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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Guilty or not guilty again.—Medieval clanship.—A woman's vengeance.—Funeral honours.—Royal-mindedness.—Its costliness; and its mode of raising the wind.—Taxes spent in alms to ruined tax-payers.—Threatening times.—Giovanni de'Medici.—Catherine once more wife, mother, and widow.

Catherine, with two of her sons in the carriage with her, had advanced but a few yards beyond the spot where the murder was committed, when, alarmed by the cries of the conspirators and of her own retinue, she looked back, and became at once aware of the truth. The whole of the attendants, except two, who made a futile attempt to kill or arrest the assassins, immediately dispersed themselves, and fled in different directions. The seven conspirators did likewise; and Catherine and her sons, hastily throwing themselves on horses taken from the grooms, galloped at full speed to the fortress. And the murdered man's body was left alone in a ditch near the spot where he was slain, till late that night it was removed to a neighbouring church by "some decent and compassionate people" who lived hard by. The ballet-master historian[130] Cobelli went to look on it, as it lay in the ditch, and pours forth a flood of voluble lamentations over the beauty of the body thus mutilated and disfigured, and that of his gold brocade jacket and rose-coloured pantaloons besmeared with mud.[131]

Necessity for providing for their own safety may furnish some excuse for Catherine and her sons' precipitate retreat to the citadel. Her husband was beyond all need of assistance, and her sons' security, and that of her dominions, was in imminent danger. For it was probable enough, that the assassination just committed almost under her eyes was the first outbreak of one of those plans for restoring the old dynasty that were so constantly occurring.

Such, however, does not seem to have been the case. The popular indignation against the perpetrators of Feo's murder was at once strongly manifested. They were that night hunted through the town, and most of them dragged prisoners to the piazza before the morning.

There, before the assembled crowd, Gian Antonio Ghetti, the principal of them, declared to the magistrates that Feo had been put to death by the express order of Catherine and Octavian; and the others loudly confirmed his assertion.[132] There does not seem to have been the slightest attempt made to test the truth of these declarations by separately examining and cross-questioning the assassins. But it is remarkable, that the Auditor, Catherine's chief magistrate, does not appear to have considered this explanation at all impossible. On the contrary, he found himself in a position of difficulty, evidently fearing, that if he proceeded at once on the supposition, that these men were to be treated as murderers and traitors, his zeal might possibly turn out to have been expended on the wrong side. In this difficulty "the worthy magistrate" beckoned from the crowd a young man whom he could trust, and with a few whispered words despatched him in all haste to the fortress, dexterously holding law in leash the while.

WAS CATHERINE GUILTY?

In a very short time the messenger returned, and our "worthy magistrate" was himself again. It was all right. Murther was murther. Law was to "have its course;" and quartering alive, dragging at horses tails, and other ingenious devices of the sort were to be resorted to, according to the most approved precedents.

But are these orders from the citadel as efficacious in disproving the truth of Gian Antonio's assertion before the tribunal of history, as they were in making the Auditor's course clear before him? The learned Litta, in his great work on the Families of Italy thinks not. He writes,[133] "Feo was killed by conspirators in 1495: if, indeed, it were not Catherine herself who ordered his death." But we know that suspicion of crime becomes morbidly active in those whose duties make them continually conversant with criminals; and in estimating the value of Litta's impressions, great allowance must be made for the mental bias of one who spent his life in chronicling the Fasti of the noble families of Italy.

No contemporary writer gives the slightest indication of any suspicion of the possible truth of this audacious inculpation of the widowed princess having existed at the time. It is true, that if such suspicions had existed, they would probably have been deep buried in the hearts of those who conceived them. But all the probabilities of the case plead in favour of Catherine's innocence upon this occasion. Had she wished to rid herself of her young husband, nothing would have been easier than to have made an end of him, privately, quietly, and safely, in the secresy of the fort or of the palace. It is curious to observe, that when subsequently she condescended to point out the absurdity of the accusation, she made use of this argument; remarking, as the historian records it, that "Thank God, neither she nor any of her family had need to apply to common bravoes, when they saw fit to make away with their enemies!" Had she even chosen to employ bravoes for the purpose, with the intention of leaving to them the responsibility of the deed, it might have been done far more safely in the palace than in the street. The latter necessarily involved a very considerable degree of danger of popular tumult, and ever-menacing, ever-near revolution. In the confusion and excitement following the perpetration of such a deed, it may be said to have been merely a toss up which way the popular mind, so easily moved to violence, so prone to change, might turn.