Peace at last concluded, the French finally made their way home, leaving so weak a hold on Naples that the Aragonese quickly reinstated themselves. In the universal joy at the disappearance of the invaders it appeared to all that the Moro had saved Italy. His prestige, of late clouded, was now more brilliant than ever. Securely seated on the ducal throne, strong in the new alliance in which his initiative had bound Italy, he seemed indeed to have succeeded in all his calculations and schemes. Those seeds of future danger—the fatal knowledge of Italy’s weakness, which the French had acquired, the declaration of the Duke of Orleans, that he should return to conquer his rightful heritage of Milan—were unheeded. In his new exaltation the Moro vaunted himself the child of fortune, and believed himself to be, as astrologers, poets, courtiers, ambassadors told him, arbiter of the destinies of Italy, and incarnation of almost divine wisdom and prudence. He put his trust more and more in destiny, and prompted by his venal astrologer, Ambrogio da Rosate, thought to read in the stars his triumph. As if blinded by the gods in preparation for the sacrifice, he passed all bounds in his arrogance. The old jealousy and distrust of his fellow-sovereigns now revived with new force. His jester’s vainglorious trumpeting—the Pope is my chaplain, Venice my treasurer, the Emperor my chamberlain, and the King of France my courier, was repeated in every city of Europe, as if Lodovico himself had seriously spoken it. The many guests at the Castello of Milan told everywhere of the painting on the walls there, depicting Italy as a queen, and the Moro, with a scoppetta—his personal emblem—brushing the dust from her robes, whereon were inscribed the different Italian cities. These boasts of exaggerated self-confidence rankled in his contemporaries. But while they hated him, they feared him too. More than ever now all Italy waited upon his motions.
LODOVICO IL MORO, BY BOLTRAFFIO (TRIVULZIO COLLECTION)
To face p. 176.] [Anderson, Rome
The months that followed the conclusion of peace with Charles were joyous beyond compare. In the summer of this year (1496) the Duke and Duchess had a meeting with the Emperor, and returned loaded with honours, which added a new lustre to Lodovico’s fame.
Suddenly, at the height of his fortune, Fate struck her first blow at the Moro. Beatrice died (1497).
The golden days of Milan changed all at once to gloom. Silence shut down upon the dancing and sweet music. The Duke, to whom even his children and State seemed no longer worth living for, sat for nine days in a darkened chamber alone, refusing all comfort, while in Sta. Maria delle Grazie the monks chanted incessant masses for Beatrice’s soul. The Moro was overwhelmed. He who had ever lived happy, now began to feel great anguish, says the Venetian Sanuti. The fabric of his dreams had crashed upon him. What were kingdoms to him without that clear-sighted and dauntless spirit at his side? Not only was his strong affection rent, but his profound faith in his good fortune was awfully shaken. As if the evil augury had to declare itself unmistakably, on the night of Beatrice’s death a large part of the walls of the vast pleasaunce which he had created round the Castello fell with a great crash, ruined by no storm or wind, or agency perceptible to human sense. From this moment, so much is man’s destiny affected by his own spirits, all Lodovico’s misfortunes began. He entered on that downward course which was to drag so much to ruin with it—and to the husband’s loss of the blessing of this Beatrice, the poet of the Italian Renaissance ascribes not only the fall of Moro, Sforza, and Visconte Snake together, but the captivity of Italy.
‘Beatrice bea, vivendo, il suo consorte,
E lo lascia infelice alla sua morte.
Anzi tutta Italia, che con lei
Fia trionfante e senza lei, captiva.’[[3]]