At the beginning of the fourteenth century the lordship of Milan was disputed by two families, the della Torre and the |The Visconti in Milan.| Visconti. The supremacy of the latter was established in 1312 when Henry VII. conferred the title of imperial vicar upon Matteo Visconti. Of Matteo’s numerous family four sons deserve mention: Galeazzo, Lucchino, and Giovanni, who all ruled in Milan, and Stefano, who died in 1327 without obtaining power, but whose children subsequently came to govern. Galeazzo, the eldest son, who succeeded his father in 1322, was deposed by Lewis the Bavarian in 1327, and died in the following year at the siege of Pistoia. His son Azzo recovered, in 1329, the sovereignty of Milan, and the tide of imperial vicar. He proved a successful ruler, and by joining in the successive leagues against John of Bohemia and Mastino della Scala, he extended his authority over the greater part of central Lombardy. On his early death in 1339 his uncle Lucchino succeeded to the lordship over Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Lodi, Piacenza, Vercelli, Novara, and a less complete sovereignty over Pavia. To these dominions Lucchino added Parma in 1346, and Tortona, Alessandria, and Asti in 1347. On the west these territories were bounded by the dominions of the Marquis of Montferrat and the Count of Savoy; while on the east they were separated from Venice and the States of the Church by the possessions of four tyrants of lesser power—the Gonzagas in Mantua, the house of Este in Ferrara, the della Scala in Verona and Vicenza, and the Carrara in Padua. On the death of Lucchino in 1349 his dominions passed to his younger brother Giovanni, who had entered the Church, and had received from Benedict XII. the archbishopric of Milan. In spite of his ecclesiastical position Giovanni did not scruple to aggrandise himself at the expense of the Papacy. In 1350 he induced the Pepoli, who had made themselves lords of Bologna, to cede that city to him. This advance from Lombardy into central Italy made a profound impression on contemporaries, and completely altered the position of the Visconti. It marked the beginning of a prolonged quarrel with the Papacy, and it alarmed Florence and the Tuscan communes for their independence. In 1353 the defeat of Genoa in her naval war with Venice led to the temporary submission of the Ligurian republic to Milanese rule. This was the last great triumph of the militant archbishop, who died suddenly in 1354.
The house of Visconti was now represented by the three sons of Stefano: Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. They agreed to divide their uncle’s dominions between them, but to keep the two chief cities of Milan and Genoa under their joint rule. Matteo, who was vicious and debauched even |Bernabo and Galeazzo Visconti.| beyond the standard of the Visconti, was assassinated by order of his brothers in 1355, and Bernabo and Galeazzo divided his share between them. On the whole their joint rule was wonderfully harmonious, though in later life they fell rather apart and adopted different residences—Bernabo in Milan and Galeazzo in Pavia. Few pictures are more repulsive than that which has been handed down of the domestic government of the two brothers. In the midst of lavish profusion and ostentatious patronage of men of letters, they ruled their subjects with a rod of iron. State criminals, instead of immediate execution, were publicly tortured for forty days according to a fixed daily programme. The game laws were enforced with atrocious severity even for those days. A peasant who had killed a hare was given to Bernabo’s hounds to be devoured by them. Yet these bloodthirsty despots, belonging to an upstart family and without any recognised or legal title in their dominions, were allowed to ally themselves by intermarriage with the greatest dynasties in Europe. They were the richest rulers of their time, and their wealth induced even kings to shut their eyes both to the cruelty of their rule and to their ignoble origin. Bernabo married his daughter Verde or Virida to the Leopold of Hapsburg who afterwards fell in the battle of Sempach. Galeazzo obtained for his son, Gian Galeazzo, the hand of Isabella, daughter of John of France, with the county of Vertus in Champagne; and his daughter Violante was married to Lionel of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. of England.
In spite of these alliances, which gave to the Visconti a unique position among the despots of northern Italy, the |Milanese reverses.| rule of the two brothers was by no means uninterruptedly successful. Genoa revolted in 1356 and recovered its freedom. Cardinal Albornoz, who was engaged in restoring papal authority in the Papal States, organised a league among the northern despots, the Gonzagas, the della Scala, the Marquis of Montferrat, and all who were jealous of Visconti ascendency. Pavia recovered its independence for two years under the encouragement of a republican monk, Jacopo Bussolari, but was compelled to surrender to Galeazzo in 1359. Asti, Novara, Como, and other western towns were for a time wrested from Visconti rule by the Marquis of Montferrat. A more serious loss was that of Bologna. Giovanni d’Oleggio, who had been appointed governor of the city by Giovanni Visconti, refused to acknowledge the authority of the latter’s nephews. When Bernabo endeavoured to compel his submission in 1360, Oleggio baulked him by surrendering Bologna to Albornoz. The successes of the papal legate and the return of Urban V. to Rome seemed for a moment to render hopeless any extension of the rule of the Visconti beyond the limits of Lombardy. But Albornoz died in 1368, Urban returned to Avignon in 1370, and a general revolt in Romagna against papal rule restored to the Visconti the advantages which for a moment they had lost. It was not, however, Bernabo Visconti who profited by these changes, but a new and more famous member of the family.
In 1378—an eventful year in Italian history—Galeazzo Visconti died, leaving his share of the family dominions to his only son, Gian Galeazzo. Fearing the ambition |Gian Galeazzo Visconti.| of Bernabo, who might well desire to provide for his numerous children at his nephew’s expense, the young prince ruled in Pavia with such ostentation of piety and moderation that his uncle deemed him a harmless simpleton. Having thus disarmed all suspicion, Gian Galeazzo decoyed his uncle from Milan to a friendly interview, consigned him to a prison which he never left alive, and reunited the territories of Bernabo with his own (1385). To the cruelty and unscrupulousness of his predecessors, Gian Galeazzo added a dogged resolution and a capacity for intrigue which enabled him to attain a height of power beyond their most sanguine dreams. Personally he was so timid that a sudden sound excited a terror which he could not conceal. But his lack of courage—an unusual defect among Italian tyrants—proved no bar to his ambition. His wealth enabled him to attract to his service most of the ablest condottieri of the age, and to purchase from them a fidelity which was quite uncommon. Himself the husband of a French princess, he drew closer the connection with France by marrying his daughter, Valentina, to Charles VI.’s brother, Louis of Orleans (1389). The bride not only brought to the Orleans family the town of Asti as her dowry, but also an eventual claim to the succession in Milan which was fraught with most momentous consequences to Europe. A few years later Gian Galeazzo succeeded in removing one great defect in the dignity of the Visconti by obtaining from Wenzel, king of the Romans, the formal creation in his favour of a hereditary duchy of Milan (1395).
The great ambition of Gian Galeazzo Visconti was to found a kingdom of northern Italy, and circumstances were |His schemes.| so extraordinarily favourable that he very nearly succeeded in gaining his object. The two great Guelf powers, Naples and the Papacy, might naturally be expected to oppose such a design. But the Papacy was in the throes of the Schism, and Naples was the scene of civil strife between the two houses of Anjou. Of the three leading republics whose independence was directly threatened, Genoa was powerless. Florence was hampered by the jealousy of Siena, Perugia, and other communes in Tuscany and Romagna, while Venice had for the moment more immediate enemies than Milan, and might be bribed to aid in their destruction. The empire was in the feeble hands of Wenzel, France in the equally feeble hands of Charles VI., and both princes were allied with the Visconti. There seemed to be hardly any danger either of foreign intervention or of efficient resistance in Italy.
The first task which Gian Galeazzo undertook was the reduction of eastern Lombardy. A quarrel between Francesco Carrara and Antonio della Scala gave him his opportunity. |Conquest of Verona and Padua.| He offered his aid to both princes, but ultimately concluded a treaty with Carrara in 1387 by which Verona was to go to himself and Vicenza to Padua. Both cities were easily taken by Gian Galeazzo’s troops, and the once famous house of della Scala was ruined. But the lord of Milan kept Vicenza as well as Verona, and Carrara perceived too late that he had only hastened his own downfall. Venice was eager to punish the neighbour who had done all he could for her destruction in the wars both with Hungary and with Genoa. In spite of the obvious danger of aggrandising Milan, Venice agreed to a partition of the territories of Carrara. Resistance to such a combination was hopeless; Padua was compelled to surrender to Milanese rule, and Treviso and the marches were handed over to Venice (1388). The supremacy of Gian Galeazzo in Lombardy was now uncontested. The remaining princes of Savoy, Montferrat, Mantua, and Ferrara, were all, for one reason or another, his humble vassals.
In 1389 Gian Galeazzo was free to turn his attention to Tuscany and Romagna, where his ambition seemed to be equally favoured by internal dissensions. Siena, Perugia, and a number of petty lords in Romagna |War with Florence, 1390-2.| joined in a league against Florence, whose fall would have assured the supremacy of Milan. But the Florentine oligarchy served the republic faithfully in this hour of danger. Sir John Hawkwood was taken into the service of Florence, and the Count of Armagnac was bribed to bring a body of French troops to aid the republic. Visconti had engaged the most eminent Italian leaders, Jacopo dal Verme, Facino Cane, and others, and the numerical superiority of their troops might have gained an ultimate victory. Armagnac was defeated and slain, and this disaster compelled Hawkwood, who had invaded Lombardy as far as the Adda, to conduct a difficult and hazardous retreat. But the balance was turned against Milan by a wholly unexpected reverse in the north. The younger Francesco Carrara, who had been imprisoned with his father after the fall of Padua, succeeded in escaping. After hairbreadth escapes and the most romantic wanderings over Europe, he succeeded in getting supplies of money from Florence and of men from Bavaria. With a small body of followers he entered Padua by the bed of the Brenta in June 1390. The citizens welcomed his return, and the rule of Milan was overthrown. This revolution in Padua was a great blow to Gian Galeazzo. It compelled him to withdraw part of his forces from Tuscany, and in 1392 he decided to postpone his southern enterprise and to conclude a treaty. Padua was left in the hands of Francesco Carrara on condition of paying tribute to Milan; Florence was to abstain from intervention in Lombardy, and Gian Galeazzo from intervention in Tuscany.
The treaty of 1392 was followed by a few years of troubled peace, broken by only a brief renewal of hostilities in 1397, which was ended by another treaty in 1398. During these years Gian Galeazzo continued to prosecute his schemes by diplomacy and intrigue. |Successes of Gian Galeazzo.| In 1394 a revolution was effected in Pisa and the lordship of the city acquired by Jacopo d’Appiano, who was notoriously in the pay of Milan. Five years later, Appiano’s son completed the bargain by handing over Pisa to Gian Galeazzo in return for the principality of Piombino. Genoa only escaped a similar fate by a voluntary submission to France in 1396. Siena in 1399, Perugia and Assisi in 1400 sought to escape the disorders of faction by accepting the rule of Milan. Everywhere republican liberties seemed destined to give way to the advance of despotism. Paolo Guinigi, with the help of Milanese gold, made himself lord of Lucca in 1400, and in the next year Giovanni Bentivoglio became the master of Bologna. Slowly but surely the coils were being drawn round Florence, and the league which she had formed for the defence of liberty was wholly broken up. Hawkwood had died in 1394, and no leader of equal merit could be found except in the service of Milan. A momentary prospect of relief was offered when the princes of Germany in 1400 deposed the incapable Wenzel and gave the kingship of the Romans to the Elector Palatine, Rupert III. Rupert undertook to invade Italy and to crush the upstart ruler of Milan whom his rival had raised to the rank of duke. But the German troops were no match either in skill or in discipline for the mercenaries of Italy, and were utterly routed at Brescia by Jacopo dal Verme (October 24, 1401). The last hope of Florence disappeared when Giovanni Bentivoglio, who had turned against Milan, was compelled to surrender, and the Bolognese welcomed the substitution of a foreign for a native despot (July, 1402). But death intervened to thwart an |His death in 1402.| ambition which human opposition had failed to check. On September 3, 1402, Gian Galeazzo was carried off by the plague at the age of fifty-five. The kingdom of northern Italy perished with the man who had practically created it.
CHAPTER IX
THE SCHISMS IN THE PAPACY AND EMPIRE, 1378-1414
Decline of German Monarchy—Dangers to Germany—Policy of Charles IV.—Return of the Papacy to Rome and election of Urban VI.—Election of Clement VII. and beginning of the Schism—The German towns and their hostility to the nobles—Weakness of Wenzel—The town-war—Peace of Eger—The Succession to Hungary and Poland—The Jagellon House is established in Poland, and Sigismund in Hungary—Opposition to Wenzel in Germany—Troubles in Bohemia—France and the Schism—Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI.—A Schism is created in the Empire—The idea of a General Council—Negotiations between the rival Popes—Europe and the Schism—The Council of Pisa—The Triple Schism—Alexander V. and his successor John XXIII.—Death of Rupert of the Pale—Election of Sigismund—Jobst—Death of Jobst—Second election of Sigismund—Sigismund and Pope John XXIII.—Summons of the Council of Constance.