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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Meantime Savelli battered the citadel with cannon brought from Cesena and Forlimpopoli, and Feo battered the city from his rampart, but without much mischief being done on either side.

On the 29th, the army of the Duke of Milan and the Bolognese were before the walls of Forlì. A duly accredited envoy from the Duke entered the town, and had a long secret interview with Savelli. Communications passed also between Catherine in the fortress and her friends outside the city. The fort of Ravaldino seems during the whole time of the rebellion to have had free means of communication, for ingress and egress, with the open country beyond the walls of the city; so that Catherine might at any time have escaped had she not preferred to hold the citadel. The preservation of her dominions, and very possibly her life, were entirely due to the possession of this stronghold. And the incidents of this rebellion in Forlì, which may be taken as a very perfect type of hundreds of similar events of constant recurrence in the history of the petty principalities and municipalities of Italy in those centuries, throw a very sufficient light on the paramount importance attached by the rulers of those cities to the possession of such a place of refuge, and the proportionably vast sums they expended in erecting and maintaining them. The great difficulty in the matter always was to find some Castellano sufficiently trustworthy for it to be safe to confide the fortress to his keeping. The great power arising from the absolute command of a building so strong as to be impregnable to any means of attack that citizens could bring against it, and from which the inmates might do much damage to the city with very little danger of suffering any injury themselves, was so great and so tempting, that the governors of these fortresses were rarely to be depended on. It might be almost said, that in cases of difficulty and temptation treachery was the rule, and fidelity to the lord the exception. And it not unfrequently occurred, that the Castellano within his walls felt himself to be more than a match for his master and sovereign outside them: a state of things of which some of the episodes in the history of Forlì narrated in these pages have shown us a few symptoms.

THE ORSI ARE OFF.

By the evening of the 29th, it was sufficiently evident that it was all up with the hopes of the insurgents in Forlì. The game was clearly played out and lost. To make their situation still more desperate, a great number of written papers signed by Catherine were found scattered about the great square and streets of the town soon after dusk that evening. These contained strong exhortations from the Countess to her faithful subjects of Forlì, to put summarily to death all the leaders of the conspiracy before they could escape from the city; and promises of favour and rewards to any man whose dagger should be the means of making an end of any one of them.

The Orsi and their associates felt that the city was rapidly becoming too hot to hold them. That night, in hurried council, they determined on leaving Forlì secretly, before morning.

But there was one thing,—and the incident is strikingly illustrative of the character of the country and the epoch, and of the undying ferocity of Italian party hatred,—one thing to be done, even before providing for their personal safety, fearfully endangered as it was by every hour of delay. They determined that Catherine, on coming forth triumphant from her fortress, should find herself childless; and feel, in the moment of consummating her success, that it was worthless to her.

The six children were still at the gate-house in the care of the three citizens to whom Savelli had entrusted them. In the early part of the night, therefore, Checco d'Orso, Ronchi, and Pansecchi presented themselves at the prison, with a fictitious order from Savelli that the children should be given up to them to be conducted to a place of safety out of the city. Fortunately for the little ones, Capoferri conceived suspicions of the truth of the representations made to him, and steadily refused to give up the children, despite the urgent persuasions and threats of Orsi. The cautious triumvirate of the gate-house had declined to admit within their walls more than him alone of the party at the door. Checco, therefore, on finding himself thus baffled, made a sign from a window to his comrades outside to force an entrance at the moment of his passing out. Ronchi, seizing an axe, approached the door for this purpose. But a sentinel on the wall above, observing this hostile movement, fired down upon him and a servant, who was with him, and killed the latter. Ronchi retired from the wall, and at the same moment Orsi came out, and the gate was safely shut behind him.

There remained nothing for the baulked desperadoes but to hurry, with rage and despair in their hearts, to join the small body of relatives and adherents, who had prepared to quit the city with them. They went out, a party of seventeen, at two o'clock in the morning of the 30th of April: and thus the revolution was at an end.

HER ABLE CONDUCT.

According to all medieval law, right, and custom, Forlì deserved to be sacked in punishment for its rebellion; and it was not altogether easy for Catherine to save it from the horrors of such a fate. For it might be difficult to get rid of the troops who had come to her aid, if they were baulked of their anticipated prey. The Countess announced to the citizens that if she spared them this merited chastisement, she did so solely for the sake of the women of Forlì; for the men had not deserved mercy from her: and eventually, by prudence and caution, and permitting only a very few of the soldiers to enter the walls, Forlì was saved from sack.