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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

One of the historians somewhat maliciously observes, that though he has no doubt of Madama Caterina's merciful consideration for the women of Forlì, still it was a fact, that all the vast quantity of plunder taken from the palace after the murder of the Count, was scattered through the city, and was subsequently nearly all recovered by the Countess; whereas, if Forlì had been sacked, no fragment of all this wealth would ever have been seen again.

And now, once again, we have pomps and processions, and complimentary speeches, and smiles, and oaths of fealty, and gracious condescension. The magistrates go in procession to Catherine in the fortress, with the key of the city, and excuses, and compliments, and loud detestation of the recent crime. And Catherine, on horseback between the generals of the forces sent to support her, makes a triumphant entry into the city; and there is an affecting meeting, with embracings and tears, between the Countess and her children; and Ottaviano is proclaimed Count, and "Madama," his mother, named regent; poor Girolamo is buried with much pomp in Imola; every tongue has something now to tell in favour of the lady regent:—did she not, when, surrounded by the Milanese and Bolognese officers, she was taking formal re-possession in great state of a fort outside the city, and when a man-at-arms rushed up to her in the middle of the ceremony, to say with panting breath, "Madonna! all the cellars of the Orsi are being plundered by the people! but I have secured some of the largest butts of wine for your ladyship, and have set a guard over them!"—did she not then and there, in the midst of the stranger generals, graciously reply, that she preferred that the poor people should share the wine among them, for that neither she nor her children wished to possess anything that had belonged to the Orsi! ... and, in a word, all is sunshine once again, ... except in one small cell of the Palazzo Pubblico, where a few of those who have made themselves noted by their violence during the insurrection, and have failed to escape in time from the city, are reserved for vengeance.

It is but just to Catherine's fair fame to note, that they were very few; and further to remember, if their punishment excites our loathing, that mercy was hardly recognised as a virtue, or known as a sentiment in those "ages of faith." There were among them the man who had thrown the Count's body from the window, and he who had been chiefly prominent in dragging it through the city. There was also the veteran revolutionist, Orsi, with his eighty-five years, long-flowing silver locks, and noble patrician bearing. The unfortunate old man had been left behind, when his sons and the others of the family had left the city, probably because his great age made it impossible for him to join in their hurried flight.

VENGEANCE.

On the 1st of May three of these prisoners were hung at the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico, and then thrown thence into the square, where they were literally torn to pieces, and the shocking fragments left exposed till sunset, when they were collected and buried. The brutalising effects of such spectacles on the entire mass of the population is sufficiently indicated by the fact, that contemporary public opinion considered the Countess to have used much and unusual moderation in her dealings with such of the conspirators as fell into her hands.

On the evening of that day an ominous decree was posted in all quarters of the city, requiring that one able-bodied man from every family in Forlì should attend on the morrow with pickaxe and crowbar in front of the vast and magnificent palace of the Orsi. At daybreak on the 2nd of May a great crowd, armed as had been ordered, were assembled. At the same hour the venerable-looking head of the great Orsi clan was seen coming forth from his prison on the piazza, bare-headed, with his long silver locks glancing in the sunshine of that bright May morning, with hands bound behind his back, and led by the hangman, holding the end of a halter passed round the old man's neck. Thus led into the midst of the crowd of his fellow-citizens, he was placed in front of his ancestral home. And then the work of demolition was commenced.

"Have you well marked the spectacle, O Orso!" said the hangman to his prisoner, when the work was done; and then led him by the halter back to the piazza.

A cruel death awaited him there; but that which he had already endured, was probably the bitterest part of his punishment to the old patrician. That razing of the family mansion was infinitely more to a medieval Italian noble, than the mere destruction of so much property; and carried with it a bitterness of misery hardly appreciable to our less clannish feelings, and less localised attachments. The old Italian noble would have seen an equal amount of property destroyed at his villa in the country, or at a residence in a foreign city, had he possessed such, with comparative indifference. But the turreted family "palazzo" in his native city, his fortress in time of civil broil, the patriarchal home of several branches and generations of his race, the manifestation and evidence of the rank and importance of his clan, was more in his eyes than mere stone and timber. His strongest passion, his family pride, saw in the old ancestral walls the corporeal presentment of the family name. And the levelling of the massive building with the soil, was the extremest ignominy an enemy could inflict, and was felt by the doomed race as a symbol of the extinction of their name and stock for ever.

These were the feelings in that old man's heart, when the hangman asked if he had well observed the spectacle before him, as he led him away to the one other scene that remained for him. In the piazza it was the nerves of the old man's body that were to be tortured.