Brogi
DUCHESS OF URBINO, EITHER ELEONORA OR GIULIA VARANA
After the picture by Titian in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The difficulties of the youthful commander were increased by the inopportune arrival of four thousand Swiss mercenaries, who, finding matters in train for a pacification which would dash their hopes of booty, could scarcely be restrained from an immediate assault upon Ravenna. Their ruffianly intentions being insidiously encouraged by the Legate, it was only by great prudence and decision that the Duke prevented them from sacking that city, when evacuated on honourable terms by the Venetian authorities. This conciliatory policy was rewarded by a speedy surrender of Cervia, followed on the 11th of June by that of Rimini, the last of the towns claimed by Julius, upon which Francesco Maria lost no time in disbanding his army and returning home. As soon as he was gone, the Cardinal, steady only to his duplicity, imprisoned the Venetian officers who had imprudently lingered within his reach. Although this campaign lasted but six weeks, and produced no considerable engagement, it afforded to the young Duke an insight into mankind, as well as a lesson in military affairs, which enabled him to pass at once from boyhood to the experience, as well as the reputation, of an able commander.
As soon as Francesco Maria was liberated from camp duties, he sent to Mantua for his bride, and at his uncle's desire carried her to visit Rome. The Roman citizens, ever devoted to festivity, received him with distinction, due not less to his personal merit than to his high rank and near relationship to the Pope. Among the pageants exhibited in honour of his marriage were tilting in the Piazza Navona, and a masque celebrating his successes in Romagna, after the manner of those triumphs which that capital used to witness some fifteen centuries before. He carried Giuliano de' Medici with him to the papal court, and effected his reconciliation with Julius, who, suspecting him of some intrigues at Bologna, had given orders for his imprisonment; thus swelling that debt of the Medici to his family, which Leo X. subsequently and most ungratefully expunged.
The Duke also used his influence for removal of the interdict from Venice, the tried ally of his house; and this the Pontiff more readily granted, having now gained all he hoped from the compact of Cambray, and being ready for any new coalition that might tend either to aggrandise the Holy See or to liberate Italy from foreign yoke. He therefore cared not for the remonstrances of his late coadjutors against his abrupt secession from their common policy; and, aware how little signified Maximilian's languid operations, he only sought an apology for putting himself in direct opposition to the French, whose successes in Lombardy were assuming a serious aspect. This was soon afforded by the hollow counsels of the Cardinal of Pavia, whom he had despatched to the camp of Louis on pretence of congratulating him upon his victory at Vaila, but in fact to watch his intentions. In this monarch the Legate found one as ambitious as his master, and not more scrupulous than himself; he therefore with characteristic treason encouraged the projects he had shrewdly penetrated, stipulating in return for the sovereignty of Imola, as soon as Louis should, by his secret aid, add Bologna and Romagna to his Milanese possessions. As an underplot in this drama of ingratitude and treachery, the Cardinal of Rouen proposed that Julius should be deposed by a general council, with a view to securing for himself the tiara. Such at least were the ends which the French King soon after openly pursued; and those historians who seek to establish a case against the Cardinal of Pavia, explanatory of his subsequent conduct, charge him with thus early selling himself to Louis, and betraying his partial and confiding patron the Pope.
The Legate, therefore, on his return to Rome, warmly seconded the Pontiff's views. A rupture with France was the preliminary move in the game he had arranged with Louis, and his zeal in promoting it seemed the surest disguise of his ulterior designs. Florence and Ferrara were bound to the French interests, while Venice was their determined foe; so it only remained for the Pope to join stakes with the Signory, and the party was made up. His intrigues to secure the support of Spain, Austria, and England, and to retain the Swiss in his service, do not require our particular notice.
Unwarned by recent events in Romagna, and blinded by affection for his nephew, and for the Cardinal of Pavia, to the character of the latter, and to the insuperable antipathy which had grown up between them, the Pope, unfortunately, again delegated to them the joint conduct of the war. The first advance was made against Ferrara, with the view, doubtless, of restoring the Polesine to Venice, and extending the temporal sway of the Keys to the banks of the Po. Francesco Maria, who, after wintering in Rome, had returned home with his Duchess in May, entered the Ferrarese ere July was over, at the head of six thousand infantry, and one thousand five hundred horse, and quickly became master of a great part of that duchy. But this army was unequal to operations against the city of Ferrara, strong in its surrounding marshes; and an expected contingent of ten thousand Swiss were intercepted by Chaumont, the French general (called Ciamonte by Guicciardini,) and sent back to their mountains by the combined means of force and gold. The naval armament against Genoa, then in the hands of Louis, proving also a failure, and the Cardinal Legate conducting his department as unsatisfactorily as before, the Duke of Urbino heard with joy that the Pontiff was on his way to the scene of operations. On the 15th of September he passed through Pesaro, leaving the Apostolic benediction, and various indulgences, in acknowledgment of his enthusiastic reception. When he reached Bologna, he found Modena, which had lately surrendered to his army, threatened by Chaumont in person, and a strong feeling abroad among the ecclesiastical officers, that they had been deluded by the Legate, who prevented them from clenching their success by the capture of Reggio, and had wiled them to a fruitless demonstration before Ferrara, thereby not only wasting precious time, but exposing the army to great hazard, and leaving Modena and Bologna uncovered. The Pope immediately directed his nephew to send the Cardinal, under arrest, to Bologna, which he did, with every mark of consideration; but the extraordinary influence which that sneaking spirit exercised over the frank and open-hearted Julius, diverted his suspicions, and was rewarded with new favours.
The unpromising aspect of his affairs, which brought the Pontiff in person to Bologna, did not improve. Disappointed of the assistance he looked for from Switzerland and Naples, feebly supported by his allies of Venice and Mantua, his troops were reduced to a defensive position, fatal to the prestige which had attended their first successes. Encouraged by this state of matters, and by the approach of Chaumont's powerful army, the friends of the exiled Bentivoglii began to agitate for their restoration to the sovereignty of Bologna. Nor were these the worst mortifications awaiting the proud spirit of Julius. The clergy of France had met at Lyons, and decided upon convoking a general council at Pisa, to sit in judgment upon his conduct, a movement already openly supported by Louis, the Emperor, and Florence, and by five members of the Sacred College. These anxieties fretted his fractious temperament into an illness, so serious at his advanced age, as to threaten a fatal termination; and in the prospect of thus losing the mainspring of the war, his confederates were little inclined to compromise themselves by fresh exertions. His courtiers, too, alarmed at the prospect of clinging to a falling cause, beset him with persuasions to obtain a truce on any terms. But they mistook the character with whom they had to deal. In deference to their representations, he opened a negotiation with the French general, wherein, far from assuming a suppliant air, he prescribed as a preliminary stipulation, the sacrifice of the Duke of Ferrara to his vengeance, as a rebellious vassal. Thus passing