San Marino was not attacked during the campaign, which terminated on the 30th of August of the same year (1469) with the battle of Vergiano, in which Alessandro Sforza, the commander of the Papal forces, was signally defeated by Federigo.
San Marino has never, so far as I have been able to ascertain, undergone the calamity of a siege, and its inhabitants have uninterruptedly enjoyed the blessing of self-government from the foundation of the Republic in the third or fourth century to the present time, with the exception of the few months of 1503, during which the infamous Cesare Borgia forced them to accept a Podestà of his own nomination. Various causes have contributed to this lengthened independence; but it may be stated that, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the San Marinese owed it no less to their own patriotism, courage, prudence, and good faith, than to the disinterested protection of the Counts and Dukes of Urbino, whose history has been so ably written by Mr. Dennistoun, in his recently published memoirs of that chivalrous race.
The privileges of the Republic were confirmed on the 12th of February, 1797, by Napoleon Buonaparte, who offered to enlarge its territory,—a boon which its citizens were wise enough to decline; thinking, perhaps, with Montesquieu, that—
"Il est de la nature d'une république qu'elle n'ait qu'un petit territoire: sans cela, elle ne peut guère subsister."—Esprit des Lois, liv. viii. chap. 16.
Your readers will find some notices of San
Marino in Addison's Remarks on several Parts of Italy; Aristotle's Politics, translated by Gillies, lib. ii. Appendix.
Its lofty and isolated situation has supplied Jean Paul with a simile in his Unsichtbare Loge:
"Alle andre Wissenschaften theilen sich jetzt in eine Universal Monarchie über alle Leser: aber die Alten sitzen mit ihren wenigen philologischen Lehnsleuten einsam auf einem S. Marino-Felsen."—Jean Paul's Werke (Berlin, 1840, 8vo.), vol. i. p. 125.
In the first line of the letter, "vedato" should be veduto; and in the seventh line, "difenderai" difendervi.
F. C. B.