Like every unsuccessful conspiracy, this also contributed to strengthen the power of those whom it was intended to ruin. In the proclamations of the Republic to foreign powers it was particularly emphasised, as we can well understand, that the freedom of state and city had been saved from great danger, and the rescue was of course acknowledged with praise and thanksgiving. ‘Already,’ wrote King Ferrante, on September 28, to Lorenzo de’ Medici,[135] ‘we loved you on account of your excellent qualities and the services done by your grandfather and father. But as we have lately heard with what prudence and manly courage you behaved in the late revolutions, and how courageously you placed yourself in the foremost ranks, our affection to you has grown remarkably. We wish, then, the illustrious Piero all happiness with so worthy a son, and congratulate the Florentine people on so eminent a protector of their freedom, and ourselves on a friend whose excellent gifts increase visibly every day. Perhaps it would be our wish to incite you to praiseworthy actions, but your noble and active nature does not need encouragement, not to mention that you have the example of your grandfather and your father constantly before your eyes.’ The Republic had informed the French king of these events on September 28; the answer came from Bourges only on January 14 in the following year, but it expressed Louis XI.’s friendly feelings.[136] It was very important to him to remain in good understanding with Florence. He was long in friendly relations with the house of Medici, and during his residence at Mont Luçon in May 1465 granted to Piero and his legitimate heirs the privilege of bearing the lilies in their coat of arms.[137] The blameless and well-deserved reputation, says the King, which the deceased Cosimo de’ Medici had gained during his life by his actions and in all his transactions, which were conducted with prudence and virtue, gives his children and relations a claim to honourable consideration.
The influence exercised by Louis XI. on the development of the Italian affairs of his time makes it necessary to give a retrospect of the policy and situation of this monarch, under whom the French kingdom began to assume that form which was completed by Richelieu. Louis XI. had in 1461, on the death of his father, whom he succeeded at the age of thirty-eight, found the country freed indeed from foreign foes, after a hundred years’ struggle, but loosely held together. For half the provinces of his kingdom recognised the King indeed as their supreme lord, but were independent of him with regard to their administration. They pursued a policy of their own, concluded alliances of peace and war, while, as in the case of the most powerful of these great feudatories, Charles Duke of Burgundy, the union of French districts with foreign territories belonging nominally to the German empire, constituted a power which, if they won over their neighbours to their interests, might enter the lists with royal France. Louis, as Dauphin, long at variance with his father and the government, had relied upon Duke Philip the Good. Under him the dukedom, comprising the greater part of Belgium of the present day, the Netherlands, with Burgundy, Artois, Picardy, and Franche Comté, rose to the height of its prosperity and power. Scarcely had Louis ascended the throne, however, than he took measures against the great feudatories which kindled the war known under the name of the War of the Public Good (Guerre du bien public), in which Burgundy was also involved. This war was indeed terminated in 1465 by the treaties of Conflans and St. Maur, but only to break out afresh in another shape two years later, when Charles the Bold had succeeded his father on the ducal throne. Thus fully occupied at home and threatened in his own capital, Louis had closely connected his foreign affairs with his internal policy. At the commencement of his reign he had declared the pragmatic sanction of his father, which placed limits on the authority of the Holy See in his country, to be abrogated; nevertheless, when Pius II. refused to comply with his wishes in political matters, he permitted a contradiction on the part of his parliament which practically destroyed that authority. In 1462 he had allowed John of Anjou to be defeated in the war against King Ferrante, and thus made enemies of this family, to whom Provence belonged, while he likewise estranged Duke Charles of Orleans by allying himself closely with Francesco Sforza, whose states, as we have seen, were claimed by the former on the ground of his mother’s hereditary rights. The Duke of Milan had at least shown himself grateful by sending him, during his war with the allied princes, the auxiliary troop which Galeazzo Maria was commanding when his father’s death summoned him home.
The year 1467 did not begin peacefully. It was very well known in Florence that the exiles, untaught by the failure of those who had made a similar attempt under far more favourable circumstances, after the fall of the Albizzi, had, for the greater part, quitted the places of exile assigned them, and retired to the Venetian territory. Here they tried every means of returning home with foreign assistance. Some applied even to the Venetian Signoria, and others to the General-in-Chief, Bartolommeo Colleone.
Venice had no honourable excuse for breaking with the Florentines. Outwardly the two states were in harmony. In the beginning of January 1467, both had joined the defensive alliance concluded at Rome under the protection of Pope Paul II. which was to secure peace in Italy. Florence had accepted the conditions, stipulating that ‘the French King, whose authority essentially aided the preservation of peace and the safety of the different states, should be permitted to join the alliance at his pleasure, with authority next to that of the Pope.’[138] This stipulation, however, did not appear to satisfy the Republic when, before long, the political sky was clouded, so that in the following March, Francesco Nori, a confidant of the Medici, was sent to Louis XI. to propose an offensive and defensive alliance, irrespective of their engagements with the other Italian powers.[139] The hostile disposition of Venice was unmistakable, although an open breach of the peace was avoided. The old grudge on account of the views on Milan, frustrated by the Medici, came again into the foreground. It was proposed to employ the hatred of the exiles in order to obtain in Florence a government with obligations towards Venice, and therefore dependent on her, and to overturn the power in Milan already shaken by Francesco Sforza’s death. Bartolommeo Colleone was to be the instrument.
Whoever stands on the Piazza near the church of St. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice will be reminded of long-vanished times by an equestrian statue in bronze, almost more than by the surrounding buildings. A slight, graceful pedestal supports a war-horse in a quiet but powerful attitude, whose strong limbs do not prevent a mannerised treatment of the neck and head. Upon this, on a high saddle, and holding the richly-adorned bridle, sits the somewhat thick-set figure of a knight, clothed in mail from head to foot, and showing beneath the helmet a bold, marked countenance, which, slightly turned to the right, seems to challenge an enemy. Thus has a Florentine artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, depicted Bartolommeo Colleone, whose magnificence and wealth may be admired in his chapel built in the cathedral of Bergamo, which contains his tomb and that of his daughter Medea. Born within the territory of this city, and acquainted early in his paternal home with the miseries of war, Bartolommeo had earned his spurs in the Neapolitan wars, had fought under the unhappy Carmagnola for Venice, against Sforza for the Milanese republic, then in Venetian service against the same enemy, and after the peace of Lodi retired to his castle of Malpaga, in the valley of the Serio, enriched by his campaigns, a strong man, but resenting his fate, because, although the republic of St. Mark had chosen him as their captain-general amid great honours, and had paid him a considerable sum, there was no prospect before him of fresh laurels to be gained. The exiled Florentines now came to him, having already had connections with him, and excited his ambition. Diotisalvi Neroni was at Malpaga in October 1466, from whence he wrote to a confidant that great events were approaching; if he could be with him for two hours, he would tell him things to astonish him.[140] It seems that a prospect was held out to the condottiere of a dominion in the many-lorded and fickle Romagna—nay, of even gaining Milan itself. His old connections in various quarters, as well as the disturbances always prevailing under the minor dynasties, which gravitated now in one and now in another direction, would enable him to bring a considerable number of troops together.
In the Romagna—a name which is here employed in its widest signification for all the country from the Lombard frontiers to those of the march of Ancona, but which in a restricted sense comprises Ferrara, Bologna, the exarchate of Ravenna and Romandiola—the abnormal state of things still prevailed to which Dante alluded when he answered the question of Guido of Montefeltro, in the lower world by saying, that in the hearts of his oppressors the land was never free from war, even if peace prevailed there for the moment.[141] On February 14, 1279, Rudolph of Hapsburg relinquished this province, which had been till then regarded and governed as a part of the empire, in favour of the Church, which put forward old claims to a part, and the inhabitants had promised to be true to the Roman Church as heretofore to the Roman Empire; they wished their allegiance to be measured by their former obedience to the empire, of which the Church was the rightful successor. But the Popes had from the beginning shared their authority with the great and small lords who ruled in the various cities, the propinquity of which only made the feuds of the Signori and citizens more frequent and bitter. When the poet mentions the Polentani of Ravenna and Cervia, the Ordelaffi of Forli, the Malatesta of Rimini, Mainardo of Susinana, in Faenza and Imola, these are only a few out of the great number of those who allowed only a general superintendence to the representatives of the Popes, the Counts of Romagna and the legates sent from Rome or Avignon, while they governed almost unrestrictedly in their cities and the counties appertaining to them. When Pope Clement VI. sent the Cardinal D’Albornoz as legate to this state, about the middle of 1353, Romagna was lost to the Papacy. Albornoz regained, partially reconquered it; but he left the domination of the different families mostly as he found it, taking into account the inclinations and traditions of the cities themselves, and contenting himself in most cases with restoring the Papal authority as the supreme presiding power. In this way the municipalities retained their statutory rights and financial administration, were exempted from taxes and levies on payment of a very moderate feudal contribution, and chose their officers themselves, or, as happened with regard to the office of Podestà, presented the candidates to the Pope or to his legate. The position of the Papal plenipotentiaries was, however, all the more difficult when they took up their residence in great cities, where factions always prevailed; and the tedious insurrection which, actively participated in by Florence, spread itself over Romagna at the time of the last Pope in Avignon, Gregory XI., beginning at the Patrimony and Umbria, showed on what a weak footing the Papal power stood in the trans-Apennine provinces not long after the death of Albornoz.
In the time of which we are treating circumstances were very different in different parts of Romagna, not only from internal and local causes, but also in consequence of the interference of neigbouring powers. For as already, in the middle of the preceding century, Giovanni Visconti, Archbishop and Lord of Milan, had seized upon Bologna, so did Gian Galeazzo fifty years later. Central Italy was probably preserved only by the death of the most powerful of the Visconti from subjection to their supremacy; and subsequently the last of that ambitious house did actually get the great city, though only for a time, into his power. Venice had already begun to fix her gaze on Romagna, and had taken a firm footing in Ravenna in 1440, having declared Ostasio da Polenta, her former protégé, to whom Filippo Maria Visconti had also attached himself, to have forfeited the ancient inheritance of his house, and sent him and his sons prisoners to Candia, whence none of them returned. While the republic of St. Mark thus began to gain territory on the seaside, and pursued a policy which some sixty years later brought about a most dangerous conflict with the Papacy, Florence made an attempt on the side of the Apennines, just as if the land was without a master. In various ways, by purchase and mortgage, by the subjection of petty lords such as the wide-spread Guidi, and the voluntary resignation by the communes of their independence (which happened with Modigliana in 1445), the Republic had extended its dominions more and more over the ridge of the mountain range, and created the territory, reaching far towards Faenza and Forli, which down to our day has borne the name of Grand-ducal Romagna. This was, however, not enough. The Accomandigia which has been spoken of in connection with the Tuscan lords and territories extended likewise to many in Romagna, and formed a political connection which would have been in direct opposition to the Papal sovereignty had this sovereignty not been so loose in its form. The Malatesta of Giaggiuolo, the Manfredi of Faenza and Imola, the Alidosi of Imola and Castel del Rio, the Ordelaffi of Forli, the counts of Montefeltro and Urbino, were all Florentine Raccomandati, as was the case with many families of Umbria, bordering upon Romagna and partly dependent upon her—the Accoromboni, Brancaleoni, Gabrielli of Gubbio, the Vitelli of Città di Castello, the Fortebracci of Montone, and the Trinci of Fuligno. The duration of the Accomandigia was very various; it was concluded for a certain number of years, just like a condotta or mercenary contract, or for life. The renewal followed then generally after a fixed interval, or from the successors of the stipulating parties in the former manner. The lords in the States of the Church made the reservation not to be obliged to fight against the Pope or his vicars, the legates or governors; some of them even refused to fight against the Angevin kings of Naples or the Roman people. What difficulties and perplexities must therefore arise from the frequent contests between the Popes and their feudatories, or between the former and their neighbours, out of such associations, is evident.
The state in this province actually most independent of Rome was Ferrara.[142] In the beginning of the thirteenth century the Ferrarese had elected Azzo VI. of Este their hereditary ruler, and the investiture granted him by Pope Innocent III. of considerable possessions in Romagna, as well as in the province of Ancona, had given the house much distinction. A century later, in consequence of a family quarrel, Venice attempted to put forth her claims to Ferrara, and Pope Clement V. was obliged to give way. The attempt of the latter to hold the town in the immediate control of the Church, at first successful, soon failed, and the citizens in 1317 recalled the family of Este, who were eleven years later invested with town and territory by Pope John XXII. The imperial fiefs acquired by the lords of Ravenna, from which they received in 1452 the ducal title from the Emperor Frederick III., nineteen years before Pope Paul II. granted it to Borso d’Este for Ferrara, made their position more independent than that of the other Papal feudatories; but certain rights relating to the republic of Venice, as well as the not always friendly neighbourhood on the lower Po, gave rise to complications which might easily become dangerous. Far less great in territory and power were the counts, afterwards dukes, of Urbino;[143] they, with their little land, were in the same political circumstances between Tuscany and Umbria, Romagna and Ancona. Their family was invested by Frederick Barbarossa with the hilly region of Montefeltro, which afterwards formed the north-western part of their state. In the first decade of the thirteenth century they established themselves in Urbino, which was subject to the Papacy, and gradually extended their possessions on both sides of the mountains—to the south by the acquisition of Gubbio and Cagli, to the north at a much later time as far as the Adriatic sea. They were a warlike race which had once given to the contest of Guelphs and Ghibellines a courageous general in Guido of Montefeltro, and had now one of the best and most highly-prized condottiere in Federigo, who assumed the government in 1444, and for whom Pope Sixtus IV. afterwards renewed the ducal title which his brother and predecessor had borne.
The Malatesta, Ordelaffi, Manfredi, and Alidosi were legally dependent only on the Popes. But they were just the families who caused perpetual strife. The Malatesta had established themselves in Rimini in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and in the following century enlarged their possessions by talent and skilful use of circumstances, but had again weakened their power by dividing into several lines. The three sons of Galeotto Malatesta, of whom the history of the wars of Visconti and Albornoz has much to relate, formed the lines of Rimini, Cesena, and Fano, the second of which expired in 1465 with Malatesta Novello; while Sigismondo, the legitimised son of the lord of Fano, had after the death without children of his uncle Carlo lord of Rimini, become his successor, and Rimini remained the centre of the dominions of this family. Sigismondo is a prototype of the city tyrants of the fifteenth century—talented, active, enterprising, a good warrior, the patron of intellectual effort, but passionate and untrustworthy, and stained with faithlessness and cruelty in a measure unusual even in those wild times. In 1447 and again in 1451 he fought in the pay of Florence against the Neapolitan Aragonese, then shared in Anjou’s enterprise against Naples, and was so pressed by Federigo of Montefeltro that only the republic of Venice, which he had served in the Morea, saved for him the remnant of his possessions. Pope Pius II. prevented Rimini from falling into the hands of the Venetians by investing Sigismondo with the sovereignty of the town and a little territory, reserving its lapse to the Holy See in case of his decease without rightful heirs, as had happened at Cesena in 1464. In 1466 Pope Paul II. endeavoured to persuade Sigismondo, on his return from the Morea, to relinquish Rimini, offering him the government of Spoleto and Fuligno—certainly a rich compensation, had not the intention too evidently been to weaken the Malatesta by detaching them completely from their native country and from the sea. His son Roberto, born like himself out of wedlock, but legitimised by Pope Nicholas V., had taken possession of Cesena in 1464, but was unable to retain it against the Papal strength, as the inhabitants, tired of the endless oppressions of the violent dynasties, rather surrendered themselves to the direct rule of the Church, which allowed them greater freedom in their movements and did not annoy them with taxes.