That last touch of republican pride is magnificent; and it is a pity that any reasons of policy, or other motive of any kind, should have induced the senate to exhibit itself so lamentably false to all such generous feeling so shortly afterwards.
Francesco was exceedingly delighted at the abundant success of his embassy to Venice. Bianca now was—no, not was exactly—but might be supposed to seem to be, no longer a private individual, but a princess, as being the daughter of a sovereign state. By metaphor, fiction, parchment, and herald's trumpeting, Bianca was now a princess, of due rank to mate with a sovereign duke; and Francesco accordingly announced to the various courts on the 20th of June his forthcoming marriage with a daughter of the republic of Venice. The ceremony was fixed for the 12th of October, 1579; and immense preparations were made to celebrate it with unusual pomp and splendour.
VENETIAN EMBASSY TO FLORENCE.
Meanwhile the Grand Duke sent his natural brother, Don Giovanni, a boy of twelve years old, with a numerous train, to bear his thanks to the Republic for the honours conferred on his bride. He was received by eight–and–twenty Venetian gentlemen at the frontier, and by forty senators outside the city, by whom he was processionally conducted to the Casa Cappello, where Vittorio, Bianca's brother, was charged by the senate to entertain him at the expense of the state, which granted an unlimited credit for that purpose. Under these circumstances it may be safely conjectured that the boy ambassador was received with such holiday keeping, as left on his mind no mean impressions of Venetian hospitality and magnificence.
On the 28th of September arrived in Florence the ambassadors sent by Venice "to put," says Galluzzi,[190] "Bianca in possession of the prerogatives which the daughtership of St. Mark produced to her." It is rather difficult to understand what these prerogatives might have been; but it is probable that if the baggage of the ambassadors had been searched for them, they would have been found to consist in a certain quantity of engrossed parchment and sealing–wax, cased in some more or less splendidly adorned wrappage of velvet or cloth of gold.
The ambassadors, however, Antonio Tiepolo and Giovanni Michiel, were assisted in bringing these "prerogatives" by a train of ninety gentlemen of the noblest houses in Venice. It was apparently thought necessary that the extrinsic pomp of this embassy should be in exact proportion to the intrinsic meanness of the business it was engaged on. For we are told that it outshone in taste and magnificence all former doings of the kind, even in the most palmy days of Venice. And all the ninety noble gentlemen who came to make kotoo to Francesco's cosa, vied with each other in efforts of ostentation for the manifestation of their, own greatness.
Beside these ninety, there came also the bride's father and brother, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, by no means behindhand, the holy man, in availing himself of his scrap of relationship to the "cosa," for the purpose of bringing his grey hairs into the sunshine of a princely countenance. And with these came other eighty, all calling themselves relations of the bride; and all were lodged in the Pitti palace, and treated with all sorts of junkettings and diversions, banquets, balls, tourneys, hunting–parties (with nets), bull–baiting, chariot races, comedies, &c.
The task of thus entertaining his wife's relatives on this occasion is computed to have cost Francesco three hundred thousand ducats,[191] a sum which, allowing for the difference in the value of money, seems almost incredible. It happened to be a year of great scarcity in Tuscany. There was wide–spread and severe distress among the people, who looked on at this lavish and useless expenditure; and the sight did not contribute to conciliate the love of the Florentines to their new liege lady.
CORONATION.
Meanwhile, in the interval between the arrival of the ambassadors in Florence, and the day appointed for the ceremony, it occurred to Francesco,[192] that the daughtership of St. Mark might be turned to better account yet. There had been two other daughters of St. Mark, one the wife of a king of Hungary, and the other Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus. Now, why should not Bianca also be crowned, as a daughter of the Republic. It would have a very good effect as part of the ceremony at all events, and might very likely pass with many persons for more than it really was. Crowning is crowning; and whether the crown to be placed on Bianca's head was that of St. Mark's daughter, or that of a Grand Duchess of Tuscany, might very easily be little observed or questioned.