Count Francesco received the news with great gravity, without a sign of anger, or sorrow, or displeasure; although his situation was becoming really desperate; for, as the Venetian legate maliciously informed him, the Venetians were negotiating alliances with Savoy, with Arragon, and with the Pope. As to Savoy, Sforza forestalled them; for he forthwith despatched a messenger to Turin with terms so advantageous to Duke Louis that that unstable personage put the Venetians out of mind and settled into peace with Sforza: who, enabled to turn his entire force against Venice, drove his late allies back beyond the Adda, defeated them utterly at Caravaggio, made peace with them as a victor with success before him, and in the middle of October turned his arms against the Milanese republic.
Sforza had disarmed Savoy and conquered Venice; but he had not yet come to an end of his enemies. In November, 1447, Charles of Orleans seriously resumed his intentions of a Milanese campaign. Already in July, Burgundy had rewritten to the Venetians entreating them to favour Orleans; and the council had replied[[80]] that though their acts of late may have appeared hostile to the cause of Orleans, yet nothing but the instinct of self-preservation had ever induced them to make peace with Francesco, and their sentiments were still most loyal to the house of France. Nothing appeared more likely than a French invasion; Savoy already had warned the Venetians of it. On the 14th of November the Duke of Orleans wrote to the city of Asti,[[79]] saying that he was now positively certain of the alliance with Brittany and Burgundy, and that before Christmas, his army, under Jean Focaud, would arrive in Lombardy. This letter, written in a tone of the cheerfullest high spirits, was followed a week later by one equally sanguine and happy: Dei gratia, omnia negotia Lombardie ad nos spectantia sunt in his presentibus optime disposita. Jacques Cœur has pronounced himself favourable to the affair. And on the 4th of December Orleans writes that the companies of Foix and Bourbon are on the point of departure; and that John of Angoulême is arranging with the king for the reinforcement from the royal troops.
But Christmas came, and the phantom armies of the expectant Orleans remained as visionary as before. Yet on the 7th of January he writes, still sanguine, still bent on conquering his castle in the air: “The army will be larger than we thought; for all the French princes will lend their aid. Burgundy is sending great sums of gold and abundant troops into Lombardy.” The Duke is as full as ever of his schemes and hopes. But this is the last of his letter; and before his messenger could bring an answer home from Asti, Milan had found a master among the ranks of Italy.
For famine and weariness and civil discord had broken the spirit of the Milanese republic. Even Savoy, even Venice, were seized with pity, and murmured to each other that almost any change would be desirable, ut hec afflicta et misera Lombardia, dudum guerrarum disturbijs lacessita, aliquando quiescere possit; tot populis, tot calamitatibus, totque oppressorum vocibus compatiendum et miserandum erat. Anything short of the success of Count Francesco would be a happy alternative to such disaster. And in Milan itself the discontent was as pronounced. The Guelfs still vociferated against Francesco, but the Ghibellines, the party of the nobles, grew slowly and strongly in favour of the Count. All parties at last were out of conceit with this miserable liberty, which was but another name for civil disunion and ruin. Some were for the Pope, and some for Charles of France, and these were the Guelfs. Some were for Savoy, some for the King of Naples. But all these princes lived a long way off; they had no armies ready to combat the Venetians, whom each and every faction dreaded now and hated worse than famine. When one day Gasparo de Vimercato rose up in public conclave, and suggested that Milan should give herself to Count Francesco Sforza, it was incredible how suddenly the whole mind of the city turned towards the Count. The Count was the son-in-law of the late duke. The city was familiar with him. He was known to be humane and generous and strong. Should the city elect him, in one day he could dissipate the famine, the battles, the fear of enemies, and the suspicion of treachery, which for thirty months had made the misery of Milan. Leonardo Gariboldo, Aloigi Trombetta, and Gasparo da Vimercato were sent at once to acquaint Count Francesco, that by the free voice of the people he had been elected lord of Milan.
Among the innumerable conspirators, intriguing diplomatists, and successful tradesmen who filled the high places of the Italy of that day, Francesco Sforza appears at least a man. Simple, direct, and brave, no sudden honour and no reverse of fortune took from him that natural dignity of a balanced mind which is one of the finest attributes of the Italian. Good sense and kindness made a moral force of this captain of adventure. He disciplined his troops, erected a court-martial, and punished offences of rape and violence by death; so that while the miserable populations of Lombardy had everything to fear from the other armies that occupied their soil, gradually they learned to feel themselves secure in the rough, mailed hands of Count Francesco. Among the soldiers his reputation was more than mortal. We have to leap over a dozen generations before the prestige of the Little Corporal present an analogy to such devotion. But Count Francesco was loved and respected even by his enemies; and there is a story of him which has ever struck me as among the most charming in military history. It was at the siege of Como, in that very February of 1450, when, unknown to him, the Milanese who had so long and so furiously resisted him, were crying, “Sforza! Sforza!” in an ecstasy of hungry enthusiasm in the great piazza. Meanwhile Sforza and his men were occupying Monte Barro; by means of a little hill in front, overlooking the Adda, and fortified by five bastions, they kept in check the troops of Venice and Milan, ranged in impotent lines along the further side of the river. The bulwarks of the little hill were but slight, improvised in a few days for the occasion, and the poor Italian artillery of the fifteenth century, wrought no great destruction; yet such was the spell of Sforza’s name, that the two armies across the Adda never ventured to try the place by assault. One night, however, it leaked out that Count Francesco was not in the fort; he had gone up the mountain to arrange a fresh disposition of his troops upon the summit of Monte Barro. In his absence it was decided to attack the hill, and in the late February dawn the Venetians and Milanese poured under the slender bulwarks, armed with artillery, which silenced that of the fort, and, planting their scaling ladders against the ramparts, they soon were in possession of the place. Now, as it happened, unknown to either army, late at night Count Francesco had returned home, and hearing the clamour in the place, he started out of sleep and strode at once to the ramparts, ignorant that the enemy had taken the place by surprise and that his soldiers, unaware of his presence in their midst, had already given the sign of surrender. “Defend yourselves, for I am here!” rang out the clear voice of the Count; and at that moment he perceived that he stood alone in the midst of his foes. But the mere fact of his presence was a better defence to his bastions than a world of soldiers. The assailants, like chidden children, withdrew from their positions, dropped the guns and pieces they were carrying away, and with uncovered heads made for their scaling-ladders. As they passed the Count, standing alone there, they made for his hand—kneeling, crowding to touch it. “Father and ornament of Italian arms we salute you,” cried the soft Venetian voices; and in little knots and groups, as quickly as they might, they dropped over the walls into the moat again, leaving Count Francesco the master of his ramparts. It was to this man, so eminently the hero of his hour, that the three Milanese delegates brought their news of the submission of the city.
On Feb. 25, 1450, Count Francesco Sforza rode into Milan. He rode at the head of his troops, and he had taken care that his future subjects should welcome the army; for every soldier was hung all over, from corslet, from waist, from shoulder, and from arm and hand, with loaves of bread—great clustering rolls and loaves that hid the armour underneath, as much as every man could carry. It was fine, wrote Corio, to see how the famished Milanese fell upon the troops, avidly tearing the longed-for food from neck and arm, and falling to at once (con quanta ingordigia!) upon the delicious bread. “Sforza! Sforza!” cried the citizens, a thousand times more eagerly than before. Some of them cried out in the words of the Psalms Hæc est dies, quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et lætemur in ea! Sforza was in the city; his troops and his bread had effectually secured his future. The Venetians might brew another poison. Charles of Orleans at Chauny might return that loan of men and gold which his cousin of Burgundy had lent him. Louis of Savoy wrote to his father at Lucerne: Le Comte François a obtenu ceste ville par intelligence, déceptions et pratiques et non mie par force de guerre. All these pretenders, who had felt the bird already in the hand, must dissemble as best they might their disappointment. But Genoa[[81]] and Florence welcomed the chance of peace, and in November, 1451, joined in a defensive league with Milan against the Dauphin, King of France, the Duke of Savoy, and the Venetians. Lombardy was no longer the devastated battlefield of doubtful victory. Count Francesco Sforza was effectually the master of Milan.
IV.
It is one thing to have a thing by might, another to hold that thing by right. The theory that might is right appears sufficient in the hour of conquest, yet it is but a slender basis for future government; and Francesco Sforza, safely lodged in Milan, hedged round with troops, greeted as duke by the very citizens who had so long repulsed him, was none the less aware that men regarded him merely in the light of a successful usurper. Even in Milan there were many who regretted the loss of a legitimate dynasty; there were those who looked to the King of Naples, the adopted heir of the late duke; and there was a party anxious to proclaim the suzerainty of the Emperor; and a larger party still who placed their faith in Charles of Orleans, the legitimate descendant of the great Giangaleazzo. In the eyes of such men as these what claim had Captain Francesco Sforza, soi-disant> Duke of Milan? He was merely a successful soldier, the husband of the late duke’s bastard daughter, unmentioned as heir to Milan in any testament or codicil, who by force and famine had succeeded in imposing himself, as the alternative to starvation, upon the miserable Milanese. In the sight of the Emperor, Francesco Sforza had compromised whatever shadow of right he might once have had by accepting from the illegal hand of the people the imperial gift of his duchy.
Before the feudal law Francesco Sforza was merely a usurper, and a compromised usurper. To Orleans he appeared the representative of the illegitimate branch defrauding the legal heirs of their just claims. To Arragon, Sforza was the man who pockets treasure bequeathed expressly to another. The humiliation of this position is apparent. Yet Sforza, with much magnanimity, refused to ruin his subjects with taxes in order to buy the imperial investiture—a purchasable commodity, as his successors and his predecessors knew, and one which would have legalized his situation. At first, in the triumph of success, he appears to have enjoyed his illegal honours, his glory as a popular hero; and he affirmed that he preferred to rest his claims upon the people’s voice. On March 25, 1450, they pronounced him Duke of Milan.
Sforza made a good ruler. Under him Milan ceased to be the prey of miserable dissensions and disorder, and the streets no longer ran with the cries of Guelf or Ghibelline. The soldier proved an excellent despot; not harsh or selfish, as might have been expected from a man sprung from so little and taught in so rude a school. He governed the people for the good of the people, making his own gain but an accident of their advantage; and that magnanimous and disastrous impulse which made him refuse to tax the poor in order to purchase his investiture is characteristic of the man.