GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA, BY PIERO POLLAIUOLO (UFFIZI, FLORENCE)
To face p. [138]] [Alinari, Florence
To such a personality as this prince’s, so conspicuous and so frenzied, legend readily clings, even in his own lifetime, and the imaginations which peered into the secrets of his dungeons carried, perhaps, some of their morbid visions with them. We must, however, believe the contemporary writers, who record hideous deeds committed by the Duke even in the light of day, grim pranks of punishment and devices of cruelty inflicted upon offenders, under his own eyes. There was a strange touch of imagination in his adjustment of torments to offences, and often a kind of wild justice and sympathy for the oppressed, horribly manifested, as when he punished a priest, who had refused the funeral rites to a poor man, by burying him alive in the same grave as the corpse. Galeazzo Sforza was in fact an embodied paradox—a monster of vices and virtues, as he has been called, or better still, in his daughter Caterina’s word, a ‘Fantastick.’ This mad, bad prince had the theoretic admiration of his age for virtue, and was possessed with a very rage for cultivating it in his subjects. Abuses, such as bribery of magistrates, corruption in the public administration, oppressive restrictions on trade and commerce, were vigorously put down. He allowed none but himself to take money from petitioners, or to seize other people’s property. His passion for justice and good government had planted so many gallows in his realm, that when his young bride came to Milan she trembled at the spectacle and fell on her knees, imploring pardon for prisoners and offenders, a boon immediately granted to her compassionate beauty. Though greedy of treasure and guilty of robbing his rich subjects, Galeazzo was punctual and exact in paying his servants—a rare virtue in an Italian prince. So trustworthy was his word as a sovereign that men regarded it as if it had been money. He had great personal attractions, was merry, affable and familiar with those around him, and willingly gave audience to his subjects. The courage which the populace expect of a prince was conspicuous in him—a man who never knew fear, as his fearless daughter Caterina proudly describes him.
Better still, Galeazzo Sforza knew men. No one of proved worth and activity had to fear his caprices. Cecco Simonetta, his father’s faithful minister, was retained in the highest offices throughout his reign; and his chief engineer and architect, Bartolommeo Gadio, kept undisturbed command of the great works of the Castello. Nor did the Duke’s heated temper affect his political judgment. He reconciled himself with Savoy, and with Lorenzo de’ Medici and Ferdinand of Naples formed that triple alliance which gave Italy her most splendid period of peace. In the cordial relations which he maintained with France he never forgot Milan’s appointed task of guarding the gate of Italy. Within his own dominions he held party passions in check, and followed his father’s prudent policy of employing in the important offices of State foreigners like the Sicilian Simonetta, and men who owed everything to the House of Sforza, and of diminishing the influence of the great nobles.
BRIDGE OVER NAVIGLIO NEAR SAN MARCO
With peace without and order within, the tide of prosperity rose ever higher in the populous city. The vast lands of the Duchy were everywhere being brought to full fertility by irrigation works and the draining of wastes. Palaces surrounded by beautiful gardens and fruitful orchards and vineyards were springing up where before had been wilderness. Great schemes for new waterways between the different cities of the State were in hand, and all the immense increase of the country’s resources, resulting from improved agriculture and greater facilities of traffic, flowed by a thousand streams into the coffers of the capital. An extraordinary vitality seemed to possess all classes in this morning of the Renaissance. The larger horizons revealed to the spirit by the revival of ancient literature and thought, the multiplicity of new interests created by increased knowledge, the joy of the release from the mediæval sense of guilt and sorrow, gave to this age the vigour and enthusiasm of a regenerated world. Milan was one vast hive of vivacious energies, busy in commerce, in art and all kinds of handiwork, in learning, poetry, music. The Duke’s excited spirit was eager for all intellectual and artistic novelties. His Court was thronged with scholars and philosophers. Not content with the magnificent library of Pavia, he formed a fine collection of books in Milan, and printing-presses were set up in the city at this time. But above all else Galeazzo loved music. Milan had been from early times the resort of troubadours, minstrels and those skilled in ‘divers musicks,’ but never before had such beautiful singers been heard there as the Duke summoned from Flanders and all parts of Europe to compose the choir of the ducal chapel in the Castello. Music and the chase were Galeazzo’s favourite diversions; and the vast hunting-grounds and deep forests of the Duchy, full of wild boars and stags and all sorts of beasts and birds, the wide meres and watery channels crowded with waterfowl, were continually visited by gallant hunting and hawking trains. The picturesque interest of that far-off princely life, rich in all the adornments of rarest art, and fresh with the springing joy of that hopeful age, is enhanced for us by its dimness. It has all the poetic charm of a half-obliterated fresco. These historic figures appear to our vision in that stiffness and innocence and decorative grace, that mingling of mediæval romance and Renaissance beauty with which they were doubtless represented by the primitive painters who covered the walls of Galeazzo’s palaces in Milan and Pavia with scenes of the ducal life—frescoes, alas! long perished.
The picture of the city at this time would be bright indeed but for the plague-spots of vice and cruelty in the ruler, and of corruption in the people. Acquiescence in tyranny, and the new luxury of life, had bred effeminacy and servility in the citizens. But there were some among them who could not forget their shame. This motley prince, himself an early and crude product of the still undisciplined spirit of the Renaissance, was destined to perish by the operation of that same spirit. The very arrogance of blood and brain which drove him to excess swelled the indignation of the youths who assembled in the school of the humanist Cola Montana, and followed the finger of their preceptor as he pointed with scorn to the spectacle of the Duke passing with extravagant pomp across the Piazza dell’ Arengo, and to the obsequious train of nobles and magistrates in gorgeous attire attending him, and contrasted the degradation and pusillanimity of these courtiers with the noble simplicity of the Carthaginian and Roman patriots who had won immortal fame by giving their lives for their country. Cola, who was himself secretly envenomed against the Duke on account of personal wrongs, never ceased to hold up before his pupils the example of Brutus and the lofty ideal of virtue and self-sacrifice which inspired their classic ancestors. Inflamed by his eloquence and by a mingling of pedantic pride and youthful enthusiasm, these sons of fathers who remembered the brief hope of the Ambrosian Republic formed a resolution to rid the State of the monstrous tyranny which oppressed it. Girolamo Olgiati, Gio. Ant. Lampugnano and Carlo Visconte were the chief conspirators. The lofty indignation of the two latter was aggravated by personal grievances, but the motives of Olgiati, whose sensitive mind had been moulded for years by Cola Montana, seems to have been pure of all egoism except a beautiful self-conceit. They communicated their plot to a few trusty comrades, and went about the city secretly stirring up discontent. In spite of the general prosperity poverty existed, and it happened that the season had been bad and scarcity threatened. The populace could not see beyond this immediate evil, and all groaned together under the taxation which they supposed went only to provide for the limitless luxury of the Court. Many citizens were hereditary Guelfs and foes of the Sforza. The idea of rebellion was familiar enough in every North Italian city, and the conspirators received so much sympathy and so many promises of adherence that the excited vision of young Olgiati pictured the whole city awaiting the signal of the great deed to rise and set him and his fellows at the head of a Republic as noble as those of antiquity. Day and night Lampugnano’s house was crowded with enthusiasts for liberty. All preparations were made for the rising, deputies were appointed to ensure the safety of the city in the confusion which was sure to follow the overthrow of the government, and the day and the particulars of the great act of judgment on the tyrant were carefully arranged.
On St. Thomas Day (1476), Duke Galeazzo entered early in the morning into his capital, after a short victorious campaign against the encroachments of Burgundy in the mountains of Savoy. Let it be remembered of him that his last deed was thus to beat back invaders of Italy. As he rode to Milan from his Castle of Abbiategrasso, in the bitter cold which had numbed the streams and fogged the air, three ravens slowly rose and flew across his path, one after the other, uttering hoarse croaks. The Duke seized a gun and fired at these evil augurs, and was half-minded to turn back. He went forward, however, but a heavy presentiment of ill had fallen on his soul. As he rode in, welcomed by the nobles who had thronged the city to do him homage, the conspirators noted his heavy countenance, and knew that the hour was at hand. Instead of mirth he carried gloom into the Castle, all prepared for his coming, and though it was the season of joy, he ordered the ornaments of the chapel to be draped in black, and bade the Flemish priest, Cordiero and his thirty fellow-singers from beyond the mountains, chant every day in the Mass a verse from the Office of the Dead. Nevertheless the great Christmas festivities took place as usual, and the tall figure of the Prince, robed to the feet in crimson damask, and accompanied by the fair Duchess and a crowd of nobles, stalked gesticulating though the splendid chambers of the Castello, vaunting, in the midst of a strange and mournful oppression, his own magnificence, and the glory and enduring strength of his House.
The next day was the Feast of St. Stephen. Very early in the morning, Gio. Antonio Lampugnano and Girolamo Olgiati knelt and heard Mass together, like knights entering into battle. A great crowd gathered in S. Stefano, where the Duke was to attend Mass later. Some of the conspirators mingled with the people, while the three leaders waited in a house close by. The slow moments passed. At last the appointed hour arrived and the procession was at hand. Girolamo, in his confession, tells the rest in breathless words. Soon a noise; it is the Prince. We hide our daggers, and in an instant stand in the church. The Duke passes, I transfix him, he falls and expires.
Corio, who was one of the Duke’s chamberlains and was present in the church, describes how Galeazzo entered between the Ferrarese and Pisan Envoys, preceded by a pompous train of guards and servants. The writer saw the daggers flash from the little group of conspirators and bury themselves in the gaudy body of the Prince, and heard his one cry, O Nostra Donna! as he fell back in a pool of blood. In the uproar which immediately arose, Lampugnano was killed as he fled through the press of shrieking women; but Girolamo and Carlo Visconte, with their accomplices, succeeded in escaping from the church. The mangled body of the tyrant was carried into the adjoining Canonica, and its gory dress was exchanged for a robe of white cloth of gold, and all the ducal ornaments and insignia set upon it. Meanwhile Girolamo, hounded by the rage and terror of his father out of his home, whither he had fled, took refuge with a priest and waited in violent agitation, his exalted brain seething with hopes and fears. The people must be even now rushing to arms. His friends must be coming to find him and place themselves under his command. They would sack the palaces of Cecco Simonetta and the hated ministers, seize the gates, abolish the taxes, proclaim a glorious Republic. The hours went by and nothing happened. Hearing a great noise, he looked eagerly out and saw the lacerated remains of his comrade Lampugnano being dragged along by yelling children with every hideous insult.