[BOOK SIXTH]
OF FRANCESCO MARIA DELLA ROVERE
FOURTH DUKE OF URBINO
[CHAPTER XXXII]
Youth of Duke Francesco Maria I.—The League of Cambray—His marriage—His first military service—The Cardinal of Pavia’s treachery—Julius II. takes the field.
TO the family della Rovere, whom we have traced in the [preceding chapter], an heir was born on the 25th of March, 1490. His father, the Lord Prefect, acknowledged his arrival to be a divine blessing, and, as then usual, testified gratitude by the selection of his baptismal names. St. Francis was the established tutelary saint of the family, under whose guidance Sixtus IV. believed himself to have obtained the tiara, and to whom his brother the Prefect addressed his orisons for a male child. It came into the world on the fête of the Annunciation, and was immediately christened Francesco Maria,[*230] in honour of the saint and of the Madonna. In this, his only male offspring, centred the hopes and interests of the Lord of Sinigaglia; and after his death, in 1501, the boy was carried to the court of Urbino, where his progress was watched with almost paternal anxiety by Duke Guidobaldo. His mother occasionally visited there after her widowhood, although from motives of perhaps misplaced delicacy, she resided chiefly on her husband's fiefs of Sora and Arci in the Neapolitan territory.
The first care of his uncle Guidobaldo was to obtain for him a renewal of the prefecture of Rome, which his father had held; and as that appointment was in the hands of Alexander VI., an enemy of the della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino had recourse to the influence of Louis XII. with the Pontiff. This application was warmly seconded in the same quarter by the Cardinal of S. Pietro in Vinculis, paternal uncle of Francesco Maria, and an adherent of the French interests. The readiness wherewith his Holiness accorded this dignity, and even held out hopes of marrying his niece, Angela Borgia, to the young Prefect, induced his uncles to hint at their project of adopting him as heir to the dukedom, a step which required the papal sanction. But they were met by temporising answers, and found, ere long, that the apparent frankness of Alexander was but a cover to that deep-laid plot of destruction, involving both Guidobaldo and his nephew, which we have already developed.
Meanwhile, Francesco Maria's education advanced in letters and arms, with every aid which books, talented preceptors, and distinguished society could afford. His earliest instructor had been Antonio Crastini of Sassoferrato, a man of excellent judgment, and well skilled in theology and philosophy, to whom his father had entrusted the command of Sinigaglia, and whose services were eventually rewarded by Julius II. with the sees of Cagli and Montefeltro. Ludovico Odasio still resided at the court of his former pupil Duke Guidobaldo, who placed under his superintendence his youthful relation. The lad, though small in stature for his years, was remarkable for strength and activity, as well as for an active temperament and lively talents. He was liberal, and even careless, of money; but all his pleasure was in the military art, all his ambition centred in martial glory, for Nicolò of Fossombrone, and another famous astrologer, had predicted from his horoscope high deeds of arms. After passing hours in the study of history and classical literature, and of those sciences wherein princes then sought pre-eminence, he found relaxation in horsemanship and martial exercises, under the eye of such honoured veterans of Duke Federigo as still wore their well-won laurels in the palace of his son. Thus was his youthful mind moulded to the noblest forms of chivalry, without those idle appendages which the affectation of other times has exaggerated into caricature.