And Savoy, in all his further proceedings to obtain the protectorate of Milan for himself, excepts the French claim, against which he avows himself powerless to protest. This claim, theoretically so strong, had also in its favour the devotion—the veneration, says Corio—which the royal name of France inspired in the Guelfs of Lombardy; and in this moment of revolution the Guelfs, the democratic party, were exceptionally powerful. The governor of Asti, Raynouard du Dresnay, infected by the ardour of the times, could no longer await the coming of his master, but on September 22nd, furnished with 3,300 golden ducats of Asti, at the head of a little force of 1,500 men-at-arms, sallied out to plant the royal lilies of Orleans upon the soil of Milan.
Almost at once the inhabitants of Felizzano, Solero, Castellaccio, and Bergolio yielded to his arms. So many of the fortresses in the Alessandrino followed suit that Alessandria and all the country round were filled with fear. The force of Raynouard was very small, but inspired with so much fury, such fervour and cruelty of battle, that the softer Italians did not dare resist him. The smaller cities opened at his knock, and even in the larger cities there was a party which, afraid of his vengeance, and fascinated by the prestige of France, would have welcomed him with open arms. Yet there were many, hating the stranger and his barbarian ferocity, who sent messenger after messenger to Sforza, bidding him arrive and deliver them. “Patience!” said Count Francesco. “In the first onslaught the French are more than men. Soon they will weary, and then we will attack them.” But meanwhile, with undiminished energy, day after day the victories of Raynouard proceeded, and further and further into Lombardy advanced the banners of the king of France.
On October 1st an embassy from the unhappy republic of Milan arrived in Venice requesting aid and counsel. This, of a truth, was seeking sweetness in the jaws of the lion; for Lodi, Codogno, and other cities had already revolted to the Venetians, who hoped in time, by skilful management, to possess the greater part of Lombardy. But the bewildered Princes of Liberty knew not in whom to place their trust. Venice and Florence were leagued together, and each hoped to obtain something from the dismemberment of the territories of Milan; Montferrat, Mantua, Savoy, Genoa, and France, in open arms, were spoliating the corpse of their neighbour—for a corpse indeed it seemed—and of the captain-general of their own forces these heads of the republic were more profoundly suspicious than of any open foe. Too many of the nobles in Milan were secretly in favour of this adventurer. Only the people, the Guelfs, sustained their republican ardour with violent rhetoric, and declared that they would rather be the servants of the Turk, or of the Devil, than of Count Francesco Sforza.
There was this in favour of Venice, that she detested Count Francesco (who had left her service for the Duke of Milan’s) as bitterly as any Guelf in Lombardy. And Venice, the most aristocratic of oligarchies, was for complicated political reasons greatly favoured by the Guelfs. Therefore, not without hope in their hearts, the delegates of Milan awaited the answer of the Venetian senate. Three practicators, or agents, were deputed by the Ten to confer with the ambassadors concerning the proposed alliance between Milan and Venice; but these agents were secretly bidden in no way to commit or bind the Venetian government (nichil obligando nos); for the conference really was to be only a means of extracting information as to the true condition of affairs in Milan.[[67]] And it would be as valueless to us, as to the hapless, bamboozled Milanese, were it not that here we get, I think, the first evidence of the Venetian inclination to pronounce for France.[[68]]
There was no help here from the violence of Raynouard. Venice especially declared that against France and Genoa she would do nothing. And every day recorded the conquests of the French. The Milanese ambassadors returned very sadly, “despised by the Venetians,” says Corio, “and treated as perniciously as possible.” In vain they bade Francesco Sforza give battle to the audacious little force of Raynouard. Count Francesco, who had ever been favourable to France, pursued his waiting game, although Bosco Marengo, closely besieged by the French, was almost at the end of possible resistance, and the fall of Bosco meant the loss of Alessandria. At last the Milanese succeeded in scraping together about fifteen hundred soldiers, and these, under Coglioni, they sent to Alessandria to harass the enemy. The French were taken between two fires—on the one side Coglioni, on the other the Alessandrian reinforcements; yet at first they gained the day, but so furious was their anger, and so long they dallied in the slaughter of their enemies, that before they had despatched the last, a further reinforcement of the Milanese, and a successful sally on the part of the besieged, intercepted their return. Raynouard was taken prisoner with many of his men; the cities which had revolted to him returned to the allegiance of the Milanese republic; and the royal troops, leaderless and disbanded in the very hour of victory, fled home as best they might to Asti.
This was on Oct. 17, 1447. Twelve days later the Duke of Orleans himself arrived in Asti. There he made a solemn entry on Oct. 26th, riding under a däis borne by the notables of the city robed and hooded all in white, pro majori letitia adventus ipsius domini ducis. Charles of Orleans was now a man of fifty-seven, amiable and sanguine. Something of the charm and of the inefficiency of youth appeared to linger around this aging poet, who, taken captive a youth of twenty-four, issued into the world again almost a man of fifty. Those intervening years had held for him none of the serious business of life: and his experience was still the experience of charming, ardent, and unhappy youth. Since Agincourt he had counted his years by lyrics, not by battles; and now perhaps one of the serious things to him in this contentious Lombardy was his friendship with Antonio Astesano, professor of eloquence and poetry at Asti, himself no inconsiderable versifier, and author of a poetic epistle on the victories of the Maid of Orleans, which in 1430 he had sent to the Duke in his English prison. Charles, with his serene unpractical temper, his interest in literature, his inexperience of life, hoping all things, doing nothing, appears a strange figure in that distracted Lombardy: a garlanded maypole stuck in the front of battle.
At first the arrival of the Duke of Orleans appeared an event of immeasurable importance. The Guelfs in every Lombard town, who at first had thought only of Venice, began, more loudly even than during the campaign of Raynouard, to declare for France. The Duke came armed with promises from France, from Burgundy, from Brittany, from England. There were no bounds to the magnificence with which he declared himself about to take the field. But perhaps it would not be necessary to take the field at all. The Duke sent a deputation to the Milanese republic; the lord of Cognac, one of the nobles of Ceva, Caretti (whose family all the while were practising none too secretly with Montferrat), Secondino Natti, Antonio Romagnano, and Francesco Roero, requested the Milanese to submit to the allegiance of their lawful duke. But the Milanese were all too well aware of the hateful consequences of tyranny. Men were still alive whose brothers and whose children had been torn to pieces, limb by limb, by the hounds of Giammaria Visconti, the uncle of this man. The suspicion, the cunning, the timid fear of Filippo Maria had succeeded to that oppression. “This time,” said the people of Milan, “we will preserve ourselves a free republic.”
A show of force would at least be necessary to induce them to change their minds; and in December, 1447, Charles of Orleans sent an embassy to Venice,[[69]] requesting the Council to enter into an arrangement with him, and to furnish him with troops. He repeated his assurances of aid from France, England, and Burgundy; and if such aid as this were really forthcoming, Venice, animated by a limited Venetian and not by a national Italian patriotism, would certainly hesitate to cross his path. So bitter was the hatred of Venice towards Sforza, that any other candidate appeared preferable to him; and this douce, unready Charles would be easier to manage than a man of that heroic and ambitious type. Yet in a matter so important it was, before all things, necessary to be circumspect; and the Venetians put off the Duke of Orleans with many assurances of their devoted adherence and affection, many warnings against the cunning and the machinations of Sforza, while they wrote to their allies of Florence requesting an opinion. At this instant Sforza was so dreaded in Italy, and his victory appeared so imminent, that if a few of the promised battalions had appeared in Piedmont the Venetians would gladly have espoused the cause of Orleans. But Sforza, left almost without money, with no ally that he was really sure of except his valiant wife, found the situation untenable. He had not a friend in Italy, nor a friend across the mountains. Peace, if only the feint of peace, was imperative while he collected his unvanquished forces for a further struggle. Early in January he wrote to Florence, proposing peace. The Florentines and the Venetians were bound in so close a league that peace with the one meant truce with the other; and though, at least twice, in solemn terms, the Council of Ten warned the Florentine Signory that there was no substance in this matter, for peace was contrary to the real interests of Count Francesco, yet in the end Venice agreed to accept this peace for what it was worth, using the hour of respite to further her stratagems in other quarters.
The peace was not worth much. On May 9th Andriano Ricci of Asti arrived in Venice with a message from the Duke of Orleans.[[70]] “The French reinforcements will soon be here,” said the sanguine Duke; “will you also be my auxiliary?” The Venetians, though still cautious, replied in terms of alacrity—
“We are ready to grant you all possible aid and favour, and there is no other prince on earth whom we so warmly desire to be our neighbour in Milan. Hasten the King of France, for if any good effect is to follow our endeavours, the troops should come at once. And rely upon it, so soon as your French auxiliaries are in readiness, we also will provide a satisfactory contingent to help in the conquest of Milan. And we are the readier to do this, since the peace which we had begun to treat with the Milanese republic is already broken, and we at this moment are in open war with Milan.”