When Pescara was again called (in 1513) to join the forces collected in Lombardy against the French, his wife returned to Ischia, where she continued a diligent course of reading. Besides studying the classics, she cultivated Italian poetry, from which her fame, in our day at least, has chiefly arisen, and in her graceful verses displayed a charm and musical rhythm not equalled since the strains of Petrarch’s muse were heard.
Her husband sometimes came to see her, but his visits from the camp could not be frequent, and most of the time she was left alone in the midst of the little court at Ischia, consumed by that species of domestic grief so poignant to a loving heart when the marital union has not been blessed by issue. Vittoria mentions this particular sorrow, this absence of maternal joy, in a very touching sonnet (No. 22). Finally, despairing of children of her own, she prevailed upon her husband in 1515 to adopt as his son and heir his young cousin, the Marquis del Vasto.
In 1521 we find Vittoria at home. The year before she lost her father, whom Italians delight to mention as having lived a life full of grandeur and glory; but more impartial writers dispute the intaminatis fulget honoribus, and assert that his desertion of the losing for the winning party, when he passed over from Charles to Ferdinand, was done without principle, and merely to save his Neapolitan fiefs. He was a great friend of Macchiavelli, and the well-known contempt and hatred of this political fiend for what he was pleased to call the barbarous domination of the foreigner probably influenced him to think that it mattered little whether he served Frenchman or Spaniard, since neither had a right to or deserved his services. It was to him that the subtle Florentine addressed his seven books on the Art of War. His wife, the lovely and pious Agnes, survived him only two years, dying after a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto. One of Vittoria’s most beautiful sonnets is on her mother.
Pescara, being again called to arms, hurried to the north of Italy, and after the battle of Sessia behaved with exquisite courtesy towards the wounded and expiring Bayard. At the battle of Pavia, on Feb. 24, 1525, Pescara was grievously wounded. Although he greatly contributed by his skill and valor to the fortunes of that day, he could not conceal his disappointment at not being more generously rewarded by the emperor, and was soon afterwards approached by Morone, the experienced minister of the Duke of Milan, with an offer of the kingdom of Naples for himself if he would join a league which was being formed among the Italian princes to free Italy of foreign
rulers, whether French, Spanish, or German. Historians differ in their accounts of his conduct in this delicate affair. Writers in the imperial interest from that time to this assert that he indignantly rejected the proposal, which involved both treachery and ingratitude—even although he had not received the full measure of his merits—and Sandoval says that he showed himself among those double-dealing Italians “verdadero Español, Castellano viejo.” Certain it is that Pescara used to consider himself more a Spaniard than an Italian, was prouder of his Spanish blood than of his Neapolitan title, and often regretted that he was not born in the land of his ancestors. On the other hand, Italian writers say that he fully committed himself, and was perfectly willing to abandon and turn against his sovereign, but that at the last moment he quailed, and basely betrayed his companions to the vengeance of the emperor, for which reason the rancorous Guicciardini (xiv.. 189) calls him, with almost incredible insolence, “Capitano altiero, insidioso, maligno, senz’ alcuna sincerità.” More moderate historians say that he was merely dazzled by the prospect of a crown, perhaps even entertained the proposition, and would probably have thrown himself into the movement but for the protest and heroic abnegation of his wife. The truth seems to be, as Gregorovius remarks, that national antipathy has biassed the judgment of Italian writers. Immediately after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. wrote a most flattering autograph letter to Vittoria. Her answer from Ischia, May 1, 1525, is written in a fair hand, and preserved among the papers of the Gonzaga Archives at Mantua.
Pescara received three wounds, and lay for some months suffering from their effects, which he imprudently aggravated by copious draughts of ice-water. He was too weak to travel, and, growing worse, sent a hasty messenger to his wife to come to Milan and receive his last breath. She started immediately, but was met at Viterbo by the fatal intelligence that he had died on Nov. 25.[186] His funeral took place on the 30th, and the body was afterwards transported to Naples and buried in the church of St. Dominic. Paulus Jovius, a contemporary, wrote his life—Vita Ferdinandi Davali Pescarii—in elegant Latin. A literary memorial of Spanish domination in another extremity of Europe, and of the days when, the great school of war being transferred from classical Italy to the Netherlands, the gests of illustrious soldiers were eagerly studied by military men—although, as a rule, no longer in the learned language of Cæsar’s Commentaries—is preserved to us in the Historia del fortissimo y prudentissimo Capitan Don Hernando de Avalos, Marques de Pescara, published at Antwerp in 1570.
Vittoria’s first impulse, following this shock, was to take the religious habit, but she was prudently dissuaded by the learned Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, who was then in Rome, from a measure which would seem to proceed rather from overwhelming grief than mature deliberation. She did, however, retire for a time to the convent of San Silvestro in Capite, which was closely connected with the fortunes
of the Colonna family. It was during this pious retreat that she began that In Memoriam to her dead husband which we will mention a little further on.
The first seven years of her widowhood were passed in inconsolable grief. She resided at different periods either with her father’s family at Rome, Marino, or in some other of their castles, or at Naples and Ischia with the relatives of her late husband. Being still in the prime of life, in the bloom of beauty, and well provided for by Pescara’s will, her hand was sought in marriage by several distinguished suitors; but she turned a deaf ear to all proposals of this kind, vowing that her first love still reigned supreme.
Amor le faci spense ove l’accese.[187]
(Love lit his torch, and quenched it in the flame.)