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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

HER YOUNGER CHILDREN.

All these various sources of expenditure in a short time reduced the Count from being a rich man, to the condition of a poor and embarrassed one. This led him to the re-imposition of the taxes he had taken off. And the latter step led to the very unpleasant results indeed, which the sequel of the present chapter has to tell.

In the meantime Catherine presented her husband with three other sons. Her fourth child, and third son, was born on the 30th of October, 1484, and named Giorgio Livio. A fourth was born on the 18th of December, 1485; and a fifth on the 17th of August, 1487. The second of these was christened Galeazzo, after Catherine's father; and it is worth noticing, that one of the child's sponsors at the baptismal font was the envoy sent to the court of Forlì by Lorenzo de' Medici. Now, we have abundant evidence that the feelings of Lorenzo were anything but friendly to Girolamo, as indeed it was hardly to be expected that they could have been. And this public friend-like manifestation is an instance of a kind constantly recurring in Italian history, of the mode in which the "viso sciolto, pensieri stretti" wisdom was carried into practice, that is far less pleasing to trans-Alpine barbarians than to the Macchiavelli and Guicciardini schooled statesmen of Italy.

From this Galeazzo descend, it may be noted, the present family of the Riarii.

Catherine's sixth child was christened Francesco Sforza, and was generally known by the familiar diminutive Sforzino.

There would be neither instruction nor amusement to be got from reading page after page filled with detailed accounts of the various occasions on which the chronic state of conspiracy against the Riarii burst out ever and anon into overt acts, during these years. Correspondence was well known to be actively kept up by the Ordelaffi with their friends within the city; and every now and then some butter woman, or friar, or countryman driving a pig into market, was caught with letters in his possession, and had to be hung. Then would occur attempts at insurrection, which occasioned fines and banishment, and beheading and hanging upon a larger scale. And the historians adverse to the Riarii assert that he hung and beheaded too much, and could expect no love from subjects thus treated; while the writers of opposite sympathies maintain, that he hung and beheaded so mildly and moderately, that the Forlìvesi were monsters of ingratitude not to love and honour so good a prince.

Thus matters go on, perceptibly getting from bad to worse. Cash runs very low in the princely coffers, and the meat tax has to be re-imposed, occasioning a degree of discontent and disaffection altogether disproportioned to the gratitude obtained by its previous repeal. Unceasing vigilance has to be practised, stimulated by the princely but uncomfortable feeling, that every man approaching is as likely as not to be intent on murdering you. Girolamo and his Countess, one or other, or both, have to rush from Forlì to Imola, and from Imola to Forlì, at a moment's notice, for the prompt stamping out of some dangerous spark of tumult or insurrection.

A HARD LIFE.

In a word, this business of great family-founding on another man's foundations seems to have entailed a sufficiently hard life on those engaged in it. And though that "last infirmity of noble (?) minds," which prompts so much ignoble feeling, and engenders so many ignoble actions, vexing as it did their prince, vexed also the cultivators of the rich alluvial fields around Forlì by corn taxes, salt taxes, meat taxes, and other "redevances," yet on the whole it may be well supposed that "fallentis semita vitæ" at the plough tail had the best of it, despite occasional danger from the summary justice of the Castellano of Ravaldino. That black care, which rode so inseparably and so hard behind the harassed prince backwards and forwards between Forlì and Imola, did more than keep the balance even between hempen jerkin and damasqued coat of mail; and the least enviable man in Forlì and its county was in all probability the founder of the greatness of the Riarii.

One consolation, however, this hard-worked prince had in all his troubles, and that perhaps the greatest that a man can have. His wife was in every way truly a help meet for him. Catherine was the very belle idéale of a sovereign châtelaine in that stormy fifteenth century. Her aims and ambitions were those of her husband; and she was ever ready in sunshine or in storm to take her full share of the burden of the day; and, indeed, in time of trouble and danger, far more than what was even then deemed a woman's share in meeting and overcoming them. Dark to all those higher and nobler views of human morals and human conduct which have since been slowly emerging, and are still struggling into recognition, as we must suppose that vigorous intelligence and strong-willed heart to have been, nourished as it was only on such teaching, direct and indirect, as "ages of faith" could supply, still Catherine had that in her, which, if it may fail to conciliate our love, must yet command our respect, even in the nineteenth century. From what she deemed to be her duty, as far as we can discern, this strong, proud, energetic, courageous, masterful woman never shrank. And it led her on many a trying occasion into by no means rose-strewed paths. Her duty, as she understood it, was by all means of all sorts,—by subtle counsel when craft was needed, by lavished smiles where smiles were current, by fastuous magnificence where magnificence could impose, by energetic action when the crisis required it, by gracious condescension when that might avail, by high-handed right-royal domineering when such was more efficacious, by fearlessly meeting peril and resolutely labouring, to aid and abet her husband in taking and holding a place among the sovereign princes of Italy, and to preserve the same, when she was left to do so single-handed for her children. And this duty Catherine performed with a high heart, a strong hand, and an indomitable will, throwing herself wholly into the turbulent objective life before her, and perfectly unmolested by any subjective examination of the nature of the passions which conveniently enough seemed to range themselves on the side of duty, or doubt-begetting speculations as to the veritable value of the aims before her and the quality of the means needed for the attainment of them.