearments which she permitted from
him. At last, one day Lodovico himself knelt before
her, having at great risk returned to the city and made
his way secretly through the gardens into the Castello.
Heedless of his disobedience to her decree of banishment,
the thoughtless woman received him with the
utmost joy, and the whole city burst into a frenzy of
welcome. Simonetta’s clear vision read the future.
Most illustrious Duchess, said he, I shall lose my head,
you your State. Deaf to his warning, Bona committed
150the government to her brother-in-law. Three
days later Simonetta was arrested and carried to the
Castle of Pavia, where, after he had lain a whole year
in captivity, he was brought to trial, before one of the
most vindictive of his personal enemies, on a charge of
enormous crimes against the ducal House. He was
tortured, and finally beheaded in the Castle yard. For
putting him to so merciful an end, Bona took much
credit to herself in an official notification of his trial
and death sent to the various Courts of Italy.

The minister disposed of, the turn of the favourite
came. From being Lodovico’s ally and tool, Tassino
was now become a serious hindrance to Lodovico.
His arrogance was overweening. He had boundless
power over Bona, and was rapidly making himself absolute
master in the palace. The crisis arrived in a
struggle over the Rocchetta, the inner Keep of the
Castle of Milan, which, with its strong garrison and
impregnable defences, gave its commander virtual
dominion of the whole city. Tassino persuaded the
Duchess to appoint his father as Castellan, in the place
of Filippo Eustachio, who had been put in charge of
it by Duke Galeazzo. But Filippo, a staunch adherent
of Lodovico’s, disobeyed her repeated commands
to give up the keys, and sturdily resisted all her
efforts to remove him, defying her threats and sentences,
until the Moro had prepared a swift and sudden stroke.
One day, at Lodovico’s bidding, Filippo and Gio.
Francesco Pallavicino entered the apartments of the
little Duke, at an hour when most of his attendants
were out of the way, and snatching up the child,
carried him across the narrow bridge which led from
the Corte Ducale into the Rocchetta, and delivered
him into the custody of his uncle. With the person
of the sovereign in his possession, behind the defence
of drawbridges, portcullises and artillery, and a strong
151body of soldiers faithful to himself, the Moro could
dictate terms to the Duchess. She had no alternative
but to surrender to him the regency and the guardianship
of her son. As for Tassino, seeing himself overreached,
he fled incontinently, to escape a worse fate,
and stripped of everything but his perfumes and ivory
combs, which were bundled after him, he disappears
ignobly out of history. Bereft at once of lover, son
and sovereignty, Bona was a piteous figure of helpless
rage and grief. She declared she would abandon the
Duchy, even if she had to climb out of the windows
and cross the moat at the risk of her life. Lodovico,
however, gently detained her in the Castle of Abbiategrasso,
a virtual prisoner, until the subsidence of
her shallow passion enabled her to submit to the
new order of things and settle down, without power
or authority, to a quiet life with her children, in the
Castello of Milan again.

Thus, by a series of successful palace intrigues,
Lodovico Sforza made himself supreme in Milan. He
had still, however, to cope with the resentment of the
nobles who had helped him to power, and now found
themselves denied any share in it. Like all usurpers,
Lodovico found ingratitude necessary to self-preservation,
and from the first he studied to depress his more
powerful subjects, choosing foreigners and men of
modest degree as his ministers and advisers. Roberto
di San Severino with many other nobles now took up
arms against him. But they were completely defeated
by Constanzo Sforza, an able general and a kinsman
of the reigning House, and the turbulent San Severino,
transformed into the Moro’s bitterest foe, quitted the
Duchy, and went off to serve Venice in the war
against Ferrara.

The masterly craft by which Lodovico Sforza had
achieved his triumph, roused the admiration and fear
152of all Italy, which increased as, with the progress
of time, he became the most conspicuous figure in
Italian politics. About the enigmatic personality of
this prince, history has confused our minds with contrary
judgments, which romance has translated into a
various caricature. His peculiar association with Italy’s
greatest glory and greatest shame has thrown an exaggerated
light and shade upon his memory. The
Italian historians of this period make him the scapegoat
for that calamity of Italy, which no one man, but the
ancient and inherent sin of the whole nation, brought
about. Guicciardini, while recording his many virtues
of mind and heart, is glad to believe him guilty of the
worst crimes of ambition and perfidy, and to discover
in him a fatal self-conceit. Paolo Giovio speaks of
him as born for the undoing of Italy. Modern inquirers
have modified the traditional view of the Moro, by
showing the baselessness of some of the worse charges
against him, and by a diligent prying into all the
details of his domestic existence, they have at once
humanised and belittled the old picture of the man.
Yet still the real Lodovico seems dark to us. It is not
for nothing that the name of il Moro—the Moor—given
to the dark-skinned boy in his childhood, has
clung to him through history; it shows the conviction
of his contemporaries and of posterity that it fitted
not only his bodily appearance, but the complexion of
his soul.

By his actions he must be judged. In the Italy of
the Quattrocento, to do evil that good might come was
excellent morality. The best men practised it, and
differed only from the worst in the ends they pursued.
Lodovico’s usurpation of power had its immediate
justification in the salvation of the State. The prestige
of his name, and his fine statesmanship, could alone
avert the civil war and anarchy which Bona’s government
153was leading to, and oppose a barrier to the greed
of Venice and Naples for Lombardy. The deposition
of a weak woman by a strong and able man was an
act unsingular in a country where beneath all law and
convention reigned the tacit conviction that character
was the true legitimacy. Once in power, he found
that internal peace necessitated the sacrifice of the
turbulent elements of which he had served himself to
climb, and personal ingratitude became a public virtue.
Freed from the prepotence of these restless spirits, the
citizens could pursue their occupations undisturbed, and
the prince could devote himself to his great schemes
for the improvement of agriculture, the facilitation of
commerce and the humanising of the people. It is
these things—in which he carried on the noblest tradition
of the Sforza domination—which are the Moro’s
apology for much wrong-doing; it is these and not his
ceaseless political activity, and immense prestige as a
statesman, which make the story of Milan great during
his reign, a period brilliant, joyous and prosperous
beyond compare.

Though in title only regent for the young Duke,
Lodovico was absolute sovereign. His extraordinary
activity, resource and subtlety, backed by the boundless
wealth of Milan, soon made his influence felt
abroad. For the first year or two his cares at home
kept him from interfering much in general affairs. The
balance of power in Italy, deprived of the weight of
Milan, wavered in consequence, and Sixtus IV., Naples
and Venice did their utmost to swallow up Florence.
The safety of the great Tuscan Republic, secured
partly by the courage and address of Lorenzo de’ Medici,
but more by the timely knock of the Turk at the door
of Italy, at Otranto, was further assured by the fast-rising
power of the new ruler of Milan, who by uniting
his State in 1484, in a fresh alliance with Florence
154and Naples, restored to Italy that equilibrium which had
been first established by his great father, Francesco.

The eleven years that followed the Peace of Bagnolo
(1484-95) were the most splendid in the history of
mediæval Italy. They were the culmination of a great
ascent, preceding as great a downfall. Pressing upwards
through the continual struggles, amid the phantoms and
shadows of the earlier centuries, the chosen spirits of
humanity had at last emerged upon a height, where, as in
the light of unclouded morning, the whole world seemed
spread out before and behind them, heaven itself within
their reach, the gods themselves their fellows. In the
general material prosperity out of which the fine flower
of Italian civilisation in the Quattrocento had sprung,
as in the cultured and artistic joy of life which was its
highest expression, Milan, led by Lodovico Sforza, held
a foremost place. Whatever may have been his secret
motives, this prince exerted himself ceaselessly to conceive
and carry out projects of enduring benefit to the
country. Summoning the greatest brains in Italy to his
service, he set on foot immense hydraulic works, by
means of which wildernesses were converted into fruitful
tracts, and new ways opened for the passage of
merchandise and general traffic. He widened his
father’s famous canal, the Naviglio Martesana, and the
Naviglio encircling the city, employing the inventive
genius of Leonardo da Vinci, to overcome the difficulty
of the different levels by a system of locks, still existing
in Milan to this day. He joined these canals with
the ancient channel between Milan and Pavia, thus
forming a navigable waterway between the Adda and
the Ticino. Large districts hitherto unfertile owed
their after prosperity to this enlightened ruler. He
fostered agriculture, founding model farms and introducing
improved breeds of cattle and horses. His
pleasaunces and orchards round the Castello at Milan,
155and his country palaces and villas were so beautiful
and fruitful that they were called earthly paradises.
After a brief half century of the Sforza rule, the Duchy
of Milan was become a vast garden, supporting an
enormous population of hardworking peasants. Commerce
flourished more than ever, every way being opened
to it by wise and considerate measures. In the higher
branches of industry the Moro’s vitalising interest and
enthusiasm was as effective. His splendid patronage
of art and letters made this city of prosperous traders
the richest centre in Italy of the æsthetic culture of
the Renaissance. Attracted by his liberality and large
ideas, the rarest genius of the age was at his command.
Bramante of Urbino spent many years at Milan, building
cupolaed temples and colonnaded palaces, and transforming
the old mediæval city of the Visconti into the
fair Renaissance vision of the Moro’s desire. For
Lodovico and for Milan, Leonardo da Vinci did his
greatest works. Perugino painted for the Moro the
splendid Madonna with the Archangels, now in the
National Gallery, and in the stimulating atmosphere a
number of native artists of considerable distinction
sprang up. Lodovico equally favoured men of letters
and scientific inquirers. He invited them to Milan,
and gave them great rewards, and did his utmost by
grants and personal care to raise the University of
Pavia and the schools founded at Milan by Galeazzo
to a flourishing condition.

CANAL, VIA SAN MARCO

156But the merits of the Moro’s government were obscured
to the people by his tyrannic methods. The
peasants, groaning under the oppression of forced labour
and of heavy and unjustly distributed taxation, were too
preoccupied by their immediate grievances to care for
the rich harvest which would ensue some day from the
sacrifice of their sweat and their scanty gains. In
their belief the Prince sought only self-glorification and
the increase of the already fabulous ducal treasure.
Their simple lamentations sound in the pages of the
chroniclers like a dull threatening undertone in that
wonderful symphony of rich and various instruments
which the life of the Milanese Court was at this time.

157

CANONICA OF ST. AMBROGIO

One of the worst characteristics of a tyrant was,
however, conspicuously absent in Lodovico Sforza.
He was not cruel. Galeazzo’s horrible ways of enforcing
the law no longer prevailed. The gallows
vanished; fragments of quartered traitors adorned the
gates no more, and such pains as justice or policy
necessitated were administered out of the sight and, if
possible, knowledge of the Moro. Even Guicciardini
describes the Moro as mild and merciful. The sight
of bodily suffering hurt his fastidious delicacy, his love
of fair and seemly appearance, his fine sensibilities.
His shrinking from blood was perhaps a sign of what
may explain much that seems dark in his history—fear;
of the decadence which fatally awaits races risen
too swiftly to greatness. However that may be, his
mildness did not win the hearts of the people for a
sovereign who addressed them from behind the protection
of iron bars and never admitted them to free and
friendly audience. An ever-widening gulf divided their
lives of elemental want and passion from the exquisite
existence of subtle and various delight within the impassable
158walls of the Castello. It was for the Moro,
we remember, that Leonardo sketched the plans of an
ideal city, with an upper system of streets in which the
sovereign and his chosen society of nobles and courtiers
might pass, uncontaminated by the breath and odour of
the multitudes below.

To the princes of the Quattrocento the people were
but the necessary foundation of existence, ‘the mud
on which proud man is built.’ And how incomparable
was the fair fabric, so based, and composed of all
the rarest elements of life. The story of the Moro’s
Court is well-known to English readers. The joyous
figures that peopled it are familiar to us, and the gorgeous
pageants, the processions of princes and potentates
and fair ladies, the stupendous display of wealth and
beauty, the tourneys, feasts and dances, are tales oft told
in biography and romance. In 1489 the long arranged
marriage of the young Duke with Isabella of Aragon,
granddaughter of King Ferrante of Naples, was celebrated
with extraordinary pomp, and two years later
the festivities were renewed for the double nuptials of
the Regent himself with Beatrice da Este, daughter of
the Duke of Ferrara, and of her brother Alfonso, heir-apparent
of Ferrara, with Anna Sforza, sister of Gian
Galeazzo. All these splendours were far overpassed,
however, in 1493, when the Moro’s diplomacy was
rewarded by an imperial alliance for the House of
Sforza, and Bianca Maria, the Duke’s remaining sister,
rode forth from the Castello in a chariot of gold to her
marriage with the Emperor Maximilian. The imagination
reels with the descriptions of the rich robes and
jewels, the pavilions and triumphal arches, the garlands,
the blazoned hangings, the allegorical masques, the noise
of music and of applauding crowds on these occasions.
One would feel that Milan must have suffered an intolerable
surfeit of colour and delight, did we not know
159that the gorgeous riot was shaped into symmetry and
order by the supreme decorative taste of the Italian
Quattrocento. All the beautiful neo-pagan conceits,
the new vision of the gods of Olympus granted to that
age, inspired these brief spectacles. Leonardo—Bramante—fashioned
those gorgeous edifices of an hour, built
up that wonderful seeming, ephemeral as the glories
which it celebrated, and stayed those passing moments
for ever in the history of the world.

Though it was the desire to outdo every other
princely Mæcenas which impelled Lodovico to bid
highest for the services of great artists and scholars,
it was not merely his liberality which held such a man
as Leonardo at Milan, but rather his large appreciation,
his sympathy with great and original ideas, his rare
wisdom in leaving genius free to work in its own way.
He had this, moreover, in common with that unique
among the sons of the Italian Renaissance, that
he, too, was a far seeker and the designer of things
never to be finished. Leonardo came to Milan
about 1483. There exists a copy, apparently in
his own handwriting, of a letter recommending
himself to the Moro, in which he enumerates all
his qualifications for employment, beginning with his
skill in the invention of military engines, and ending
with his capacity to carry out any work in sculpture or
painting as well as any other man, be he who he may.
Vasari tells us that on his arrival in Milan he offered
Lodovico a silver lute which he had fashioned himself
in the form of a horse’s head, and in such a manner
that in beauty and sonority of tone it surpassed every
other instrument at the Court, and that the prince
quickly became enamoured of his admirable gifts and
conversation. The more intimate knowledge of the
man revealed in his own notebooks has, however,
changed the traditional picture of Leonardo as a fine
160courtier and brilliant wit and conversationalist, the
centre of attraction at the Court, enjoying great revenues
from the Moro and dissipating them in splendid living.
We see him, instead, secluded with his pupils in the
pleasant home which Lodovico gave him on the outskirts
of the city, beside the Castello gardens, poring
over some problem of construction or hydrostatics,
striving to create a flying-machine or other novel
engine. Or passing rapidly, according to his mood, from
modelling the great horse to his painting in the refectory
of Sta. Maria della Grazie, or tracing the
exquisite contours of those beautiful favourites of the
Moro, Cecilia Gallerani and her successor, Lucrezia
Crivelli, mocked and allured in each shadowy face by
that inscrutable smile of woman in which the secret of
life seemed to hide itself. He evidently cared little to
mingle with the social life of the Court, where perhaps
he was neither able nor willing to express to a circle,
alive to intellectual interests but enslaved by pedantry
and charlatanism, those occult thoughts which even in
his writings he hid in left-handed hieroglyphics. Yet
he must have been a familiar presence in the palace,
where he was constantly summoned for some work
which to us seems strangely disproportioned to his
genius—the arrangement of the water-supply for the
Duchess’s bath, the designing of triumphal arches for
a wedding pageant, or the costumes and accessories of
some spectacular joust. Whatever it was, he did it
with the interest of one for whom there is no great nor
small, and for whom a moment as much as countless
centuries holds eternity, and little things and big manifest
alike the divine law of necessity.

Leonardo’s figure overshadows for us all others of
Lodovico il Moro’s Milan. There were many others
besides him, however, of highest reputation at the time
in the chosen circle of the Court. The Moro, in his
161care for the intellectual improvement of his subjects,
imported poets from Tuscany to teach them the art of
composing sonnets. Ancient prejudice against all
things Lombard withheld many of Leonardo’s countrymen
from accepting the Sforza’s offers of honours and
emoluments. But the sunshine of Court favour, come
whence it might, was greedily accepted by the Florentine
Bernardo Bellincione, whose gift for stringing together
appropriate and flattering verses secured him
the position of Court poet for many years at Milan.
Nor could any small local passion restrain that bare-boned
vagabond genius, Antonio Camelli—called il
Pistoia after his native city—from quenching his perennial
famine at the ducal table. But though he played
the fool to amuse his patrons, il Pistoia was of much
rarer stuff than Bellincione. Behind his cloak of
buffoonery the tragedy of a serious and prophetic spirit
hid itself, and a fine satire inspired the sallies of his
fantastic muse. An irrepressible sonneteer, he poured
forth streams of verse at Milan. A number of his
sonnets allude to the politics of the day, and are of great
interest.

These professors of poesy were very successful in
propagating their art in Milan. Francesco Tanzi, one
of the many versifiers at Court, declared that after the
example of Bellincione, Milan was full of sonnets, and
all the rivers and canals ran with the water of Parnassus.
The poetic frenzy had invaded the whole of society, so
that every young knight who desired the favour of ladies
and princes had needs be skilled in making rhymes and
improvising to the music of his lute. A flourishing
school of poetry rewarded the Moro’s patronage and
encouragement, and its most distinguished graduates
were young nobles of the first rank—Gaspare Visconte,
of the same stock as the old ducal House, and Antonio
di Campo Fregoso, of a famous Genoese House. A
162singer of older and still higher repute in the ducal
circle was that mirror of the graceful and cultured
chivalry of the day, Niccolò da Correggio, who as the
son of Beatrice da Este, wife of Tristan Sforza, was
constantly at Milan, in devoted attendance upon his
cousin, the younger Beatrice da Este. Marchesino
Stanza, Girolamo Tuttavilla, Galeazzo di San Severino,
Galeotto di Caretto, a lettered noble and chronicler of
Montferrato, all swelled the tuneful choir. The Moro
himself is said to have included sonnet-making among
his myriad activities. Around these distinguished figures
hovered a host of lyrists of various rank and accomplishment,
both natives and pilgrims attracted from afar
to this now famous shrine of the Muses. Men of other
occupations added their voices in moments of leisure.
Among these was Bramante, who, in the intervals of
his labours as architect, engineer, painter and master of
revels, competed eagerly for the laurel wreath.

The chief theme of their song, and the object of
the gallant adoration and service of all, was the
younger Beatrice da Este, who at fifteen came to
Milan to be the Moro’s bride. To this child of
tuneful Ferrara, trained from childhood upwards in all
the æsthetic traditions of its famous Court, an atmosphere
of poetry, music and art was as natural as the
air she breathed. With that full and eager vitality
which she shared with her father, Duke Ercole, and her
sister, Isabella of Mantua, she sought all beautiful and
joyous things. In the Court of her rich and indulgent
lord she could satisfy every desire. For the rich
equipment of her person and her surroundings she had
the rarest talent at her command. Leonardo da Vinci
devised curious girdles for her. That finest of goldsmiths,
Caradosso, carved the beautiful gems which she
wore, and spent his most delicate workmanship on pax
or reliquary for her oratory. To create her presentment
163in marble she could choose a Gian Cristoforo
Romano, most cultured and graceful of young sculptors.
Her love of sweet melody was fed by the crowd of
skilled musicians who frequented this Court, where their
art was traditionally welcome. Besides the Flemish
priest Cordier, and the other ultramontane singers of
Duke Galeazzo’s celebrated choir, there were here the
viol player, Jacopo di San Secondo—the Apollo of
Raphael’s Parnassus—whose strains were able to soothe
the Moro in moments of fever and pain, Atalante
Migliorotti, the friend and companion of Leonardo, and
others numberless, nameless to us now. An incomparable
craftsman, Lorenzo di Pavia, made instruments
for her of purest tone, in cases of ivory and ebony most
exquisitely worked. She played herself upon these,
and had a sweet voice. Many a time with her devoted
knight, Galeazzo di San Severino, model of all fashionable
graces, and himself an accomplished singer, and
her favourite Daino, most musical and delightful of
fools, she and her ladies would make harmonious concert.
As became a daughter of Este, Beatrice extended
a princely patronage to scholarship and serious literature.
Her secretary, the learned Vincenzo Calmeta,
tells us that she engaged men suitably gifted to read
aloud to her the Divina Commedia and the works of
other Italian poets. She would give serious attention
to literary debates, such as the lively poetic contention
we read of between Bramante and Gaspare Visconte,
on the respective merits of Dante and Petrarca.

Such encounters of sharp-sworded wit, so much in
vogue at that time, were conducted at Milan with less
pedantry and self-conceit than in Courts ruled by more
strictly humanistic traditions. A freedom, gaiety and
freshness animated the intellectual atmosphere here.
The Moro’s extraordinary activity of mind and wide interests,
Beatrice’s ardour, and capacity for enjoyment,
164fired all around them. The Duchess’s eagerness for
culture was tempered by her love of sport and outdoor
life. Her hawks and her hounds were a primary
passion in this Ferrarese princess, and many a fair
morning was passed in adventurous chase of the wild
creatures in her husband’s vast hunting demesnes. She
was a splendid horsewoman, and had unbounded
courage. The lively sports in which she indulged
with her ladies and cavaliers were not always of a
refined order. The gaiety of the fifteenth century was
ministered to by jests and practical jokes of incredible
coarseness, and by all the obscenities of the allowed
fools and monstrosities of nature who capered in
grotesquely brilliant garb round every Renaissance
princess. Yet into this full life the Duchess herself
carried a redeeming innocence. In spite of her free
intercourse with the young nobles, no lightest shadow
ever rested on her fair fame.

The society in which she passed her bright, pure
existence had, however, but lately had Galeazzo Maria
for leader and example, and had forgotten all moral
restrictions. When Beatrice came first to Milan she
found her husband’s mistress, the beautiful poetess
Cecilia Gallerani, installed in the palace itself. The
whole of Milan was rotten beneath its fine vestures and
its art and learning. Wealth and luxury had encouraged
the love of pleasure natural in the people, and
the ideal of freedom in thought and manners, the search
for novel experience and sensation, the worship of the
new old gods, born of the revived knowledge of
antiquity, had induced immorality and corruption more
than elsewhere in this city where voluptuous tastes
were not restrained, as in the Florentines, by natural
temperance. Everywhere in the midst of the joyous
revels lust and evil passions were heaping up sins
ready for the retribution to come. Corio, an eyewitness
165of these times, preludes his story of the
great catastrophe by a vivid picture, adorned by
the fashionable pagan conceits, of Milanese life
during these years before the fatal 1495, when it
seemed to the city and its Lord that everything was
more firmly established in peace than ever before. No
one thought of other than accumulating riches. Pomps
and pleasures ruled the hours. The Court of our princes
was splendid exceedingly, full of new fashions, dresses and
delights. Nevertheless, at this time virtue was so much
lauded on every side that Minerva had set up great
rivalry with Venus, and each sought to make her school
the most brilliant. To that of Cupid came the most
beautiful youths. Fathers yielded to it their daughters,
husbands their wives, brothers their sisters, and so thoughtlessly
did they thus flock to the amorous hall that it was
reckoned a stupendous thing by those who had understanding.
Minerva, she too, sought with all her might to
adorn her gentle Academy. Wherefore that glorious and
most illustrious Prince Lodovico Sforza had called into
his pay—as far as from the uttermost parts of Europe—men
most excellent in knowledge and art. Here was the
learning of Greece, here Latin verse and prose flourished
resplendently, here were the poetic Muses; hither the
masters of the sculptor’s art and those foremost in painting
had gathered from distant countries, and here songs
and sweet sounds of every kind and such dulcet harmonies
were heard, that they seemed to have descended from
Heaven itself upon this excelling Court.

We who know the after days of Milan watch the
golden hours gliding by towards the darkness ahead,
and the glory centring round the two doomed figures of
Lodovico and Beatrice is pregnant for us with tragedy
and grief. Corio continues with a description of these
princes, in this so vain felicity, passing their time in
divers pleasures, and speaks of the magnificent jousts and
166tournaments and military shows, and of the homage
paid by the poets to the Moro as Lord both of war and
peace. Yet, he adds, with all this glory, pomp and
wealth, which seemed as though nothing could be added
to it, Lodovico, not content, or unaware of his felicity,
must needs reach higher still, that his fall might be the
greater. And the chronicler, preparing himself to
compose the cruel and unheard-of tale, fears that compassion
will not suffer him to arrive at the piteous end
without tears.

The Moro’s power was in fact unstably based. His
was the right of natural ability to rule. But beside him
the lawful sovereign had grown to manhood during these
years. Gian Galeazzo Sforza—the engaging little boy
reading Cicero in Bramantino’s fresco, now in the
Wallace Collection—showed with advancing years
little desire or capacity to govern. Amiable, weakly,
and self-indulgent, he was perfectly content to leave the
power to his uncle, for whom he had a love and admiration
which are a touching element in the relationship of
the two men—usurper and legitimate prince. Had
they only been concerned, the Moro’s peculiar difficulties
might never have arisen. He seems to have regarded
himself sincerely at first as the vicegerent of his nephew.
Dum vivis tutus et laetus vivo. Gaude, fili, protector
tuus ero semper. These words, in the mouth of nephew
and uncle, are the motto on a miniatured page in the
History of Francesco Sforza, by Gio. Simonetta, printed
in 1490. The picture shows Lodovico and Gian
Galeazzo kneeling on the edge of a lake; in the midst
of the water a ship with a youth in it and a Moor at the
helm, and in the background a mulberry-tree (moro)
spreading wide branches. This allegory—one of many
such that we read of—may have expressed some real
affection as well as self-exaltation in Lodovico, though
after-events give it a strange irony.

167But the respective marriages of the two princes introduced
another element into the situation. Beatrice da
Este was not only the joyous spirit of festival and sport
and all artistic delight, but a woman of strong character
and intelligence. She quickly gained influence over her
husband, and asserted herself in State affairs. The very
narrowness of her youth and sex gave her power over
the complex and wide-minded Moro, who adored her
spirit and courage, and yielded to her as his great sire
Francesco had yielded to Bianca Maria. Beatrice
wanted the semblance as well as the substance of
sovereignty, and the birth of her son, in 1492, added
the new ambition of a mother to her desire. Isabella of
Aragon, on her side, had a royal spirit; her soul swelled
with rage and offended pride when the regent showed
no intention of relinquishing the government to her
husband. In vain she urged Gian Galeazzo to assume
his rights; her exhortations only passed straight from
the confiding boy into Lodovico’s ears. Her sense of
wrong was further exasperated by Beatrice, who usurped
the homage and consequence which should have been
Isabella’s as consort of the sovereign. The rivalry between
the princesses began very soon after Beatrice’s
appearance on the scene, and that playful boxing-match
of which we read, in which the Duchess of Bari knocked
down her of Milan, was the symbol of a contest which
involved fatal issues reaching far beyond the two women
themselves.

Influenced by his wife’s ambition, and the birth of
his son—also perhaps by the impossibility, when the hour
came, of relinquishing the sweets of power and sacrificing
his vast projects and the fruits of his past incessant
labours to the claim of mere primogeniture represented
by the feeble and already failing Gian Galeazzo—Lodovico
was evidently scheming, after 1490, to make himself
Duke of Milan. From the time of the Moro’s marriage
168the ceremonial homage which had been paid till then
to the young Duke was gradually lessened. The tutelage
which had been proper in his boyhood was now
used to emphasize his incapacity. No single office or
dignity was at his disposal. Ministers of State, captains
of fortresses, generals and magistrates, all were appointed
by Lodovico. At no point did his subjects come into
contact with their real sovereign. He was dependent
for all supplies upon the Moro, who kept absolute control
of the immense Sforza treasure. The birth of his
heir was but scantily celebrated, while that of Lodovico’s
a little later was made the occasion of the most
pompous rejoicings. The halls of the sovereigns in the
Corte Ducale were gradually deserted, while Lodovico
and Beatrice’s apartments in the Rocchetta were
thronged. The self-seeking courtiers knew well where
their devotion was most profitably placed. Besides, it
was melancholy in the chambers of a sickly prince and
a sad princess ever brooding over her wrongs. The
two appeared less and less in public, and finally retired
altogether to the Castle of Pavia, and their pathetic
figures were almost forgotten on the joyous stage of
Milanese life.

But they existed—a constant menace to the Moro,
a weapon for his thousand enemies in the State, and for
jealous Italy outside. Isabella’s piteous complaints to
her grandfather, whom she implored to right her
husband, inflamed the long-standing Aragonese hatred of
the Sforza. The other powers—Venice, baulked in
her greed of conquest by the strong hand of the Moro,
and ever nervous for the cities which she had wrested
from Milan in Filippo Maria’s time; Pope Alexander
VI., who allowed no gratitude to the Sforza, although
through Cardinal Ascanio they had been the means of
his election, to interfere with his schemes for a new
Borgian Italy; Florence, politically and commercially
169jealous of the Lombard State—all would have gladly
seen the Moro overthrown and Milan depressed.

During these years of peace and of expansion for
Milan, the suspicious fear with which the disproportionate
prosperity of one power was always regarded
by the rest of Italy had concentrated itself upon
Lodovico Sforza. His extraordinary success and untiring
activity, his powers of intrigue, his ability and
resource, were the theme of every tongue. The extravagant
adulations of his Court poets were repeated
and unwillingly credited throughout Italy. With the
vast wealth of Milan at his command what might he
not do? Fear of Milan was an old habit. Was it
she that should give Italy a master after all? Was this
dark prince, mysteriously potent, to be the destroyer
of her liberty at last?

Had men looked more closely into the monster of
their imagination, they might have perceived that it
was not Lodovico’s ambition that was most to be
apprehended. The fatal situation which now developed
seems to have been the product of two opposing
fears. The Moro’s faith in himself and in his good
fortune was a superstition which supported itself upon
the lying prophecies of the astrologer ever at his side,
and was at the mercy of every ill omen. His intrigues
were often the devices of a man on the defensive,
rather than the confident moves of a conqueror. To
give a colour of justification to his now almost complete
usurpation, he set casuists to work and evolved a
specious doctrine, pronouncing himself lawful successor
of his father, as the first son born to Francesco after
he became Duke of Milan. By means of this argument,
and the better persuasion of an enormous gift of gold,
he obtained from the Emperor Maximilian the promise
of the investiture of the Duchy, an obsolete legality
which neither Francesco or Galeazzo had troubled to
170obtain in confirmation of the right won by the sword.
These devices, however, aroused only derision and
scandal in his own country, nor could they quiet his
own uneasy mind. He felt Italy against him and was
afraid. His particular dread of the House of Aragon
never slept. Though old King Ferrante urged with
pathetic sincerity the maintenance of the league which
had preserved the peace of Italy for so many fortunate
years, he might at any moment be succeeded by Alfonso
of Calabria, who did not disguise his hatred of the
Moro and his longing to right his daughter and son-in-law.
Lorenzo de’ Medici had died in 1491, and peace
was already threatened by the injudicious policy of his
son Piero. The covetousness of Venice, the faithless
selfishness of the Pope, completed a situation of general
peril, which might easily beget a great combination to
crush Lodovico and reinstate Gian Galeazzo, to be
followed by a scramble for the States which all knew
the young Duke incapable of governing.

The Moro resolved to anticipate the blow. With
fatal confidence in his power to control the force which
he was evoking, he opened the gate which it was Milan’s
sacred duty to keep shut against the foreigner. He
invited Charles VIII. of France to lead an army into
Italy against the Princes of Aragon, and to recover the
Kingdom of Naples for the House of Anjou.

Lodovico’s act did not perhaps at the time wear the
magnitude of guilt which subsequent events gave it.
Italy was so disunited, so lacking in any general
principle of patriotism that her various tyrants had not
scrupled to appeal at times to France or the Empire
in their needs. Men were used to sporadic attempts
of the Princes of Anjou to overthrow the Aragonese
dynasty in Naples. But now that the Angevin claims
were vested in the King of France, such attempts
must be more perilous for Italy. Naples was not the
171only State to which France had pretensions. Louis
of Orleans—next in succession to the throne of France
after the sickly Charles and his infant son—claimed
the Duchy of Milan itself through his ancestress
Valentina Visconte. The success of the French
enterprise in Naples could scarcely fail to be followed
by a vindication of this other claim. Nothing but
that strange and fatal belief in himself, which not only
inspired Lodovico but had infected his contemporaries,
could have blinded the Moro to the madness of his
proceedings and induced Venice, Florence and the
Pope to abet his projects at first by forming a new
league with him and abandoning Naples to its fate.
There was some strange glamour about this remarkable
man which deluded his own generation. The Renaissance
spirit felt itself represented and fulfilled in him.
Its boundless confidence in human possibilities was
exemplified by the reputation of almost superhuman
powers with which it invested Lodovico Sforza. God
in Heaven and the Moro on earth, so dared il Pistoia to
sing, and the prince to hear. The tragic fall which
awaited this exaltation is a part of the inward as well
as outward history of an age when pride built so high,
only to be smitten with incompleteness. Strangest of
all, perhaps, was the self-deception of Lodovico himself,
shown by the persistence in him, throughout his hopeless
captivity, of this superstitious faith, after it had
utterly failed him in the crisis of his life, so that in
his last moments, in his prison at Loches, he could
attribute his overthrow to nothing less than the direct
intervention of God, to punish him for his sins, since
only the sudden might of destiny, he said, could have subverted
the counsels of human wisdom.

In inviting Charles, Lodovico doubtless thought to
produce a temporary diversion, which should weaken
Naples and produce a political upheaval, amid which
172he should be able to secure the ducal throne, and once
seated in it, readjust by adroit diplomacy, the balance
of power in the peninsula after the retirement of the
invader in due course. But he had left out of account
the respective conditions of France and Italy—the
pent-up military fury in the noble classes in the first
country, which raged for an outlet, the fatal weakness
of disunion in the second, and the enervation which
peace and unparalleled prosperity had produced in its
people. He may have hoped to achieve his ends by
the mere threat of French invasion, and counted on
the indecision of the young king and his own subtle
craft to keep the matter from going any further.
Charles, however, whose weak head swam with the
flatteries of venal councillors, and with romantic ideas
imbibed from the tales of the Paladins, was easily persuaded
to undertake the conquest of Naples as a
preliminary step to the redemption of Christendom
from the Turk.

But the preparations for the expedition were very
dilatory, and more than two years passed before they
were completed. During this time of suspense Italy
was full of doubts and fears. Lodovico’s allies began
to hesitate, and there were daily shiftings of policy in
the various States, now in favour of Naples, now of
France, all actuated by self-interest, which guided
them finally in this crisis of their country’s fate to a
despicable neutrality, waiting upon events. The
Moro’s own policy was shifting and tortuous, even
displaying at times an anxiety—little credited by his
neighbours—to save Naples from the catastrophe
which he himself was bringing upon her. Already he
was working for a reaction against the French in the
event of their success in Italy. But his advances to
the opposite party won for him only the distrust of
his friends, and in France many warned Charles of the
173folly of relying upon this man, homme sans foy, s’il voyoit
son profit pour la rompre, as Commines pronounces him.

Meanwhile, careless apparently of the future, Italy
continued her wild dance of pleasure. In Milan,
gaiety and licence reigned supreme. Yet there are
many signs that a sense of sin and of a reckoning at
hand had begun to awaken. The sonnets of il Pistoia
grew grave with prophecies to laughing Italy of the
much weeping which time would soon draw from her,
and of the shortness of the hours between her and her
immense, irreparable sorrow. The superstitious Moro
himself must have been shaken by the blind friar who
is said to have appeared in the Piazza of Milan at the
time of his negotiations with the French King, crying—Prince,
show him not the way, else thou wilt repent
it. From Florence came the echo of Savonarola’s
annunciation, Gladius Domini super terram cito et
velociter. More poignant still to ears that could hear
was the tremulous voice of the octogenarian King of
Naples, warning Pope and Moro, again and again, of the
peril clear to the terrible prevision of the dying—He
who will may begin a war, but stop it, no!

But the voices cried in the wilderness. King
Ferrante’s was spent by death early in 1494, and in
the following autumn Charles appeared at last at the
head of a splendid host, and was welcomed with immense
pomp and revelry by Lodovico and Beatrice at
Pavia. There in the Castle the young Duke lay dying.
The King visited him, and the piteous spectacle roused
the sympathy of the monarch and his followers, for
whom the person of legitimate sovereignty had a sacredness
unfelt by the Italians. Charles was, however, much
embarrassed by the Duchess Isabella, who besought
him to have mercy on her father, the King of Naples.
She had better have prayed for herself, who was still a
young and fair lady, observes Commines.

174The invaders passed on, finding their path cleared
before them, and their progress already an assured
triumph. Their cruelty when they had first entered
the country had terrified all inclination to oppose them
out of the Italians. Piero de’ Medici’s shameful surrender,
Florence’s welcome, the inactivity of the Pope,
the speedy fall of Naples, all the details of the pitiful
story are well-known. Charles had not gone far when
Gian Galeazzo died. The cruel report at once arose,
and was widely believed by both French and Italians,
that Lodovico had had him poisoned, and the Moro’s
memory has come down to our day loaded with this
detestable sin. Modern inquiry has, however, shown
how little foundation there is for the charge, disproving
the preliminary accusations against Lodovico of starving
and ill-treating the ducal couple, and making it clear
that Gian Galeazzo was surrounded by physicians and
carefully tended. It is evident that Lodovico’s temperament
was incapable of such a crime—that he would
have been repelled by the mere idea of murdering this
nephew whom he had brought up, and who loved him
with a pathetic fidelity to the last. Gian Galeazzo’s
longing on his death-bed for the uncle, who was far
away, riding in splendour beside the French King,
his touching questions to one of Lodovico’s gentlemen
whether he thought his Excellency the Moro li volesse
bene—loved him, Gian Galeazzo—and whether he
seemed sorry that he was ill, go far to dissipate
the cruel suspicion. Nevertheless, the young Duke’s
death relieved Lodovico’s conscience of its last
scruple with regard to the Dukedom. He hastened
back to Milan and had himself invested with the
ducal mantle, cap and sceptre, in the midst of a
stupendous pomp.

Meanwhile, the success of the French was producing
the result anticipated by the Moro. Venice,
175awaking to the danger which the terrible prestige of
the conqueror’s arms meant for all Italy, was ready to
listen to Lodovico’s proposals for a remedy. The
invaders were now to add to their experience of
Italian pusillanimity an acquaintance with the craft
which had superseded brute courage in this advanced
nation. Scarcely had the French King turned his
back on Lombardy, when the Venetian ambassadors
were treating with the new Duke of Milan for
an alliance against him. A few months later,
Charles and his knights, sick with the Southern
delights of their newly-conquered realm, and longing
like homesick children for France, found their return
barred by a powerful coalition of their late ally with
Venice, the Emperor, the King of Spain, and nearly
all the minor States of Italy. The story of their
homeward march, more like a flight, need not be
repeated here. At the approach of the French to his
dominions, the faithless Lodovico trembled in his
palace, in spite of the mighty host of allies which was
awaiting them, while his people, beside themselves
with fear of the cruel Northerners, and exasperated by
the grievous taxation imposed upon them to oppose
this evil which the Moro had himself provoked,
murmured against him as the murderer of Gian
Galeazzo, and the oppressor of the widowed Duchess
and her son. Lodovico well knew that he could not
lean upon his subjects in adversity. But the battle of
Fornuovo (1495) relieved Lombardy of all fear of the
French for the time, though the Italians let slip their
chance of annihilating the hungry and enfeebled enemy,
and crushing the Northern terror for ever. The irresistible
conqueror of a year back, having with miraculous
good fortune escaped with the best part of his troops to
Asti, was compelled to negotiate for peace with Milan
and Venice. At the meetings of the Duke and the
176Venetian Ambassadors with the representatives of
Charles, Lodovico was accompanied by his young
wife, who took part in all the discussions, and astonished
everybody by her intelligence and wisdom. All
through this critical period of the French invasion,
Beatrice was the true helpmeet of her husband, sustaining
by her courage and will his more sensitive
temperament under the fears and doubts which
assailed it.

Peace at last concluded, the French finally made
their way home, leaving so weak a hold on Naples that
the Aragonese quickly reinstated themselves. In the
universal joy at the disappearance of the invaders it
appeared to all that the Moro had saved Italy. His
prestige, of late clouded, was now more brilliant than
ever. Securely seated on the ducal throne, strong in
the new alliance in which his initiative had bound Italy,
he seemed indeed to have succeeded in all his calculations
and schemes. Those seeds of future danger—the
fatal knowledge of Italy’s weakness, which the French
had acquired, the declaration of the Duke of Orleans,
that he should return to conquer his rightful heritage
of Milan—were unheeded. In his new exaltation the
Moro vaunted himself the child of fortune, and believed
himself to be, as astrologers, poets, courtiers, ambassadors
told him, arbiter of the destinies of Italy,
and incarnation of almost divine wisdom and prudence.
He put his trust more and more in destiny, and
prompted by his venal astrologer, Ambrogio da Rosate,
thought to read in the stars his triumph. As if blinded
by the gods in preparation for the sacrifice, he passed
all bounds in his arrogance. The old jealousy and distrust
of his fellow-sovereigns now revived with new
force. His jester’s vainglorious trumpeting—the Pope
is my chaplain, Venice my treasurer, the Emperor my
chamberlain, and the King of France my courier, was repeated
in every city of Europe, as if Lodovico himself
had seriously spoken it. The many guests at the Castello
of Milan told everywhere of the painting on the walls
there, depicting Italy as a queen, and the Moro, with
a scoppetta—his personal emblem—brushing the dust
from her robes, whereon were inscribed the different
Italian cities. These boasts of exaggerated self-confidence
rankled in his contemporaries. But while
they hated him, they feared him too. More than ever
now all Italy waited upon his motions.

LODOVICO IL MORO, BY BOLTRAFFIO (TRIVULZIO COLLECTION)

To face p. 176.]      [Anderson, Rome

177The months that followed the conclusion of peace
with Charles were joyous beyond compare. In the
summer of this year (1496) the Duke and Duchess had
a meeting with the Emperor, and returned loaded with
honours, which added a new lustre to Lodovico’s
fame.

Suddenly, at the height of his fortune, Fate struck
her first blow at the Moro. Beatrice died (1497).

The golden days of Milan changed all at once to
gloom. Silence shut down upon the dancing and
sweet music. The Duke, to whom even his children
and State seemed no longer worth living for, sat for
nine days in a darkened chamber alone, refusing all
comfort, while in Sta. Maria delle Grazie the monks
chanted incessant masses for Beatrice’s soul. The
Moro was overwhelmed. He who had ever lived happy,
now began to feel great anguish, says the Venetian
Sanuti. The fabric of his dreams had crashed upon
him. What were kingdoms to him without that clear-sighted
and dauntless spirit at his side? Not only was
his strong affection rent, but his profound faith in his
good fortune was awfully shaken. As if the evil
augury had to declare itself unmistakably, on the
night of Beatrice’s death a large part of the walls of
the vast pleasaunce which he had created round the
Castello fell with a great crash, ruined by no storm or
178wind, or agency perceptible to human sense. From
this moment, so much is man’s destiny affected by his
own spirits, all Lodovico’s misfortunes began. He
entered on that downward course which was to drag so
much to ruin with it—and to the husband’s loss of the
blessing of this Beatrice, the poet of the Italian Renaissance
ascribes not only the fall of Moro, Sforza, and
Visconte Snake together, but the captivity of Italy.

The gate which the Moro had thought to shut so
easily upon the departed stranger was once more ajar.
A second French expedition threatened Italy, and
Milan in particular. Early in 1497, the great captain
Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, head of the party in Milan
hostile to the Sforza, and a bitter personal foe of the
Moro, who had abandoned his country and was high
in the French service, made a raid into the ducal
dominions. At the same time his partisans stirred up
the discontent of the people, and inspired their volatile
minds with desire for a change of masters. And soon
the League began to show its internal weakness. The
interests of the two chief parties in it were fatally opposed.
Venice found her designs on Pisa thwarted by
Lodovico and in her rage began to ponder the advantages
of making friends with the French. Out of the
struggle for Naples now renewed between the French
garrison and the Aragonese she might by a prudent
policy, when both combatants were exhausted, secure
the sea-kingdom of the South, and might not a second
descent of the French King, lasting long enough to
overthrow the Sforza and no more, put rich Lombardy
179at last within her reach? With such hopes the grave
senators flattered their ambition and forgot their faith
to Italy. The Pope, for his own interests, had turned
his back on the Sforza, and was parleying with the
common foe, while in Florence the Frate and the people
still looked to Charles for the establishment of the
Kingdom of God on earth and the restitution of Pisa.

The King, however, swayed by opposite counsels, let
the months go by, and the Moro, with desperate trust
in his own statesmanship, still hoped to save his Dukedom.
In spite of his anxieties and embarrassments,
his unconquerable instinct of order maintained the fair
aspect of his dominions. But on the great artistic projects
of his triumphant days an arresting spell was laid.
The resources of the State were exhausted in war and
defensive preparations. The people were already taxed
to rebellion, and no supplies were forthcoming for his
painters and sculptors. Leonardo asked in vain for
the bronze for casting the statue of Francesco Sforza.
The clay model, raised in front of the Castello in 1493,
on the occasion of Bianca Maria’s marriage with Maximilian,
had remained there since, and it seemed more
and more likely that this high thought of prince
and artist combined would never take on any but an
ephemeral form.

The brief, uneasy quiet was broken by a stroke of
fate. Charles VIII. died suddenly (1498), and was
succeeded by the Duke of Orleans. Louis XII. had
no sooner ascended the throne than he announced his
immediate intention of invading Milan.

Once more put to the trial, Italy proved again unfaithful
to herself. And the pity of it was that the
fault lay in her long-rooted political conditions, not in
the will of the people. The sentiment of patriotism was
strong in the country, and bon italiano was the current
expression for one who hated and opposed the French.
180Yet it could not avail to overcome the conflict of interests
among the different States, which was, after all,
the blind continuous struggle of the national instinct,
whether represented for the moment by Republic,
hereditary tyrant or military usurper, towards the
creation of a single and united kingdom. This time
Venice was the arbiter of the situation. Answering
the Moro’s piteous and self-humiliating appeals for
help and protection only by cruel taunts of perfidy, the
Republic concluded an alliance with the French (1498).

The Moro’s old disloyalties were now repaid to him
tenfold. He looked round him in vain for a friend.
The reward of usurpers and short tyrannic dynasties
based on force, not love, met him in an alienated
people, who refused to endure hardship or make sacrifices
to save him, but looked instead to any change of
government as desirable. His armies, composed chiefly
of foreigners, were undisciplined and rebellious, serving
only for pay. They were badly generaled by the
Duke’s favourites. Lodovico, with all his ability, had
little judgment in his choice of servants. He was led
by his affections, which betrayed him. Chief among
his trusted officers were the San Severini brothers—the
Conte di Caiazzo, Galeazzo, famous champion of the
tourney-lists, and the Moro’s son-in-law, and the gruff
Gaspare, better known as Fracasso. They were the
sons of Roberto di San Severino, but Lodovico had
kept them always beside him and heaped honours and
places upon them. Galeazzo, the prime favourite, had
the chief command of his army. Francesco Bernardino
Visconte, Antonio Maria Pallavicino, Antonio Trivulzio
and the rest, all were alike unprepared in heart to sacrifice
themselves for the sovereign in whose sunshine they
had warmed themselves. The slight tie that bound together
the various elements of the State could not endure
against fear, ambition, greed and hereditary hate. The
181situation was further aggravated by the arrogance and
exactions of the ducal favourites which excited the rage
of the people and increased Lodovico’s unpopularity.

Events moved rapidly. In March 1499 the treaty
between France, Venice and the Pope was publicly proclaimed.
Louis was to conquer Milan, and Venice, as
the price of assistance, was to share the spoils. Florence
was nominally the Moro’s ally, but had neither means
nor will to help him now. Naples was too weak
to count, and Lodovico’s one friend, the unstable and
spendthrift Maximilian, gave only empty promises.
The Duke was left to make his desperate defence alone.
In spite of his energetic preparations the presage of
doom lay heavy on his soul, and affected all around him.
He believed that Fortune, once his friend, was now contrary,
and that God was angry with him.

In June the French army arrived in Asti, and immediately
invaded the ducal territories. Every obstacle
fell before them. Treachery and fear delivered castles
and cities one after another into their hands. The
Conte di Caiazzo made secret terms with them, and
withdrew his troops from action. The rapid progress
of the invaders brought them soon to the strong city of
Alessandria, in which Galeazzo di San Severino and
the main Milanese army lay to check their advance
upon the capital itself. Here they met a promise of
resistance, but the place had not been besieged many
days when for some extraordinary and unexplained
reason it was delivered to them. Some say that
Galeazzo was seized with despair, others that he was
deceived by a forged order to retire. Anyhow, one
morning before daybreak he stole out with a few other
nobles and galloped to Milan, and his army, when they
found their general gone, incontinently fled in all
directions.

No obstacle now remained between the enemy and
182Milan. With the same fatal spirit of despair which
had undermined the whole defence, Lodovico gave himself
up for lost. Though his great Castle at Milan
was the strongest fortress in Europe, its garrison nearly
three thousand, its artillery enormous in number and
size, its munitions of war and all necessaries infinite, he
could see no salvation except in abandoning the city and
seeking aid in person from the Emperor. There may
have been something of the instinct of bending before
the storm in his decision. He knew that he could not
hold the city, where the insurgent mob was already
sacking the palaces of his favourites. If the citadel
only stood firm, however, there was every chance of
some revolution of the political wheel carrying him back
before long. But blinded again by affection, he made
a fatal mistake in his choice of a Castellan. In spite
of many warnings he confided the entire command of
the castle to one Bernardino da Corte, whom he had
brought up from childhood and loaded with favours,
charging him to guard it faithfully against the enemy,
and promising to relieve him before three months were
past.

Lodovico Sforza’s departure from the city which his
father had won and he himself had ruled gloriously for
many years; the tears and kisses with which he parted
from his little motherless sons, sending them before him
into Germany; his last visit, attended by weeping
monks, to the tomb of his wife in Sta. Maria delle
Grazie; his rapid ride out of the city next morning,
after a night of fever and anguish, accompanied by a
very few friends and followers, while the people’s cry
changed from ‘Moro, Moro’ to ‘Franza, Franza,’ even as
he passed—these things are all recorded with deep compassion
by Corio, whose chronicle sadly concludes with
this downfall of the House which he had served from
boyhood.

183Behind Lodovico’s back, amid the flames and smoke
of the burning palaces, the streets and squares broke
out into a garish splendour of decoration to welcome his
conqueror. Four days later Gian Giacomo Trivulzio
rode in at the head of the French, amid the wild enthusiasm
of the mob. The General, elated at his
triumphant return to his native city, promised them
anything and everything in the name of their rich,
powerful, and all benign new master, the King of France.
They believed that the millennium was come.

They soon learnt their mistake. Meanwhile, Fate had
dealt the decisive blow to the domination of the Sforza.
The rock of their fortunes, the impregnable Castello,
provided by the extreme care and thought of the Moro
with every necessary for a lengthy siege, was after a few
days basely sold to the enemy by the traitor Castellan.
On reception of the news in his distant retreat Lodovico
is said to have remained as if mute, and to have finally
uttered these words only—Since Judas was there never
a greater traitor than Bernardino Curzio.

This condemnation was echoed by the whole world,
and with especial emphasis by the French themselves,
who were amazed at such treachery and cowardice.
But the Castellan was not the only traitor. Bernardino
Fr. Visconte and others of Lodovico’s great ministers
were his accomplices, and partakers of the spoil.
Hardly was the old master gone, ere they bent before
the new. Louis XII. followed his army in person to
Milan, and entered in great state, wearing the ducal
beretta, and greeted by the same artistic demonstrations
of joy and loyalty as had so often celebrated the
pompous occasions of the Moro’s rule. After a short
stay he departed to France, leaving Trivulzio as
governor, an imprudent choice, which inflamed the old
faction spirit. Most of the nobles were Trivulzio’s
hereditary enemies. They began at once to scheme
184his overthrow, aided by the French guards, who could
not bear to see Gian Giacomo preferred before them to
such high place. In the populace discontent soon
reawakened. They found themselves in worse case
than before. Their master was different, but the taxes
remained the same, and in addition they had to endure
the cruelties and excesses of the French troops. The
partisans of the Sforza worked insidiously upon their
minds and excited them to cries of ‘Moro, Moro,’ once
again. The city seethed with intrigue and sedition.
Every day tumults arose, and the brave Trivulzio,
beset with snares and embarrassments, tried vainly
with his frank methods and simple soldier’s choler to
rule this mass of conflicting passions, greeds, sufferings
and cunning ambitions.

While the way was thus being prepared in Milan
for his restoration, Lodovico, in his exile at Innsbrück,
was using every means to accomplish it, even to the
desperate expedient of inciting the Turk to attack the
Venetian State. At the same time he gathered together
a strong body of Swiss and German mercenaries,
and prepared to start for Italy as soon as he learnt
from his friends in Milan that the moment was come.
The French strength in the Duchy had been greatly
diminished by the departure of large detachments for
Naples and the Romagna, when the report ran through
Milan that the Moro was come back and had retaken
Como (1500). The whole city was immediately in an
uproar, and the mob surged round the palace of the
governor, who, after vainly endeavouring to quiet them,
was forced to hide from their insults and threats. A few
days later he left Milan. Immediately after, Lodovico’s
forerunners, Cardinal Ascanio and two of the San
Severini, rode in at the head of four thousand Swiss.
Messer Galeazzo, flowering once more in the sunshine
of his Lord’s success, had arrayed himself all in white,
185with a great feather on his head, and a pair of shoes on
his feet much more fitted for the service of Venus than
of Mars, as a sarcastic chronicler observes. The Duke
himself followed a day later and re-entered his capital
in state. But his triumph was only apparent. The
Castello was now the bulwark of his enemy. It stood
with its huge bastions and vast squares of parapets
furnished with a thousand engines of war, frowning
over the defenceless city. Even as the Moro paced
in stately procession through the streets the bells rang
out, and a terrified cry arose that the French had
sallied from the fortress. The Duke was not strong
enough to attempt its reduction, and unwilling to face
the constant peril of its presence, he left the city, which
he was never to see again, and removed to Pavia.

The same sickness of doubt, indecision and fear, the
same presentiment of failure which had attended the
Moro for so long, now seemed to attack this great
adventure for the redemption of his fortunes. He
neglected to strike a decisive blow at the French before
they could be reinforced, and contented himself with
retaking a few cities with as little shedding of blood
as possible. In vain Fracasso and his bolder captains
exhorted him to more energetic steps. His fierce
Swiss mercenaries, to whom he refused the satisfaction
of sacking the conquered towns, grew violent and
rebellious. His treasury was exhausted, nor could
all the expedients of Cardinal Ascanio in Milan, even
the appropriation of the treasure of the Duomo and
the other great churches, raise enough money to content
the voracious Swiss, of whom new hosts were
continually swarming into the city on their way to the
camp, clamouring for employment and pay. The
citizens, terrified by these rude allies, squeezed of every
penny to supply the Duke’s necessities, found their
plight worse than ever. Hearing of the great reinforcements
186even now pouring down from the mountains
to swell the French army, they trembled with fear of
the consequences of their rebellion against Louis XII.
In Novara, where the Moro now lay, despair and confusion
prevailed among the leaders, while the temper
of the Swiss mercenaries grew daily more ominous.

The French army, gradually increasing in number and
strength, was encamped at Mortara, a few miles away,
and constantly made bold dashes up to the very walls
of Novara. A battle could no longer be avoided.
On the 4th of April the enemy advanced to within a
mile of Novara and challenged the Italians to the
combat. Lodovico’s army issued forth in noble array,
but it was nothing more than hollow show. The
whole of the Swiss, who formed its greater part, refused
to fight, on the pretext that they could not shed the
blood of their fellow-countrymen engaged in the French
ranks. Their leaders had in fact secretly treated with
the enemy. Returning into Novara, followed in wild
confusion and panic by the rest of the army, they
proceeded to arrange terms of capitulation with De
Ligny, the French commander. The promises, entreaties,
tears even of the unhappy Moro, could not
move them from their purpose. All he could obtain
was a promise that they would carry him into safety
disguised in the midst of their ranks when they abandoned
Novara. And even this small mercy was a
sham and a treachery. Someone among them warned
the French generals of the arrangement, and a careful
scrutiny of the troops, as in accordance with the agreement
with the French they marched out unmolested,
soon detected the Duke by his well-known features
and complexion and the undisguisable height and
majesty of his person. With him were captured also
Galeazzo di San Severino and one or two other nobles.

Thus unbloodily, as if by the decree of Fate, fell
187Lodovico Sforza. We watch his dark and mournful
figure—more dignified in adversity than when tossed
amid the rude and difficult circumstances of active war—as
it passes slowly out of Italy in its vesture of
tragedy, conducted with respectful compassion by the
chivalrous French, taunted and reviled by his own
countrymen. It bears a significance reaching far beyond
the immediate event and the immediate victim. So
much was passing away with it. Italy, that fair queen
whose robes the too-aspiring Prince had desired to
brush free from every stain, was a captive with him,
befouled and bloodied by the ignorant barbarian, and
all the joy and exaltation of her wonderful Quattrocento
was to fail, and her new-found strength and hope, with
its sky-aspiring projects but half realised, to be bound
down in the sad fetters of disillusion, despair, and a new
spiritual tyranny, while the grand ideal of the Renaissance
was to travel away with her freedom and find
its perfect fulfilment elsewhere.

As Lodovico Sforza was the first to utter the fatal
invitation to the French, he was fitly the first scapegoat.
But, not alone in his sin, he was not alone in the
punishment. If we condemn him for starting the ruin
of his country by delivering Naples to Charles, what
shall we say of Venice, Florence and the Pope, who
each for their own selfish interests completed it by
selling Milan to Louis? The inexorable retribution
did not fail to fall upon them also. The first years of
the sixteenth century are its history. Alexander,
dying, dragged down that son and that earthly
dominion for which he had given his soul. Venice,
shaken nigh to destruction in her turn, by an iniquitous
combination, had to forget her wide dreams of empire
and be content with a narrow liberty, passing into
stagnation and decay. Julius, continuer of Alexander’s
worldly policy, may well have seen with prophetic eye,
188when death called him too, his unaccomplished scheme
of a renovated Church,—Papacy and Empire in one,
head of a new heaven on earth, which should lay the
sword of temporal and spiritual victory at the feet of
the purified Venus, Madonna with her Son upon her
knee, shrink to the monastic ideals and the rigid
excluding tyranny of the Catholic reaction. Last of
all, Florence, most constant of the lovers of liberty,
with her most melancholy fall filled up the cup of expiation
and sealed the final subjugation of the country.

SCOPETTA OF LODOVICO IL MORO

At Novara, Milan lost her independence for ever.
The restoration of the Sforza, witnessed twice
over in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century,
was a mere puppet-show, barely concealing the hand of
greater Powers behind. The Gascon archers, who
from the Castello walls amused themselves by shooting
to fragments the great clay model of ‘the Horse,’ had
ruined as effectively the fair social fabric, as unique, as
fragile, and as incomplete, which Leonardo’s work symbolised
in the person of its founder, Francesco Sforza.

With the captivity of Lodovico began in fact that
long foreign subjugation of Milan which was to endure
into modern times. Her vicissitudes during the short
period that still comes within the scope of our mediæval
story are too sad to linger over. Reoccupied by the
French after Novara, the city was mulcted in an
enormous sum as the penalty of rebellion, and instead
of the comparatively mild régime under a native
governor, first instituted by Louis, she had to suffer
the iron rule of a foreign viceroy, whose aim was to
stamp out every spark of free and patriotic aspiration
in the people.

But for several years Milan enjoyed at least outward
peace, under the triumphant Lilies, governed in succession
by the Cardinal de Rohan, the Sieur du Benin, and
190Charles d’Amboise, Sieur de Chaumont, the last of
whom ruled from 1505 to his death in 1511. In 1509
domination of the French was shaken by a sudden reversal
of policy on the part of Pope Julius, who, having used
their aid to humble Venice, suddenly made friends
with that Republic, and loudly roared to all Europe his
intention of driving the French out of Italy. The
immediate result for Milan was a great inroad of Swiss
allies of the Pope, under that terrible peasant priest, the
Cardinal de Sion, and the devastation of the fair Lombard
provinces. The French, whose forces were
weakened by dispersion in various directions and could
ill resist this furious onslaught, endeavoured to dismay
their adversary by raising a so-called General Council
for the reform of the Church, in the shape of a few
partisan cardinals, who sat solemnly in the Duomo at
Milan and pronounced futile sentences of excommunication
and deposition against the bellicose Pontiff.

But Julius, strong in alliance with the Emperor and
the King of Spain, laughed at the feeble thunders of his
rebellious sons. The French found better aid in the
military genius of Gaston de Foix, the King’s nephew,
who succeeded Chaumont as Governor of Milan and
commander of the army in 1511. With a stern and
silent rapidity which amazed all Italy, the young
general of twenty-two swept through Lombardy, retaking
lost cities, relieving those beleaguered, and carrying
his arms against the Papalists and Imperialists right
up to Ravenna, where he routed them utterly in the
famous battle of Easter Day, 1512. The victory,
however, issued fatally for the winners. The hero of
it was borne dead from the field in slow and mournful
procession back to Milan, followed soon after by his
paralysed army in retreat before the renewed hosts
which the inactivity of the new French commander,
Palissy, had allowed the dauntless Pope to collect.
191Pressed on all sides in the Duchy by the Swiss, Palissy
was unable to maintain his position there either, and
continuing their retreat the French passed away over
the Alps, abandoning all their conquests in Lombardy,
except the fortresses of Milan and Cremona.

And now once more a Sforza was proclaimed Lord
of Milan, amid the thunderous rejoicings of the people.
But the son of Lodovico and Beatrice, Massimiliano,
whom the Pope and the Cardinal de Sion, for their
own political purposes, lifted to the throne of his
ancestors at this juncture, was nothing but the feeble
tool of those two potentates, a helpless and rotten
bark tossed amid the storms of those contentious times.
For the little authority which he wielded, he was utterly
unfit. Bred up in exile at the Emperor’s Court, he
had no affection for his country, and regarded his new
sovereignty merely as an opportunity for extravagant
pleasure and dissipation. The maintenance of his
luxurious Court, and of the huge army necessary to
defend the State, demanded enormous sums, to raise
which he recklessly alienated the ducal revenues, and
continually imposed unexpected taxes on his subjects.
To satisfy rapacious allies and favourites, he flung
away his fiefs, seeming, as a chronicler says, to follow
the proverb—The fewer possessions, the fewer cares.
While the light-minded youth forgot all duties and
cares of State, in feasting, jousting and the dance, the
resentment of the people was rising against him, his
ministers and captains were intriguing with his foes, and
the roar of the great guns at intervals from the Castello
might have reminded him that the key of Milan was still
held by the enemy, and that Louis in France was
quickly preparing an expedition to reconquer Lombardy.

The first attempt of the French in 1513, under
Louis de la Tremouille and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio,
met, however, with an unexpected and signal defeat
192from the Swiss at Novara, which drove them back
over the Alps. This was followed by the capitulation
of the French garrison in the Castello of Milan, and
Massimiliano seemed now firmly established in his seat.
But Julius II. was dead, and the whole political scene
had shifted once again. The Venetians were now
ranged with France against the Papal League, and the
accession of Francis I. to the French throne, early in
1515, raised up against the Sforza a young and
enthusiastic foe, who was undaunted by the sad experiences
of his two predecessors in their Italian ventures.
The King hastened to raise an enormous army, with
which he crossed the mountains in person, and, skilfully
guided by Trivulzio, surprised and made captive Prospero
Colonna, general of the ducal forces, who was awaiting
him in a strong position. Advancing unopposed,
almost up to Milan, Francis seemed about to complete
a bloodless conquest, when a sudden rising of the
Milanese themselves, and the arrival of a great force of
Swiss to the aid of the Duke, checked his progress.
And now at Marignano (Melegnano) outside Milan
was fought that mighty battle (14th September 1515),
not of men, but of giants—as the veteran Trivulzio
affirmed—in which the fierce and stubborn Swiss and
the gallant French contended all one evening and again
the next day, till seven thousand of the mountaineers lay
dead upon the field, and their brave comrades, utterly
exhausted, were forced to give way and fly into Milan.

At news of the defeat Massimiliano retired into the
Castello, abandoning the city to the enemy. Here he
might have held out awhile, but his spirit was too
small, and by the advice of Girolamo Morone, one of
the most astute statesmen of that day, and the chief
stay of this generation of the House of Sforza—who
counted on the existence of a more promising younger
brother, Francesco—the incompetent prince renounced
193his Duchy to the French King for a large pension.
Retiring to France, this elder son of the Moro disappears
ingloriously out of the story of Milan.

The Duchy remained for the next six years in
French possession, and was ruled with comparative
justice and beneficence by the Constable de Bourbon,
till the just, generous, and propitiatory impulses of the
new sovereign yielded to indifference and forgetfulness,
and it was abandoned to the cruel and arbitrary government
of the Sieur de Lautrec, brother of the King’s
mistress, the Comtesse de Châteaubriant. His tyranny
helped to provoke another revolution in 1521, when the
young Emperor Charles V. united with Pope Leo X.
in a new Holy League, and proclaiming his right to
Milan as an imperial fief, sent an army to invade the
Duchy. Lautrec, having executed some of the noblest
citizens on suspicion of intriguing with the Imperialists,
abandoned the city, leaving the Castello garrisoned,
and took up his stand four miles from the city, at the
Bicocca, where he suffered a tremendous defeat, which
lost Milan again to France. This turn of the tide
carried Francesco, Lodovico’s second son, to the ducal
throne. The wild joy with which the oppressed and
suffering Milanese greeted this new Sforza, in whose
name they trusted with touching hopefulness for a
return of the old glory of their city, was not wholly
misplaced. Duke Francesco II. has left a memory of
good repute. The misfortunes of his reign were not
due to his faults or weaknesses, but to the political
circumstances of the time, which deprived him of all
real power, and made him a mere pawn in the great
game played between Charles V. and Francis I. with
Italy for stake. Milan was, in fact, dominated by the
Spaniard, and the presence of a great army of these
foreigners was a crushing burden upon prince and
people. Though there to defend the city, they
194wrought little less destruction and cruelty than the
French, when the latter returned as enemies in 1523,
and advancing close to the capital, spread havoc and
desolation all around. Though unable to take Milan,
they established themselves in some of the neighbouring
towns, and the approach of Francis himself with a large
army in the following year (1524) drove the Duke into
flight. The city, bereft of half its population and garrison
by a terrible pestilence, was utterly unable to make any
defence against the French monarch. Francis, having
entered Milan in triumph, passed on to besiege Pavia,
which kept him heroically at bay through many months.

Meanwhile the Emperor was rapidly gathering
force for the relief of his vassal State. From
Naples came Lanoy with the garrison of that province;
from Germany the ferocious giant Fründsberg,
leading twelve thousand lanzknechts; while
mercenaries from every part swarmed to the camps
of Charles’ other commanders, the Constable de
Bourbon and the Marquis of Pescara. This horde of
hungry and rapacious villains, whom the Emperor left
to gather supplies and pay out of the unfortunate
country which it passed through, swooped down upon
the gallant army of the King, which, falsely secure in
its vainglory and sense of personal valour, allowed itself
to be entrapped in the Park of Pavia, and on 24th
February 1525, that vast and exquisite pleasaunce,
created for the summer dalliance and the gay winter
sports of the Dukes of Milan, became an awful red-mown
field of all the chivalry of France. Never,
perhaps, was such an oblation of knightly grace and
virtue poured out to Death as on that day. One after
another the gentlemen of France fell around their King.
The famous veterans of the Italian wars died together
with the youngest scions of their Houses, new come to
this fatal Italy. Among many Milanese nobles who
195also fought in the King’s ranks and fell was Galeazzo di
San Severino, who, after mourning for his friend and
lord, the Moro, through several years of exile, had
taken service with the conqueror and risen to the position
of Grand Ecuyer of France.

Madame, tout est perdu sauf l’honneur, wrote Francis
to his mother. Among other things the Duchy of
Milan, but just retaken, was lost again, and this time
for ever. Monseigneur le Roy being a prisoner at
Pizzighettone, his army destroyed and the survivors
of his gentlemen confined in different fortresses, Duke
Francesco returned again under the imperial protection
to his capital. But though he was beloved by his
people, his restoration meant a renewal of the intolerable
Spanish tyranny, and fresh exactions for the
benefit of the Emperor’s treasury, worse than any the
city had ever suffered before. The Duke himself
groaned under a slavery for which the empty title and
insignia of sovereignty little compensated him.

And now at the very height of Charles’ success, there
seemed to come a hope of freedom for his oppressed
vassal. Italy and the whole European world had
been startled by the overwhelming victory of Pavia,
and began to fear the further advance of a conqueror
whose triumph was a menace to all. Pope Clement VII.,
whose projects for the aggrandisement of the Medici
were hampered by Charles’ predominance in the peninsula,
seized the opportunity to draw the Queen-Mother
of France, Henry VIII. of England, Venice and the
smaller Italian States into a vast alliance against the
Emperor. This seemed the moment for Milan to
throw off the yoke of Spain, and Francesco, or rather
his chancellor, the able and faithful Morone, entered
into secret relations with the League. He was, however,
betrayed by the Marquis of Pescara, whom he
had endeavoured to seduce from allegiance to Charles.
196Morone came near to losing his head, and the Duke
himself was denounced for high treason to his feudal
Lord, and was forced to take refuge in the Castello,
where he was closely blockaded by Pescara and De
Leyva; while the miserable citizens, who had found
the Spanish troops intolerable enough as their allies
and defenders, had now to suffer unspeakable things
from them in the character of conquerors.

For many months the Duke held out in the hope of
the relief promised by the League, till provisions grew
short and famine appeared at hand. Meanwhile the
city, driven to frenzy by its oppressors, rose again and
again in desperate tumults, which were quelled each
time by the Spanish generals with treacherous promises
to relieve the general misery, and followed by severities
and outrages more dreadful than ever, till the fair city
became a very hell of slaughter, lust and rapine. In
vain the forces of the League, under the brilliant young
Giovanni de’ Medici, approached to the Duke’s succour.
They were driven back by the Imperialists, and Francesco
was at last forced by extremity of want to surrender
the castle and abandon the city altogether (1526).

But the League was daily growing in strength and
soon returned to the attack. The Imperialists were
closely besieged in their turn in Milan, till the descent
of Fründsberg with fresh hordes of mercenaries compelled
the assailants to retire and concentrate themselves
on the defensive against the once again
overwhelming Imperialists. Lombardy was now
become the complete prey of the occupying armies.
The ferocious and undisciplined hosts that nominally
served the Emperor no longer heeded the commands
of a master who gave them no pay, and was himself
far away in Spain. They were practically an independent
robber horde, following whom, and going
where, they pleased, supporting and enriching themselves
197on plunder, torturing and murdering peasants
and citizens without distinction, to squeeze from them
their last possession. It meant nothing to the soldiers
that Charles was entering into negotiations for peace
with the League. Nor could their captains control
them. The Constable de Bourbon, who became
Governor of Milan for the Emperor in 1526, promised
the afflicted people to move the army from their
midst, but even if he had been sincere, he could not
have kept his word. Yet the army loved him above
all their other leaders, this rebel and exiled prince of
France, who was an adventurer like themselves.

Before long Milan and the country round was
changed into a bare desert, out of which even Spanish
cruelty could no longer extract a subsistence. The
thought of the unvisited regions farther on began to
spread and agitate among the famished hordes; the
names of Florence and Rome, cities of untold riches,
were breathed from one to another, and as one man
they rose at the offer of the Constable de Bourbon to
lead them southwards. As a swarm of locusts lifts
from a devastated plain, they swept suddenly away on
the awful, irresistible course which ended in that final
catastrophe of the Middle Ages, the Sack of Rome.

This tragic event, though hardly a part of the pious
Emperor’s plans, made the last link in the chain which
Spain was forging round Italy. Neither the Pope, nor
Francis I., who had regained his liberty early in 1526,
were able to offer any further serious resistance to the
conqueror, though for some years yet the French continued
to make desperate efforts to regain Milan, and
the city had to endure both the tyranny of the Spanish
governor, De Leyva, and the horrors of blockade.
The Treaty of Barcelona between the Pope and the
Emperor, and the peace signed by Charles and Francis
at Cambrai—that Paix des Dames, arranged by the
198most famous ladies of France and Italy—followed by
the Congress and Coronation of the Emperor at Bologna
in 1530, secured peace at last for the tormented country
by laying the destinies of Italy finally in the conqueror’s
hands. Francesco Sforza, who threw himself on the
Emperor’s mercy, was graciously pardoned and reinstated
in his Dukedom. The return of this amiable
prince inspired a faint joy in the exhausted people, and
gradually, in spite of the enormous subsidies exacted by
the Emperor, and the burdens imposed to drive off the
attacks of the independent condottieri and pirates who
ranged the disordered country, a certain amount of life
and activity crept back into the cruelly-wronged city.

Such consolation and remedy for her wounds as his
fettered powers and grave embarrassments allowed,
Francesco administered, introducing order into the wild
confusion of the government, and reviving trade and
industry by careful regulations. But what a changed
Milan from that in which his father and mother had
reigned gloriously, in beautiful stainless palaces, surrounded
by the finest productions of art, was this
wrecked, defiled and devastated city, in whose deserted
streets and suburbs nettles grew rankly, and wolves,
grown used to feed on human flesh, roamed at will,
attacking armed men, and snatching children from their
mothers’ arms! ‘What an incredible evidence of the
change of fortune,’ writes Guicciardini, ‘to those who
had seen her not long before overflowing with inhabitants,
and not only full of all gaiety and delight from
the natural inclination of her inhabitants to feasting and
pleasure, but because of the wealth of her citizens, the
infinite number of her shops and industries, the delicacy
and abundance of all the things which form man’s food,
the superb apparel and equipages and sumptuous adornments
of both her women and her men, more flourishing
and happy than any other city of Italy.’

199There is an interesting record of these years of
tribulation in the chronicle of a Milanese mercer named
Burigozzo, who, sitting in his dark-browed shop, set
down from day to day, as they passed before his eyes,
the vicissitudes of el povero Milano. His quaint simplicity
and patriotic grief make his tale very moving.
It is a picture of confusion, tumult and misery, relieved
at first by brilliant gleams, such as the hollow pomps
and glories of the entries of kings and conquerors, but
darkening ever to a more tragic gloom and terror and
despair as it passes from the milder sufferings of the
period of French occupation to the unspeakable horrors—cose
da non dire—committed by the Spaniards and
lanzknechts of Pescara and De Leyva. All the great
events of the time are made vivid to us in his pages.
We hear the ceaseless noise of battle outside, the guns
of the Castello, often directed upon the terror-stricken
city itself, roaring continually and answered by the
great bell of the Duomo sounding a martello, to
summon the citizens to arms. These, maddened by
exactions and cruelty, or inspired by hope of driving
out oppressors, or excluding assailants, gather in
thousands at the call. Suffering has made them merciless,
and they attack and butcher parties of mercenaries
in the streets. Once they make a holocaust of the old
wooden Campanile of the Duomo, with a whole company
of Spaniards within it. And through the streets,
crowded with blaspheming and bestial soldiery, we see
endless processions pass, white-robed children, men
and women with bare feet and clad in sackcloth, monks,
friars, all the hierarchy of the Cathedral, filling the air
with penitential wailings and cries of misericordia, as
they wind from the Duomo to St. Ambrogio to implore
the help of the great patron saint of the once fortunate
Milan. Churches crowded with suppliants; the excited
populace pressing round some upstart prophet—some
200fierce bearded monk who drives the timid priests from
altar and pulpit, and calls upon the people in the name
of Christ to slaughter the French. In street and
temple alike confusion and foulness, where so shortly
before the genius of order had presided. Then upon
the uproar falls the sick and heavy silence of the
pestilence, and the mercer’s tale moves as with a hushed
step, while, imprisoned for a whole month within his
house, he watches his children die, himself by the grace
of God untouched and well—while no sound is heard
but the carts going by laden with the sick, and the
ceaseless campana del corpo—while the graveyards spread
and double in extent round the numberless churches.
A hundred thousand persons perished, he tells us,
during the summer months of 1524.

As the picture unrolls itself before us we are fain to
turn away from the spectacle of anguish and all abomination
during the hideous years of the Spanish occupation
after 1525. The city preyed upon by the fiendish
mercenaries, the people outraged, pillaged, and
tortured till they yielded up their last mite of buried
treasure. Multitudes flying from their homes to avoid
worse things and sheltering in the country round, though
that was infested by human beasts and wild ones only
less cruel, or worse, stopped and bound, little children
and all, by their ruthless tormentors, to prevent their
escape. And withal siege, starvation; such a leanness
of men from hunger as was an anguish to witness, the
little bread which they possessed seized by the governor,
the dying poor driven into so-called refuges, whence
every days scores were carried out dead.

But the story of these thirty years is not entirely of
gloom. If we turn from the people to the great
Milanese nobility, we see a different aspect of life, no
less tragic in a sense, but brilliant enough and glorified
by the fine culture and rare artistic taste of the age.
201Within their sumptuous palaces and wide secluded
gardens, defended by great names and powerful interests
from the intrusions of marauding soldiery, or in pleasant
country villas beside the lakes and placid rivers of
Lombardy, whither they retired when pestilence or
famine held sway in the city, they created for themselves
that unreal world of ladies and cavaliers, arms and love,
of which Ariosto sings. It was during these years
that the courtly Dominican friar, Matteo Bandello, was
Prior of the Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, and
was collecting in the most elect circles those gay and
scandalous tales, which, retold by his witty pen with
introductions describing the circumstances in which
he heard them, give a vivid picture of the incomparable
cinquecento society of Milan, with its fine literary
accomplishment, vivacious wit and over liberal
manners—a society presided over by such gracious
figures as Ippolita Sforza, the lady of Bandello’s own
particular adoration, and Cecilia Gallerani, the Moro’s
old favourite. Ippolita, a granddaughter of Duke
Galeazzo Maria, was married to Alessandro Bentivoglio,
a son of the deposed Lord of Bologna. She and Cecilia,
now the Contessa Bergamini, and Camilla Scarampi
made up a trio of Milanese poetesses and literary connoisseurs
of finest discrimination and judgment and of
wide renown. Apparently careless of the woes of
their country, these ladies and others of their rank,
with the graceful cavaliers and dilettante ecclesiastics
who made their court, occupied themselves in romantic
vanities, in amorous intrigues, and in learned and
philosophic dalliance. Close relations united them with
the other courts and aristocracies of North Italy, and the
famous Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella da Este, was
often the centre and queen of those elegant gatherings
of beauty and wit and gallantry described by
Bandello. History shows us that most typical lady of
202Italian society dancing with the King of France at the
great ball which the usurping monarch gave in 1507, in
the Castello of Milan, in the very halls where her
sister and brother-in-law had once reigned—a
spectacle significant of fallen Italy. Like the princes
of the neighbouring States, the great nobles of Milan,
once powerful in the story of their city, had lost all
patriotic and independent spirit. The severe repression
of party-passion, that unfailing symptom of vigorous
life in an Italian community, by the French conquerors
in 1500, reduced them to idleness and political
nullity. They made friends with the new powers and
entered their service, but they had no longer any real
influence on affairs. The revolutions which placed the
Sforza princes on the ducal throne in turn afforded the
nobles opportunities of intrigue and brought home to
them the terrible realities of foreign subjugation. In
1521, for example, those who had embraced the side
of the old dynasty suffered the reprisals of the savage
Lautrec, and on mere suspicion Milan was desolated of
its noblest inhabitants by summary executions, banishment
and forfeiture. These families were, however,
restored to their old position by the elevation of
Francesco Sforza to the Dukedom, and they made no
attempt to rebel against the Imperial Eagle, which was
their real master. When the intolerable persecution
inflicted by the Spanish and German mercenaries from
1525 to 1529 maddened the people to repeated insurrection,
not one of the nobles came forward to give them
courage and to organise and direct their undisciplined
efforts to effective action. A certain Pietro della
Pusterla, of a House which through all the story of Milan
had been distinguished as leaders of popular movements,
seems to have assumed some authority over them, but
even he abandoned them in the hour of need and danger.

These futile attempts exhausted the last remains of
203aspiration for liberty and self-government in the
broken-spirited Milanese. They made no attempt to
rebel against the settlement of 1530, which resigned
them finally into the Emperor’s hands. Though
utterly dismayed—tutto smarrito, says Burigozzo—by
the heavy fine inflicted by Charles as a penalty for the
rebellion of the Duchy, they resigned themselves to
patientia and hope for better days to come.

Much patientia was necessary before those days came.
The country round was depopulated, and it was long
before the old abundance flowed again into the city.
There were times when bread lacked and the people
murmured against the helpless Duke. Prices remained
very high and there was little trade. A visit, however,
from Charles V. in 1533, expected with fear and dismay
by the citizens, to whom his name was only associated
with ravaging lanzknechts and Spaniards, brought
them, to their joyful surprise, good luck—a great influx
of custom and rich payment for their goods, instead of
robbery.

In 1534 a brief reflection of its old glory brightened
the city on the arrival of a bride for the Duke, the
sixteen-year-old Cristina of Sweden, whose portrait by
Holbein is in the National Gallery. The streets and
squares were magnificently decked for her reception.
The young princess, whose countenance, says the
chronicler, was more divine than human, rode in under
a golden baldaquin, surrounded by twelve of the
noblest gentlemen of the city, so splendidly arrayed
that each appeared an Emperor, and with such great
white plumes in their caps that her Excellency seemed
to move in the midst of a forest. The joy with
which she was greeted was, however, shallow enough,
and changed quickly to groans when the money for
the Duchess’ maintenance had to be squeezed out of
the people by a special tax.

204The fine bridal feast was soon followed by a still
more pompous, but lugubrious pageant, when eighteen
months later (1535), the last Duke of Milan was carried
to his tomb in the great temple founded by the first
Duke, Gian Galeazzo Visconte. Always delicate of
constitution, and worn out by the great anxieties of his
life, Francesco fell a victim to a severe illness in 1535.
He left no child to inherit the ducal throne.