The names of these misled youths were Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, Girolamo Olgiato, and Carlo Visconti. The first was killed by one of the Duke's attendants immediately after the commission of his crime. Visconti was arrested, and ordered to immediate execution by being quartered. Olgiato escaped from the church, and fled to his father's house. But father and brothers alike refused to afford him any shelter. His mother alone found means to persuade a certain priest to hide the murderer in his house. After three days' concealment, the unhappy youth crept forth to ascertain the aspect of the city, and the feelings of the citizens thus liberated from their tyrant. The first sight that met his eyes was the corpse of his friend and fellow criminal Lampugnani, dragged through the streets by an exulting and ferocious rabble. This horrible proof of the futility of all his hopes, and of the judgment passed upon his deed by his fellow-citizens, so drove him to despair, that he at once gave himself up into the hands of justice. On his trial for the crime, seeing that none were left alive who could be injured by the recital, he gave a full account of the whole conspiracy. And from this document are drawn the narratives of the historians. He was condemned to be torn to pieces by iron pincers, "tanagliato;"—that being the proper juridical term to indicate a by no means unprecedented mode of punishment.
"Stabit vetus memoria facti" were the last words uttered by the dying regicide, as the living flesh was being rent from the quivering muscles. And indeed the sad story has been made the subject of a tragedy much praised by Milanese[67] writers; but which does not seem, unfortunately, to have so moralised the tale, as to make it likely that it should at present be represented in the theatres of that city.
THE DUKE'S CHARACTER.
And, truly, when we find a man in the position, and of the character of Verri, writing a grave and learned history at the close of the last century, and representing in its well-considered pages the deed of Girolamo Olgiato as similar in kind to that of Oliver Cromwell, we cannot but become sensible how wholly and irreconcileably different the views and moral judgments of a law-respecting Anglo-Saxon on such subjects, must needs be from those of a people, to whom, for centuries, LAW has been presented only as the expression of a despot's will. To the inmost heart of nations so trained amiss, we may be sure, that "the wild justice of revenge" will commend itself with a force of honest conviction, proportioned ever to the amount of wrong suffered, and not to the heinousness of wrong done, by those who, at their own risk and peril, take upon themselves the execution of it.
Thus died at the age of thirty-two years the magnificent Maria Galeazzo Sforza, our heroine's father. Did these pages profess to give a biography of him instead of his daughter, it would be necessary to follow the chroniclers of his time through the long and sickening list of his cruelties and abominations. This we may spare ourselves. For the purpose of showing what tendencies and dispositions his daughter may be supposed to have inherited, and what were the manners and habits of the home in which, and from which, she received her early impressions and education, it will be sufficient, in addition to what has been already said, to mention one or two of the facts which history has put on record against this man.
There is every reason to believe that he murdered his mother by poison. All the authorities concur in representing her as an excellent and very able princess, whose wisdom and energy ensured his quiet succession to his father's throne. He very soon became jealous of her authority; drove her by his ill treatment from Milan; and is believed to have poisoned her at the first halting-place of her journey from that capital towards her own dower city, Cremona. His guilt was very generally credited by his contemporaries, and subsequent writers concur in thinking their suspicions in all probability just.
Enough has probably been said in previous pages to give the reader some idea of the profligate debauchery which marked the whole course of his life. It is unnecessary to transfer to an English page the details of cynical immorality, mingled with a ferocious cruelty, which seems to mark them to a certain degree with the character of insanity, as recorded by the old writers,[68] especially by Corio, his own personal attendant. It is sufficient to have drawn attention to the influences which must have been exercised by the moral atmosphere of such a court, and such a home on the young bride, who is about to step from it to a court of her own.