The Emperor, ever ready to abandon a falling cause, withdrew his contingent from the French service, and acknowledged the authority of the Lateran council, which had been opened on the 3rd of May. The Duke of Ferrara, too, thought it full time to make his peace with the Pope; while Louis, thus abandoned, could no longer maintain a footing in Italy, where but a few strongholds remained in his possession; and Milan was restored to Maximiliano Sforza, son of Ludovico il Moro. The overtures of Alfonso were, however, unavailing, being met in no generous spirit by his ecclesiastical overlord. On proceeding to Rome to plead his own cause, he was called upon to surrender his fief to the Holy See, and was treated as a prisoner. By the energetic aid of the Colonna chiefs, he escaped to his impenetrable swamps, and hastened to accredit Ariosto as his minister to appease the Pontiff, a mission which totally failed, the poet's silver tongue having barely obtained grace for himself as envoy of a rebel. Francesco Maria marched, by order of Julius, towards the Polesine, but malaria prevailing there after recent inundations, fever ravaged his army, and their leader averted the fate of his grandfather in these fens, by a timely retreat to his mountain air. We are gravely told by Giraldi that "the house of Ferrara mysteriously bears the name of the Deity" [Est], an idea which their repeated escapes by similar apparently special interpositions of Providence may have suggested.
It was during the Ferrarese expedition, and avowedly at the Pope's urgent desire, that the Medici were re-established at Florence by the league. The Duke of Urbino's absence from that enterprise has been accounted for by Guicciardini and Giovio, as the result of personal feeling against the Cardinal Giovanni, and as contrary to his uncle's instructions. This innuendo becomes important from being the first symptom of misunderstanding between the dynasties of Urbino and Florence, and as apparently the origin of Guicciardini's prepossessions against Francesco Maria, which, adopted by subsequent writers, especially by Roscoe and Sismondi, have led to very general misrepresentations of his after policy and motives. The whole intercourse of that Duke with the Medici, down to 1515, affords a virtual contradiction of latent enmity at this juncture, and the special charge in question is inconsistent with the facts stated by Leoni, who avers that, had Francesco Maria not been then engaged in operations against Ferrara, he would gladly have accompanied the combined forces to Florence, and that he actually connived at their carrying with them a portion of his artillery, contrary to private instructions from his Holiness, who, when the moment for action arrived, is alleged to have favoured the independence of Florence, perhaps under some vague apprehension of eventual dangers from Medicean ambition.
Italy, now freed from ultramontane oppressors, saw Milan restored to its native princes, and Florence again in the hands of her most influential family. Thus far had the favourite aims of Julius been attained; but, instead of hailing these events as the basis of a general pacification befitting his advanced years, he fretted in the recollection that Naples yet owned a foreign yoke, and that Louis was still intent upon vindicating his title to a Cisalpine dominion. The convulsive throes of a stranded leviathan were no unfit parallel to the versatile efforts wherein the old man consumed his waning powers. But, in the multifarious projects which agitated his yet elastic mind, the interests of his again favourite nephew were not forgotten. A brief of the 10th of January, 1513, granted to the latter plenary remission for all his undutiful errors against the Church, as a prelude to new favours, which must now be detailed.[250]
His uncle had entertained a scheme of purchasing for him the vague rights over Siena which the Emperors had long, though ineffectually, asserted; but a more hopeful expedient for his aggrandisement opportunely presented itself. We have, in a [former chapter], narrated the circumstances under which Alessandro Sforza became invested with Pesaro in 1445. His grandson Giovanni, the outraged husband of Lucrezia Borgia, died in 1510, leaving, by his second marriage, an only son Costanzo, about a year old. Galeazzo, natural brother of Giovanni, who was himself of illegitimate birth, governed the state, as tutor of this nephew, until the child's death, in August, 1512, and so entirely acquired the good will of the people, that they proclaimed him their seigneur. The odious tyranny exercised by all petty princes of Italy is a fertile theme for dreamy poets and philosophising liberals; but, whilst the relative oppression was much the same under all forms of government in the Peninsula, personal safety was perhaps best maintained in those least exposed to internal convulsion. From such shocks the minor sovereignties were more exempt than the republics, and the residence of a court was beneficial as well as flattering to the community; hence the fall of an hereditary dynasty was, in almost every instance, lamented by its subjects. These are not, indeed, necessarily the best judges of their own welfare; yet their deliberate and repeated convictions, when free from the influence of demagogues, and tested by impartial history, can hardly be remote from truth.
The investiture of Pesaro had legally lapsed by the young Costanzo's death, and although, in many instances, the assumption of similar rights by illegitimate claimants had been passively permitted by the Church, Galeazzo would have gladly shrunk from a contest which the avowed policy of the reigning Pope rendered inevitable and hopeless. Tempted, however, by the unanimous support of the people, he assumed on his own account the authority he till now had held in behalf of his nephew. Julius instantly recalled the Duke of Urbino from Lugo, to commence operations for the reduction of Pesaro, with Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga as legate. After a brief resistance, Galeazzo surrendered the citadel, on the 30th of October, by a capitulation which insured him an annuity of 1000 scudi of gold, and the allodial holdings of his family. These he conveyed to the Duke for 20,000 ducats, including the Villa Imperiale, and on the 9th of November he quitted Pesaro, attended by nearly the whole population, who bewailed with bitter tears the extinction of a dynasty to whom they were fondly attached. The melancholy procession accompanied their lord as far as La Cattolica, from whence he retired to Milan, and there met a violent death in the following year.
The Cardinal Legate remained at Pesaro to administer the government in behalf of the Holy See, and the Duke returned home. Julius had already made one exception to his policy of bringing the minor fiefs under direct sway of the Church, by renewing the investiture of Urbino in favour of his nephew, and the opportunity was too tempting for repeating a measure recommended by the ties of natural affection. The unmerited suspicions and hasty severity which he had manifested towards Francesco Maria seemed to warrant some consideration; there was also an arrear of about 10,000 scudi of pay and advances, by the late and present Dukes, in the wars of the Church, which her exhausted treasury was unable to discharge, but for which it was desirable to secure compensation ere the tiara should encircle a less friendly brow.[251] Accordingly, one of the Pontiff's latest acts was to gain the consent of the consistory of his nephew's investiture in Pesaro, to be held in vicariat for the annual payment of a silver vase, a pound in weight. The bull to this effect is dated the 16th of February, 1513, and on the 21st his busy spirit was at rest. Three weeks later, the Duke and Duchess of Urbino took possession of Pesaro, and were flatteringly welcomed. Indeed, the people, finding the fate of the Sforza sealed, appeared to have looked about for any means of emancipation from ecclesiastical rule; and, ere Galeazzo had quitted the capital, the council entertained a proposal to petition the Sacred College in favour of Francesco Maria as his successor. This step, whether suggested by Julius or not, greatly strengthened his hands in carrying through the arrangement which he had at heart, and it enabled the citizens to receive their new lord with peculiarly good grace.
[CHAPTER XXXIV]
Election of Leo X.—His ambitious projects—Birth of Prince Guidobaldo of Urbino—The Pontiff’s designs upon that state, which he gives to his nephew—The Duke retires to Mantua.