This last marriage was celebrated in 1368, with unexampled magnificence. The bridegroom arrived in Milan accompanied by the Sire le Despencer and a train of two thousand Englishmen. A splendid cavalcade went forth to meet him. First came Galeazzo himself, who was said to be more beautiful in person than any other man in Italy, wearing, as his custom was, a wreath of roses on his flowing golden hair, and attended by his greatest vassals. With him was his wife, Bianca of Savoy, and his daughter-in-law, the young French Isabella, and other noble ladies, followed by eighty damsels apparelled in scarlet, with sleeves of white cloth embroidered with trefoils, and girdles so richly worked that their worth was eighty florins each. Gian Galeazzo, a boy of fifteen, came next, leading a company of knights on steeds caparisoned as if for a joust, and after these followed the officers of State and of the household with their pages, all gorgeously arrayed. At the marriage feast the very meats were gilded, and with each of the sixteen courses splendid gifts were offered to the guests—highly-bred hounds with velvet and silken collars and leashes of silk; falcons with chains of gold and hoods of velvet, and silver buttons enamelled with the Snake; richly ornamented saddles and other horse furniture; suits of armour fashioned by the famous Milanese smiths; brocades of gold and richest silk, silver flagons worked with enamel, silver-gilt basins, mantles and doublets thickly sewn with pearls for the prince, and seventy-six splendid coursers and war-horses, each more generous, beautiful, and gorgeously caparisoned than the one before; and last of all twelve fat oxen. Galeazzo and the bridegroom sat at one table with the noblest of the guests, among whom was Messer Francesco Petrarca the poet, in the most honourable place. At another were placed Regina della Scala and a number of ladies. Such scenes as these are dimly pictured for us in primitive frescoes here and there, in which we see assemblages of ladies in jewelled robes and lofty peaked head-dresses, and gentlemen correspondingly fine stiffly seated at narrow boards, or pacing with slow and stately step through the dance within some spacious pillared hall.
Though extravagantly lavish for State purposes, the Visconti did not keep open Court like their predecessors. No tables were set out in the streets for the common people on holidays, no oxen roasted whole or wine-vats broached for all who liked to drink. The chroniclers complain of the avarice of their Lords. The taxes were continually increased. Pressed by the huge cost of their wars and their alliances, the Visconti were in fact always in need of money, and so assured was their supremacy in Milan, that they no longer feared the discontent of the citizens. With the development of their despotism the social gulf between the Visconti and the rest of the community had grown wide. Both brothers were proud, suspicious and cruel. But the severity of the silent Bernabò, and his terrible fits of rage and strange capricious temper, made him the most feared. He was laudably resolved to maintain justice and order, so that a man might go unarmed through any part of his dominions, and to suppress the old faction hatreds, but his methods were intolerably harsh. No one was allowed to call himself Guelf or Ghibelline on pain of having his tongue cut out. To be found abroad in the city at night, for any reason whatever, was to lose a foot, and so forth. Moreover, on mere suspicion people were put to cruel death or torment. This arbitrary severity was, however, of little avail, and crime was far more rife in the city than before Bernabò’s time. The tyrant’s passion for dogs was as extravagant as his disregard for human suffering. He had five thousand hounds, which his subjects were compelled to keep and tend for him, and if one were found to be either too fat or too lean for the chase, or to have come to any harm, woe to its guardian. Every sort of game was sacred to the prince’s sport, and the peasants who slew wild boars or other forest creatures for food during a severe famine, were hanged or blinded. Two Franciscan brothers, who dared to expostulate with the prince for his harshness, were burnt as heretics, an act something ironical on the part of one who himself spent nearly all his life under the ban of the Church. There was a certain grim humour in some of Bernabò’s fierce deeds, as in his treatment of two dignified Benedictine abbots, who were sent to treat with him by the Pope. The prince met them on a bridge over the Lambro, where, with due reverence, they presented to him the pontifical Bulls. Bernabò read them, and looking up, eyed the legates grimly, and asked them whether they would prefer food or drink. Perceiving a sinister meaning in the question, the trembling clerics glanced at the deep river flowing beneath, and said that they would rather eat. Whereupon the papal missives, parchment, seals, silk cord and all, were crammed down their throats.
Galeazzo was not so capriciously cruel as his brother, but his rule was equally oppressive. To add to the afflictions of the people, the country was devastated by the foreign Companies, who robbed friends and foes alike; and years of famine and pestilence came, which their Lords took no more thoughtful measure to relieve than hanging some of the chief ministers. To both brothers clings the horrible reproach of a decree, condemning prisoners of State to the so-called Quaresima, a series of tortures lasting forty days. Yet Galeazzo was conspicuous for domestic virtues, and both princes were very devout, and founded many churches and convents, and gave largely in alms. One has to remember in judging these sovereigns that the Florentine chroniclers, who have always held the ear of the world, hated them as the enemies of their city. They depict them as barbarous and ignorant tyrants, sunk in gross vice. Yet Petrarca, the recognised sovereign of thought and letters in fourteenth century Italy, spent several years at Milan, in the service first of Archbishop Giovanni, and afterwards of Galeazzo, and speaks of the city and its Lords with great affection and respect. The high honour which the Visconti paid to the poet shows their regard for the things of the spirit. Their capture of Petrarca was felt to be as great a triumph as the conquest of a province. Boccaccio and other Tuscan writers inveigh fiercely against their countryman for his adherence to the Visconti, pretending that he who loved freedom had been deluded by the vulgar worship of riches and luxury, and had become a slave. But Petrarca, whose close acquaintance could judge better of his hosts, probably appreciated the large and far-reaching political ideas which were the heritage of the Visconti, and perhaps saw in Milan a hope for Italy, outside the conception of the Florentines, the possibility of a larger freedom in national union, which should restore the successors of the Romans to their lost glory.
The Visconti, moreover, took great pains to advance learning and culture in their dominions. They founded the University of Pavia, the once celebrated school of jurisprudence there having long decayed, and richly endowed its chairs, and it was Galeazzo who started the famous library at Pavia, to which all students were allowed access. Bernabò was something of a scholar himself, and had studied the Decretals in his youth; but the anxiety of constant wars and the cares of State hindered him from doing all that he would willingly have done for the intellectual welfare of the capital.
The bitter jealousy which prevailed between the two brothers divided them much in later years, though it could not disunite them in the face of their foes, and Galeazzo had left Milan and removed his Court to Pavia, though still keeping his share of the government of the capital. He died in 1378. His son, Gian Galeazzo, was delicate of constitution, of retiring habits, and much given to study. The gentleness with which he began to rule, remitting taxes and seeking to propitiate his subjects, excited the scorn of the grim Bernabò, who readily accepted the proposal of the young widower—Isabella de Valois having died—for the hand of his daughter Caterina, thinking thus to get an extra hold upon him. Little did the veteran prince suspect that this mild recluse, who was hardly ever seen out of his palace at Pavia, was the very quintessence of that subtlety, tenacity and ambition which had made the House of the Visconti the most dreaded in Italy. Gian Galeazzo’s genius for statecraft had been carefully trained by his father. While Bernabò regarded him as of little account, he was strengthening his position both at home and abroad by quiet diplomacy, and evolving mighty schemes in his mind, while he patiently waited the ripe moment for their accomplishment.
There is nothing more dramatic in all the sensational story of mediæval Italy than Gian Galeazzo Visconte’s sudden spring to power. Seven years had passed since his father’s death, and Bernabò’s tyranny had grown ever more oppressive, in sharp contrast to his fellow-ruler’s. One day in 1385 Gian Galeazzo set forth from Pavia for Milan, escorted by four hundred men-at-arms, having announced his intention of visiting a holy shrine near Varese and his desire of embracing his honoured uncle on his way. He had arranged not to enter the capital, but to skirt the walls till he reached the castle beside Porta Giovia, recently built by his father. Laughing at the young man’s caution and his pusillanimity in bringing so large an escort, the elder Visconte sent two of his sons on ahead, and swinging himself into the saddle, galloped off, with two or three servants only, to meet his nephew. The two Sovereigns had but exchanged greetings when, Gian Galeazzo signed to the captain of his escort, Jacopo dal Verme, who laid his hand upon Bernabò’s shoulder, and in a moment the tyrant found himself a prisoner. With his sons he was hurried into the Castle of Porta Giovia. Gian Galeazzo entered the city and was received with immense joy. Not vainly had he counted upon the terror and hatred which his uncle had excited. The people, rushing to the houses of the fallen tyrant and his sons, sacked them from end to end, fired and tore them down, and razed them to the ground. In a General Council of the citizens the sole and absolute dominion of Milan was unanimously conferred upon Gian Galeazzo and upon his male heirs.
Bernabò was removed soon after to the Castle of Trezzo, and died seven months later, of poison, it was said. His sons, except the two captured, had fled in all directions, and were doing their utmost to raise help against the usurper. But so perfectly had Gian Galeazzo conceived and accomplished his great stroke, and with the exercise of such consummate diplomacy and such victorious arms did he secure himself afterwards, that not one of Bernabò’s children, in spite of their princely alliances, were able, with all their constant efforts, to overthrow him or recover any part of their heritage.
The usurper’s one excuse for his treachery was that his uncle and cousins had been openly intriguing against him. Immediately after the capture of Bernabò he drew up a solemn indictment against him, charging him with a catalogue of appalling crimes, and with insidious designs against his, Gian Galeazzo’s, life, and sent it to all the Courts of Europe. This characteristic attempt to give legal justification to his action deceived nobody. Italy at large regarded the young ruler with an admiration and dread which events soon proved well-founded. The brain which had shown such sovereign dissimulation cherished ambitions before which whole cities and states were to fall. It was not long before his schemes began to be fulfilled. The story of Gian Galeazzo’s military enterprises is one of almost unbroken conquest. He was no soldier himself, but he knew how to choose his generals, and he got the best out of them by interfering with them little and rewarding them very generously. The chaotic state of Italy at the time gave him his chance. So extraordinary was his success, that he was regarded as something almost diabolical. It seemed to his terrified enemies that he fascinated those whom he marked for destruction, so that they fell with eyes open into his snares. Francesco da Carrara, Lord of Padua, was persuaded to aid him to overthrow the Scaligeri of Verona. That city having been conquered in 1387, Gian Galeazzo picked a quarrel with his ally, besieged and captured Padua (1389), and sent Francesco to die in the dungeons of Monza. Master now of Verona and Padua, the Visconte had touched the Adriatic shore. Meanwhile Mantua and Venice looked on stupidly and awaited their own destruction as if paralysed. General fear possessed Italy at the rapid progress of the conqueror, who, unseen himself, directed his instruments with such unfailing insight to his desired ends. The Visconte’s policy was to strike at the weak first and gradually prepare the way for greater enterprises. The Church was at this time in the throes of the Great Schism, and Gian Galeazzo, protesting conscientious difficulties in deciding to which Pope he owed spiritual obedience, played them against one another, while he seized the papal fiefs in the Romagna. His armies climbed the mountains and poured into Umbria and Tuscany. Aroused at last by the example and exhortations of Florence, Italy shook off her stupor, and a general effort was made to stem the advance of the Visconte. Yet still he crept on, remedying the checks to his arms by his stealthy diplomacy. The King of France, in answer to the appeal of Florence, sent an army to invade his States, but it was routed by Jacopo dal Verme, and Charles VI. was himself converted into an ally by the Visconte’s flatteries and promises. In 1399 he triumphed over Florence again by acquiring Pisa, without a blow, from Gerardo d’Appiano, while Perugia, Siena and Assisi submitted to his generals.
Already in 1395 Gian Galeazzo’s great increase of power and prestige had been marked by his elevation to a new dignity. His untiring negotiations, backed by the offer of an enormous sum, persuaded the Emperor Wenceslaus to constitute the Milanese State, including a number of conquered cities, into a Duchy, and to invest the Visconte and his male heirs with it in perpetuity. The ceremony of investiture took place in the Piazza of St. Ambrogio, where upon a great throne the imperial legate robed and crowned the new duke in the sight of all the people, in the midst of every pompous circumstance, while in the basilica afterwards the Bishop of Novara, destined to become Pope Alexander V., preached the sermon and lauded the subject of his oration for his illustrious blood, his conspicuous beauty of person and the virtuous tranquillity of his mind.
Gian Galeazzo was as great an administrator as statesman and conqueror. By wisdom, economy, careful distribution of taxation and supervision of finances, he relieved the people from the cruel and ill-considered burdens imposed by the bad management of his predecessors, while increasing his own resources enormously. He was the very genius of order. He saw that the law was properly and effectively carried out, justice done to all, and perfect rule maintained throughout the State. It was by his generous, just, and wise government of the cities which he conquered that he consolidated his vast dominions.