Their lament was justified. The direct result of the tyrant’s death was the release of all the elements of disorder and reaction in Italy, the revival of angry faction, the break-up of a great organised State among a host of greedy and warring pretenders, and the terrorism of military adventurers over the whole country, ending in the establishment of a dynasty in Milan destined to sell Italy to her final shame and ruin. What if Gian Galeazzo had lived a few years longer? Florence would probably have fallen before him, Florence whose incurable spirit of individualism had been the one barrier between him and his ambition. But was that single little torch of liberty, which itself was soon to waver and be spent, worth the sacrifice of a united and peaceful Italy, strong enough to resist all outside foes, forward enough to lead all Europe in the path of progress?
Yet if that noble fruition of art and civilisation which glorifies the fifteenth century in Florence was conditional on her independence, then Italy through all the tears of her after centuries of sorrow and humiliation might well answer Yes.
THE SNAKE OF THE VISCONTI
CHAPTER VI
From Visconti to Sforza
“Una città corrotta che vive sotto un principe ... mai non si può ridurre libera.”—Macchiavelli.
Gian Galeazzo’s three sons by Isabella of Valois had died in infancy, leaving him with one daughter only, Valentina, whom in 1387 he had married to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, an alliance of immense immediate advantage to the Visconti, but of fatal issue for Milan and Italy generally, in days beyond even his far vision. After some years of marriage, his second wife, Caterina Visconte, had borne him a son, whom he had named Giovanni Maria, decreeing that every one of his descendants should thenceforth bear the name of Maria, as a token of his gratitude to the Virgin, to whose intercession he attributed the birth of his heir. A second son, Filippo Maria, was born later. At the time of the Duke’s death the elder was only fourteen, and the younger ten. In addition to their youth, they had the enduring disadvantage of issuing from parents both of the same stock, which already, in the ferocity and capriciousness of Bernabò and the physical timidity and weakness of Gian Galeazzo himself, had shown signs of vitiation. This taint in the blood became in Giovanni Maria a moral disease, amounting to mania, and in his brother an exaggerated misanthropy and timidity.
Giovanni Maria succeeded to the dukedom, and Filippo became by his father’s will Count of Pavia, which had been erected into an appanage of the sovereign House. The charge of the young Duke’s person and state immediately became the object of a wild scramble among the different parties in the city. The dead man’s will, appointing his widow regent, was utterly disregarded, and she and her adviser, Francesco Barbavara, were driven out by Estorre and Carlo Visconte, two of Bernabò’s sons, who now reappeared after long exile, hoping to recover their heritage. The Duchess died in 1404, poisoned, it was believed, by her son. But this unhappy lady, who had seen her father entrapped and murdered and her whole family ruined by her husband, and whose sons were now helpless in the hands of robbers and foes—who had been driven hither and thither in the whirl of faction and was already paralytic—might well sink beneath her sorrows, without the help of this unnatural crime, which there seems to have been no better reason than his general wickedness for laying to the young Duke’s charge.
Meanwhile Bernabò’s sons were swept away by other faction leaders, to return and be again overthrown, as the fortunes of the struggle surged backwards and forwards. One after another of Gian Galeazzo’s great captains snatched and held the city for a time. Now Ottobuono Terzo—now Carlo Malatesta—now Facino Cane, the most famous of them all, ruled in the name of the utterly incapable Prince, while out of the ruins of Gian Galeazzo’s vast State, which Venice, Florence and the Church had hastened to dismember, each faithless governor seized some remaining fragment wherewith to create a small independent dominion for himself. Thus while the great Duke’s conquests, further off, were quickly lost, cities close to the capital and long subject to the Visconti fell to these lesser depredators. Pavia and other towns were captured by Facino Cane, who kept the young Filippo a virtual prisoner, and Monza became the stronghold of Estorre Visconte and his spirited sister Valentina.
The confusion and struggle in Milan continued throughout the ten years of Giovanmaria’s reign. The condition of the city was lamentable. Peace and order were destroyed, and the names of Guelf and Ghibelline were heard again in the streets, inflaming household against household and awakening the horrors of civil war. The Duke made no attempt to rule for himself. His only share in the government was the execution of State prisoners, whom he caused to be torn to pieces, under his own eyes, by dogs trained for the purpose. The extraordinary passion for dogs, together with the hatred of humankind, visible in Bernabò and others of the Visconti, had become an extravagant ferocity in this degenerate member of the race. The story of Milan during his reign is like some dreadful dream, in which, when sleep has fallen on the incessant riots and fighting, through the darkness of the night stalk the awful figures of the maniac Prince, gloating in his sport, and his huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, beside him, with their terrible hounds in leash, on the scent of human blood.