The Story of Milan

by Ella Noyes

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 of 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 turned 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 justice 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 ever 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, however, 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, suddenly 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.