A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Under these circumstances, Vittoria undertook the education of Alphonso d'Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, a young cousin of her husband's. The task was a sufficiently arduous one;[171] for the boy, beautiful, it is recorded, as an angel, and endowed with excellent capabilities of all sorts, was so wholly unbroken, and of so violent and ungovernable a disposition, that he had been the despair and terror of all who had hitherto attempted to educate him. Vittoria thought that she saw in the wild and passionate boy the materials of a worthy man. The event fully justified her judgment, and proved the really superior powers of mind she must have brought to the accomplishment of it. Alphonso became a soldier of renown, not untinctured by those literary tastes which so remarkably distinguished his gentle preceptress. A strong and lasting affection grew between them; and Vittoria, proud with good reason of her work, was often wont to say, that the reproach of being childless ought not to be deemed applicable to her whose moral nature might well be said to have brought forth that of her pupil.

Pescara's visit to Naples was a very short one. Early in 1513, we find him again with the armies in Lombardy, taking part in most of the mischief and glory going.

Under the date of July the 4th in that year, the gossiping Naples weaver, who rarely fails to note the doings of the Neapolitan General of light horse with infinite pride and admiration, has preserved for us a rather picturesque little bit of Ariosto-flavoured camp life. The Spanish army, under Don Raymond di Cardona, who, on Consalvo's death had succeeded him as Viceroy of Naples, was on its march from Peshiera to Verona, when a messenger from the beautiful young Marchioness of Mantua came to the General-in-chief to say that she wished to see those celebrated Spanish troops, who were marching under his banners, and was then waiting their passage in the vineyards of the Castle of Villafranca. "A certain gentle lady of Mantua, named the Signora Laura, with whom Don Raymond was in love," writes the weaver, was with the Marchioness; and much pleased was he at the message. So word was passed to the various captains; and when the column reached the spot, where the Marchioness with a great number of ladies and cavaliers of Mantua were reposing in the shade of the vines, "Don Ferrante d'Alarcone, as Chief Marshal, with his bâton in his hand made all the troops halt, and place themselves in order of battle; and the Signor Marchese di Pescara marched at the head of the infantry, with a pair of breeches cut after the Swiss fashion, and a plume on his head, and a two-handed sword in his hand, and all the standards were unfurled." And when the Marchioness from among the vines looking down through the chequered shade on to the road saw that all was in order, she and her ladies got into three carts, so that there came out of the vineyard, says Passeri, three cartsful of ladies surrounded by the cavaliers of Mantua on horseback. There they came very slowly jolting over the cultivated ground, those three heavy bullock carts, with their primitive wheels of one solid circular piece of wood, and their huge cream-coloured oxen with enormous horned heads gaily decorated, as Leopold Robert shows them to us, and the brilliant tinted dresses of the laughing bevy drawn by them, glancing gaudily in the sunlight among the soberer colouring of the vineyards in their summer pride of green. Then Don Raymond and Pescara advanced to the carts, and handed from them the Marchioness and Donna Laura, who mounted on handsomely equipped jennets prepared for them. It does not appear that this attention was extended to any of the other ladies, who must therefore be supposed to have remained sitting in the carts, while the Marchioness and the favoured Donna Laura rode through the ranks "con multa festa et gloria." And when she had seen all, with much pleasure and admiration, on a given signal three mules loaded with sweetmeats were led forward, with which the gay Marchioness "regaled all the captains." Then all the company with much content,—excepting, it is to be feared, the soldiers, who had to stand at arms under the July sun, while their officers were eating sugar-plums, and Don Raymond and Donna Laura were saying and swallowing sweet things,—took leave of each other, the army pursuing its march towards Verona, and the Marchioness and her ladies returning in their carts to Mantua.[172]

A REVIEW.

The other scattered notices of Pescara's doings during his campaign are of a less festive character. They show him to have been a hard and cruel man, reckless of human suffering, and eminent even among his fellow captains for the ferocity, and often wantonness of the ravages and wide-spread misery he wrought. On more than one occasion, Passeri winds up his narrative of some destruction of a town, or desolation of a fertile and cultivated district, by the remark, that the cruelty committed was worse than Turks would have been guilty of. Yet this same Passeri, an artisan, belonging to a class which had all to suffer and nothing to gain from such atrocities, writes, when chronicling this same Pescara's[173] death, that "on that day died, I would have you know, gentle readers, the most glorious and honoured captain that the world has seen for the last hundred years." It is curious to observe how wholly the popular mind was enslaved to the prejudices and conventional absurdities of the ruling classes; how entirely the feelings of the masses were in unison with those of the caste which oppressed them; how little reason they conceived they had to complain under the most intolerable treatment, and how little hope of progressive amelioration there was from the action of native-bred public opinion.

Bishop Giovio, the biographer and panegyrist of Pescara admits, that he was a stern and cruelly-severe disciplinarian; and mentions an anecdote in proof of it. A soldier was brought before him for having entered a house en route for the purpose of plundering. The General ordered that his ears should be cut off. The culprit remonstrated; and begged, with many entreaties, to be spared so dishonouring and ignominious a punishment, saying in his distress that death itself would have been more tolerable.

"The grace demanded is granted," rejoined Pescara instantly, with grim pleasantry. "Take this soldier, who is so careful of his honour, and hang him to that tree!"

In vain did the wretch beg not to be taken at his word so cruelly, no entreaties sufficed to change the savage decree.

PESCARA'S CHARACTER.

It will be well that we should bear in mind these indications of the essential nature of this great and glorious captain, who had studied those ingenuous arts which soften the character, and do not suffer men to be ferocious, as the poet assures us, and who could write dialogues on love, when we come to consider the curious phenomenon of Vittoria's unmeasured love for her husband.