[81] Sismondi's account of these facts is strangely inaccurate. One page of his seventy-first chapter contains these four misstatements: 1. That Federigo was son of Bernardino della Carda by the Countess of Urbino; 2. That he married, about 1444, a daughter of Francesco Sforza; 3. That 20,000 florins was the price of both fiefs; 4. That Fossombrone was gifted to Federigo by Sforza. I have not found an authority for any one of these assertions.
[82] Sforza had this territorial title from Eugenius IV., when invested by him with La Marca in 1433, and we prefer it to using his more common designation of Count, in order to distinguish him from the Count of Urbino.
[83] Sanzi exults over the cowardly confederates in a triplet, whose sound ingeniously echoes the sense:—
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"Cum pompa excelsa, al suon di molte trombe, Empiendo l'aria d'alte voci humane Par che ogni valle del remor ribombe." |
The ruin occasioned by this campaign is supposed to have overtaken the poet's family, and to have induced them to exchange their roof-tree at Colbordolo for the more secure shelter of Urbino, where Raffaele was born.
[84] Machiavelli, Istorie, lib. V.
[85] Machiavelli, Istorie, lib. V.
[*86] Pomarance (già Ripomarance) is in the Val di Cecina. Campiglia is in Val di Cornia. Castiglione is Castiglione della Pescaia. Cf. Malavolti, Historia, ad ann., and Repetti, Dizionario della Toscana.
[87] I found this condotta or engagement in the archives of the Albani Palace at Urbino. It is for six months from March, 1448, and stipulates for 3000 florins of monthly pay, for which the Count was to maintain 500 lances and 300 foot. Poggio says that his actual force was 1000 horse and 800 infantry.—Muratori, R.I.S., XX., 420.
[*88] For Federigo's service under Sforza see Rossi, F. da Montefeltro condotto da F. Sforza, in Le Marche (Fano, 1905), an. V., p. 142. Rossi prints the Mandata.