III.
This proposal, which came as a surprise to Europe and almost as an outrage to the Emperor, was no surprise to the Lord of Milan. Months before Giangaleazzo had laid his plans. There exists at Paris in the Archives Nationales (K. 554, No. 7) the summary of a Project of Marriage between Louis and Valentine, dated the 26th of August, 1386.
It is interesting to note that in this early draft there is no thought of any possible French claim to Milan. Valentine is dowered with Asti and its revenue—for which her husband was never to be constrained to pay homage; she was also to bring her husband 450,000 golden florins, and to come to him “bien joyellée et aornée de joyaulx.” And, only after the death of her father, she was to succeed to the county of Vertus in Champagne.
This was a great deal, but this was not enough. There was in France a strong party so hostile to the Lord of Milan, that riches, and mere riches, were not enough to overpower their opposition. Visconti desired above all things a Royal alliance. He saw that the Guelf—the national party—in Italy was strong and was unrepresented. He would be Head of the Guelfs, until he secured something better, and his best title to that Headship was a French alliance. Moreover, self-preservation, no less than ambition, rendered the marriage desirable. Isabel of Bavaria, granddaughter of the murdered Bernabò Visconti, was Queen of France. How could Giangaleazzo suffer that his exiled cousins should possess so tremendous an advantage over him? He may have felt himself insecure in his usurped sovereignty, so long as France was united by blood and interest only to the Disinherited. If Valentine married Louis, Milan was safe from France. So at Christmas, 1386, Giangaleazzo offered the husband of Valentine the county of Vertus, in his lifetime as well as after his death, and included in the marriage contract the astounding clause of the succession of Valentine to Milan.
Even without this, Valentine was a very wealthy heiress; she brought back to France her mother’s dowry, the county of Vertus in Champagne. In addition to this she took into the kingdom 450,000 golden florins, a freight of golden ornaments and jewels, furniture to the amount of 70,000 florins, gold and silver plate, and the county of Asti in Lombardy, with a yearly income of nearly 30,000 golden florins.[[15]]
The county of Asti comprised a whole province of towns, villages, and castles. Thirty signories were in its fief; forty-eight villas paid homage to the Count of Asti; Brie and Cherasco, two large towns in Piedmont, belonged directly to him. In the politics of those times few things are more striking than the singular lightmindedness with which a king of France bestows upon a Lombard adventurer a county in the very heart and centre of his own kingdom; or the confidence with which an Italian conqueror hands the key of his position to a wealthy neighbour. The situation of the French at Asti turned out to have the very gravest political consequences. It assured them Savona, Genoa, Pisa for a moment, and a century of wars about the Milanese. For this secure footing in Lombardy gave a point of reality to their vision of an Italian kingdom, and made the subtraction of Italy from the Empire appear not only desirable but possible. On the other hand, it familiarized Italy with the French. Henceforth the Italian princes, in any dispute among themselves, would call in the protection not only of the King of France but of their French neighbour, the powerful Count of Asti.
But at first the Lombards did not like it. “I Lombardi,” says Corio, “furono di mala voglia.” What they really dreaded was the succession of Valentine and her French husband to Milan. This is too complicated and intricate a question to dispose of here. I will only say that the Italians believed that in some fashion Giangaleazzo had secured Milan to his daughter, in case he should have no sons, or (as actually happened) in case all his sons should die childless. But the question of the French claim to Milan deserves a history to itself.