The Duke of Milan assassinated—Count Girolamo Riario—The Pazzi conspiracy—Duke Federigo’s campaigns in Tuscany—Progress of the Turks.
THE mediæval history of Italy is too frequently traced in characters of blood, and the period which we have now reached, although generally regarded as one of comparative tranquillity, was signalised by conspiracies systematically matured, and by murders perpetrated in high places with revolting barbarity. It matters little that they were instigated by political abuses or provoked by domestic tyranny; so repugnant is assassination to the better feelings of mankind, that public sympathy is ever with the sufferer, and the crime is perpetuated by history as a national stigma. The brutalising influence of such deeds descends like an hereditary taint to after generations, and to it may in a great measure be ascribed the recklessness of human life, and the consequent reputation for cruelty, which are still imputed to the Italian nature, and which recent events but too sadly confirm.
The earnestness of character, the energy of mind and action, which had gained for Francesco Sforza the sovereignty of Milan, passed not to his son. Galeazzo Maria was magnificent in his tastes. His court was the most splendid of a brilliant age. In his duchy justice was prompt and impartial. But his foreign policy and personal courage were unstable, in his home administration cruelty and oppression were aggravated by caprice. Yet these faults and foibles might have been endured, had not the patience of his subjects been worn out by outrages against their domestic peace. Machiavelli informs us that hatred to their ruler, and the comparative benefits of a republic, were lessons habitually instilled into such of the young nobles as frequented the school of Cola Montano, then the most eminent teacher in Milan. But it was not until several of these youths found their wives or sisters sacrificed by the Duke's ruthless debauchery, that the seditious seeds thus implanted sprang to sudden and full growth. Seldom have the secrets of conspiracy and murder been so fully detected and exposed.[183] There is, however, a melodramatic effect of the narrative of old Sanzi which entitles it to notice as contemporary and unpublished, although apparently biassed in favour of Galeazzo. The three conspirators, mingling fanaticism with vengeance, sought by religious observances to sanctify the deed of horror. Their invocation to their city's patron saint for blessings on the attempt, with a solemnity ill becoming its sacrilege, has been preserved; but Sanzi adds that they bribed an apostate priest to consecrate at the altar a sacramental wafer, which he administered not until each had shed upon it a drop of his blood,—a blasphemous rite intended to seal their mutual vows of fidelity and secrecy; also that they used to rehearse their fury, and practise their swordsmanship, against a wooden puppet, decked out in gold brocade, and kept for the purpose in one of their houses. Among the solemn functions of Christmas week was that of St. Stephen, performed in the picturesque old fane dedicated to the protomartyr, where it was usual for the court to attend; the Duke on this occasion accidentally left behind a cuirass, that defence of despots, which he was wont to wear, and thus unconsciously facilitated the execution of a concerted project. It was customary, in allusion to the expiring year, to fire a light mass of carded flax suspended in the church, whilst a warning voice
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"Exclaimed, 'Thus human glory vanishes; Unhappy he who hazards there his hopes!'" |
As the sovereign raised his eyes to this touching emblem of transient and fragile existence, he was done to instant death by the poignards of the three conspirators.[*184] The moral offences imputed to the wretched man thus miserably summoned to his account have been collected by Sismondi, the consistent impugner of princes.[185] Sanzi, who generally leans to them, has thus painted them in colours less loathsome:—
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"A man he was remarkable for worth, Though charged with faults not few, which in his state Were freely challenged. Happy years of youth, Though pregnant with the germs of age mature, And preluding too oft its perils grave! Here must my tongue this prince exalt, as one Who even-handed justice dealt to all, Subject or stranger, noble or obscure; Nor willed that any, founding on his wealth Or station, should the meanest pauper vex. Yet is he censured as one pitiless, And prone to undue passion: trite reproach Of prosperous despots!" |
The steady support long given by the Duke of Urbino to the Sforzan dynasty suggested him as his most valuable stay in this crisis of peril, and in obedience to a summons of the widowed Duchess he made ready to march northward. The policy of the Holy See and of Naples, whose batons he jointly held, clearly tended towards Lombardy; but, unlike most successful conspiracies, the murder of Galeazzo Maria led to no revolution, and Federigo returned to vindicate the papal authority against the turbulent Carlo Braccio, who, ambitious of his father's fame and fortunes, and instigated by Lorenzo de' Medici, threatened Perugia from his stronghold of Montone. The ruin of so petty an opponent added no laurel to the victor's already loaded chaplet.
The Duke of Milan left a daughter, Caterina, the fruit of a boyish intrigue, who was born in 1462, and became one of the most remarkable women of her time. On the election of Sixtus, her father, willing to conciliate by family ties a pontiff whose energy of character promised no ordinary career, offered her in marriage to Girolamo Riario, one of his favourite nephews, whom he had in 1480 created Count of Forlì, the dispossessed fief of the Ordelaffi. In order that the bride's dowry might tempt the ambitious Vicar of Christ, her father, in 1473, made over to her such rights to the sovereignty of Imola as he had obtained by purchase from its lords the Manfredi; and after the parties had been betrothed, that seigneury was confirmed to Girolamo by his Holiness as its ecclesiastical over-lord.[186] Caterina being, however, but in her eleventh year, the nuptials were postponed, and she meanwhile remained at Milan, cultivating the abstruse and ornamental branches which were then included in female education. Endowed with a lively genius, a ready apprehension, and a singularly retentive memory, she quickly mastered these studies, and acquired a rare facility of expressing herself with elegance and propriety. Her marriage was solemnised soon after her father's murder, and having being carried by her husband to Rome, she was welcomed with magnificent festivities by the Pope, who found in her a brilliancy of beauty and a courtesy of manner excelling all that rumour had anticipated. Out of the growing favour of Sixtus for Count Girolamo, seconded by his own ambitious intrigues, which aimed at an extended sovereignty, sprang the seeds of a new conspiracy not less atrocious than that of which the Duke of Milan was victim, and far more widely influencing the politics of Italy.