The Claim of the House of Orleans to Milan.

Let us recapitulate.

When, on September 16, 1380, Charles V. of France expired, he left behind him two young sons. One was twelve years old, tall, stalwart, healthy, amiable; the other was a lad of nine, less regularly handsome than his brother, slighter, darker, more agile, more acute, and more engaging.

Charles V. had left his younger son no more than the pension of a private gentleman; the elder was the king of France. The dying monarch, a man of many brothers, had seen the dangers that arise when royal princes are too rich. But he had died before his time; and of his two heirs the king was gentle, dull, and generous; the gentleman, brilliant, grasping, and ambitious. The result was calculable. Twenty years later the younger son was king in all but name; he was rich, puissant, terrible, and hated; while his brother, impoverished and neglected, starved on the throne, the best-beloved man in France. Circumstances had made the rise of the younger son singularly easy. In his twenty-fourth year King Charles VI. became violently mad, and henceforward till his 180death there were long regencies (the subject of angry contests between his uncle and his brother) interrupted by periods of lax and kindly government. His younger brother, Louis, Duke of Orleans, became, as first prince of the blood, more powerful than the king. He was too powerful; and his arrogance and his extortions raised many enemies against him. On November 23, 1407, he was cruelly murdered as he was riding by night through the streets of Paris. He had made himself so terrible that even the brother who loved him did not seek to avenge him, but praised the murderer “who, for the public good and out of faith and loyalty to us, has caused to be put out of this world our said brother of Orleans.” No one mourned the murdered man absolutely and completely except his devoted widow and his orphaned children.

A year and a week later the duchess died. Her three sons, her one daughter, with Dunois, the natural son of Orleans, whom his widow had adopted, were left fatherless and motherless in a kingdom full of enemies, where their father’s murderers triumphed. They entered the world as a battlefield; but, though so young, they entered armed and mounted. From their father they inherited the duchies of Orleans, Luxembourg, and Aquitaine, the counties of Valois, Beaumont, Soissons, Blois, Dreux, Périgord, and Angoulême, with the seigneuries of Coucy and Savona. Through their mother they acquired the county of Vertus in Champagne, the county of Asti in Lombardy, and certain pretensions to the ducal crown of Milan.

181

I.

In the year 1387 their father, Louis of France, not yet the Duke of Orleans, had been contracted to the Duke of Milan’s only daughter, Valentine Visconti, whom two years later he espoused. In relation to the established monarchs of his time, the father of Valentine stood in much the same situation as afterwards the great Napoleon, in the first years of his empire, towards the kings of Germany. He was rich, too powerful to be safely opposed, a conqueror of whom the end was still beyond prediction; hence a man to conciliate and appease. Yet in their hearts they despised him as a parvenu and an adventurer, and deplored and deprecated the moral flaws that marred the beauty of his prosperity.

Giangaleazzo, first Duke of Milan, was the only son of Galeazzo Visconti, who, in conjunction with Bernabò, his brother, swayed the city of Milan and the greater part of Lombardy. They had murdered their own brother, and divided his inheritance between them—Bernabò, the elder, holding his state in Milan, Galeazzo in the city of Pavia.

Bernabò had no less than nine-and-twenty children. Galeazzo had but two, but for these he was ambitious. He married his daughter to the son of the King of England; his son he married to the daughter of the King of France. This was in 1360. The bride and bridegroom were still of childish age. Six years later their eldest child was born. It was a girl, Valentine. The three brothers who followed her died in their minority; but Valentine flourished, grew 182to womanhood, and brought into the house of Orleans the tangled question of the Milanese succession.

At her birth and during her childhood her father was but one of several rulers in Milan. The Visconti ruled as a clan rather than as an organized dynasty. They were the descendants of a certain Captain Eriprando, who, in the year 1037, defended Milan against the Emperor Conrad. Notwithstanding this beginning the Visconti were eminently Ghibelline, and depended for all their subsequent fortunes on the emperor. In 1277 they chased the Guelfs from Milan, and made themselves masters of the state. They became lords or domini in Milan, lords of an imperial fief, but with no pretence to an imperial investiture. The emperor recognized them only as his captains, his viscounts, or his imperial vicars.

In 1372 the Emperor Charles IV., alarmed at the pretensions of the Visconti clan, deprived them of their office. The rich tyrants, not afraid of a distant emperor beyond the Alps, paid little heed to this punishment. The emperor died, and his son succeeded—the dissolute Wenzel, who was to do so much for Milan. Almost his first act was to create the youthful father of Valentine Imperial Vicar of the Milanese.

This taste of power whetted the ambition of the young man, left fatherless now to confront the faction of his uncle BernabòBernabò and his numerous children. Lax and irregular forms of government favour a violent ambition. By one bold stratagem Giangaleazzo took his uncle prisoner, dispossessed his cousins, and established himself as lord of Milan.

183Milan was not enough. Fire and sword cleared the way before him, and his territory stretched to the Apennine ridges. Florence, on the other side, trembled for her independence. The Lombard kingdom was alive again, and, though the Pope refused the indomitable conqueror the title of King of Italy, in 1395 the Emperor Wenzel invested him with the duchy of Milan.

Meanwhile, in 1389, Valentine Visconti had gone to her husband in France. When she left Milan she was no longer her father’s only child. A few months before, her stepmother, Caterina Visconti, had given birth to a son. A little later a second son was born. The greatest conqueror of his age could now divide his possessions between two sons born in wedlock, a bastard boy named Gabriello, and his only daughter Valentine, the child of his first wife, the Princess Isabelle of France. The first question that confronts us is this: What provision did Giangaleazzo Visconti make for his daughter Valentine of Orleans?

For many centuries there has been much debate concerning the claim of Orleans to Milan. Much argument and little evidence has confused the question; it is only the evidence that we shall examine here. In the National Archives of Paris^[50] there exists the original marriage-contract of Valentine Visconti. A copy of this document is contained in a brown leather folio, stamped with the Visconti serpent, existing 184in the British Museum.^[49] It is an instrument granted by the Antipope, Clement of Avignon, on January 27, 1387, in favour of Louis of Orleans and Bertrand de Guasche, Governor of Vertus, as representing the father of Valentine. To the marriage contract are appended a dispensation (Louis and Valentine were cousins), a deed of transfer for the bride’s dowry of Asti and its dependencies, and a declaration of her right to succeed her father in Milan, in case his direct male line should become extinct. The clause which chiefly concerns us runs as follows: “Item est actum et in pactum solempni stipulatione vallatum et expresse deductum quod in casu quo præfatus dominus Johannes Galeas vicecomes, comes Virtutum, dominus Mediolanensis, decedat sine filiis masculis de suo proprio corpore ex legitimo matrimonio procreatis, dicta domina Valentina, nata sua, succedat et succedere debeat in solidum in toto dominio suo presente et futuro quocumque, absque eo quod per viam testamenti, codicillorum, seu alicujus alterius ultimæ voluntatis, aut donatione inter vivos, ipsa aliquid faciat seu facere possit in contrarium quovis modo.”

The husband of Valentine was for many years the tool with which the astute Visconti hoped to assure his own supremacy in Italy. In 1393 and in 1394 Visconti had no dearer scheme than that Clement, the Antipope at Avignon, should make the Duke of Orleans king of Adria. With Clement at Rome, Anjou at Naples, Orleans ruling the centre from Spoleto to Ferrara, Visconti beheld the annihilation of Venice and the Tuscan republics—a united Italy north of 185Rome. Doubtless he intended the kingdom of Adria and the kingdom of Lombardy to lose themselves in one monarchy: but whether that result was to be attained by the subsequent spoliation of Orleans or by his adoption as heir to Milan, was a question which probably depended on the living or dying of the sons of Giangaleazzo. Orleans, however, though so young, proved himself no facile instrument. He had no intention that Adria and Lombardy should unite to his own disadvantage; and silently he contemplated another scheme—to secure the docility of Lombardy by bounding it on the south by Adria and on the north by another French principality, to be formed by a fusion of Asti and Genoa. Orleans, therefore, determined to begin by the conquest of Genoa; and for three years he displayed so much ability that Giangaleazzo began to suspect this count of Asti and seigneur of Savona, whom the Genoese implored to become the governor of the Ligurian republic. Then came the scandal of the acquisition of Genoa by Charles VI., to the detriment of his brother. From 1395 to 1397 there is a moment of division between the interests of Orleans and Visconti; but, as we shall see, the last act of Visconti was to enforce the claims of Orleans to Milan, and the Duke of Orleans in his will^[51] expressly bequeaths to his eldest son “la comté d’Ast et autres terres que j’ay et puis avoir au pays de Lombardy et d’outre les monts.” As far as Orleans and Visconti could decide, there is no doubt of the claim 186of Orleans to Milan. But it is more difficult to decide by what right Giangaleazzo Visconti disposed of the emperor’s fiefs of Milan; for although, when Visconti signed his daughter’s marriage-contract, he was simply the illegal despot of Milan, eight years later the emperor made him duke and received tribute at his hands. The lands which Visconti had gained by succession, by fraud, and by conquest, which he had ruled by force and national custom, were now indubitably his by feudal right. But in order to acquire the security of this legality, the Duke of Milan, in theory at all events, had sacrificed a certain portion of his independence.

The first investiture was granted him on Sept. 5, 1395. From this date he held his duchy of Milan as an imperial fief. But as what manner of fief? And which class of fiefs admits a woman to be her father’s heir?

These questions, seemingly simple, are in reality difficult to answer, because feudal law was quite indefinitely modified by provincial custom. It was chiefly custom which decided if an hereditary fief could be inherited by a woman in default of males. Thus in France the provinces of Burgundy and Normandy were strictly masculine fiefs; but Lorraine, Guienne, and Artois descended to daughters in default of sons; and the duchy of Brittany, the kingdoms of Cyprus, Navarre, and Naples (a Papal fief), will occur to every mind; while in Germany itself, in the stronghold of feudalism, the duchy of Mecklenburg descended to daughters on extinction of the masculine branch; many fiefs in Swabia, Zutphen, Pomerania, and Saxony, followed this example.

187In the North of Italy the distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy had become so trivial a thing, that sons, born in or out of wedlock, were generally forthcoming in sufficient numbers to distance any feminine claim; and the Imperial investiture—save in the case when it carried with it the Imperial Vicariat—was rather a rose in the buttonhole of the tyrant than a necessary legalization of a tyranny stronger than the law. Yet the marquisate of Montferrat was brought into the house of the Palæologi through a feminine succession; and in 1387 Valentine Visconti brought the country of Asti (no less than Milan an Imperial fief) unquestioned to her husband, and with only the Pope’s investiture. A century later Caterina Sforza ruled in Pesaro. The custom in Italy, then, though dubious, various, and full of irregularities and confusions was, on the whole, the same as the custom in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Swabia, Hungary, Brittany, Navarre, and other places: on extinction of the male descent a woman might succeed. If her succession were provided for by the terms of the investiture; or, in other cases, unless she were deliberately excluded.^[52]

188In the investiture of 1395 which made Giangaleazzo duke of Milan there is no mention of Valentine, but neither is there any direct mention of the sons of Giangaleazzo. The duchy of Milan is bestowed on him, sui heredes et successores. Now this term in Italy, where the Pandects were still the model of civil law, might be held to include all the children of the possessor; and, on failure of the male line, the daughter would be entitled to put in her claim. I am not aware how much was implied in Germany at this date by the employment of this term; but probably there also it was at least ambiguous, since, under the Hohenstaufen emperors, Roman law had made a great advance through Germany, and since, later on, it was found necessary to formulate a special clause that the use of the expression sui heredes should not be considered sufficient to authorize females to claim succession to a masculine fief.

Any ambiguity was dispelled the following year. There was then a possibility of war between France and Milan, grievously estranged at that date by the presence of the French in Genoa, and by the rumours of witchcraft which defamed the reputation and endangered the safety of Madame Valentine in France. At this juncture Giangaleazzo, probably alarmed at the terms of his daughter’s marriage-contract, procured a second imperial investiture,^[54] distinctly limiting 189the succession to male heirs. But this was not the end. In 1396 news came to Paris of the battle of Nicopolis, which necessitated an immediate rapprochement with Milan; for Giangaleazzo Visconti, feared and hated because of his friendship with the Turk, was at this juncture the one necessary man, capable of mediating between the French and the East. Great court was paid to him, and he accepted the French advances. Peace and amity being restored between the two countries, on March 30, 1397, he obtained a third and last investiture from Wenzel,^[53] which restored the conditions of inheritance to their original footing, and bestowed the duchy of Milan on Giangaleazzo Visconti, descendentes et successores sui.

This ambiguity of phrase may possibly have been designed. The fact that the fief was a pm corr 189.17 Fahnlehn Fahnlehen>, directly dependent on the emperor, and that (so far as I can discover) no special Imperial privilege had been granted to Madame Valentine, would in Germany itself appear as strong evidence in favour of a solely masculine succession as even the second investiture could afford. But in Italy, by the custom of the country and the authority of contract and testament, the children of Valentine would be included among the heirs and descendants of her father; and, in case the whole race of his sons expired, the vague terms of the investiture would allow the line of Orleans to put in a claim which would prevent so important a part of Italy from relapsing to the foreign emperor. Such at least, as it appears to me, must have been the 190design of the duke in obtaining this last investiture, a two-edged weapon in the hands of him who has been described as the wisest and the most astute among all the princes of the west.

His position, therefore, seems to have been as follows. To secure himself against any inconvenient pretensions of the French, he had the restrictions of the feudal law; and yet he was equally protected against the encroachments of the empire. He had the sanction of local custom, the ambiguity of the terms of investiture; and, in addition to this, a papal privilege, conceding to Valentine the right to succeed her brothers or her nephews in the state of Milan.

The right of a Pope to dispose of an Imperial fief appears upon the face of it a very questionable matter, even when the Empire be really vacant. When Valentine Visconti was contracted to her husband, Clement VII. had merely declared an interregnum in the empire, on account of the adherence of Wenzel, King of the Romans, to the faction of Urban the Pope at Rome. Such was the supremacy of the Church over Imperial affairs at this period, that, notwithstanding the absurdity of this plea and the fact that Clement was an Antipope, none was ever found to question the legality of the French claim to Asti, which was not granted to Orleans by any Imperial privilege until the investiture of 1413. An intriguing adventurer anxious to consolidate a new and unpopular dynasty by every legal claim, Giangaleazzo cultivated Emperor, Pope, and Antipope. Urban and Clement and Wenzel were all in turn solicited to confirm the tenure of Visconti. Corio appears to believe 191that the succession of Valentine to Milan was granted by Urban, who was certainly in Lombardy in the year 1387. But Urban had denied to Giangaleazzo the coveted title of king of Italy; and there are as yet no documents discovered which prove the alluring hypothesis that the astute Visconti held in his possession a decree of the Pope no less than a decree of the Antipope granting the succession to Milan to his daughter.

Enough, however, remains to show by what a cunning opposition of France to Germany, and Germany to France, the Duke of Milan strove to secure Italian independence. If the Germans, then but the shadow of a power, chose to assert their over-lordship, the claim of the French was strong enough to insure them two enemies instead of one; and vice versa:—as, indeed, a later century too adequately proved. Hoping to hold each neighbour in check and fear of the other, Giangaleazzo meant to insure a period of quiet growth for his own principality of Lombardy.

Thus the contract securing Milan to Valentine by a papal transfer made for France; the second investiture was absolute for Germany: the first and third were so worded that they conveyed a different meaning on either side of the Alps. Besides papal privileges and imperial investitures there is, however, a third way of conferring property: I mean the way in which Naples was transferred to Anjou—the way of bequest.

But, the reader will exclaim, can a feoffer dispose of a fief without the written consent of his feodary? Here, as in the question of feminine succession, the 192matter was chiefly decided by the custom of the province. In certain countries—as, for example, Nassau, Friedland, Ober Lausitz—a feoffer might dispose of his possessions by will, although a contrary law held good in other countries.

But whatever the local law, the tendency was strong, even in feudal Germany, to diminish the rights of the empire to the advantage of the feudatory powers. As Menzel puts it, “the emperor grasped but a shadowy sceptre ... the princes increased in wealth and power, while the emperor was gradually impoverished. Imperial investiture had become a mere form, which could not be refused except on certain occasions; and the pfalzgraves, formerly intrusted with the management of Imperial allods, had seized them as hereditary fiefs.” What was done with impunity in Germany, was done with audacity beyond the Alps. And the Duke of Milan, who had received his principality as a vassal, intended to dispose of it like an hereditary monarch. If we impeach his right to pursue this course, it is not only the claims of the Visconti, but of almost every noble family in Italy, Germany, or Flanders that must submit to be denied or censured.

Yet claiming and acting upon his own authority to dispose of Milan, Giangaleazzo Visconti involved his testament in the same web of intrigue and counter-intrigue which characterized his earlier policy. No less than three wills, entirely different, are open to us; and as the most important of these is only known in an undated copy, it is difficult to decide which was his final disposition of affairs. The first, familiar 193enough to the student of Corio, was drawn up in 1397, and was modified in 1401; it makes no provision at all for Valentine. The second (No. ccxxiii in the first volume of Osio’s documents), undated, but probably composed in 1397, confirms her in all possessions previously bestowed, but grants her nothing else, unless she should fall into a state of poverty or widowhood, in which case she was to have sufficient and princely nurture in her brother’s home at Milan, with a dowry in case she should contract a second marriage. This is all, yet this is enough to confirm the contract of 1387. But it is the latest-found of the testaments of Giangaleazzo Visconti which is most important to the student of the French claim to Milan. This will, discovered in 1872 by Signor Luigi Osio in the Milanese Archives, gives an entirely new force to the pretensions of Orleans. Yet it exists only in copy and in extract—like a passage of Sappho saved by some unconscious grammarian—quoted by a Sforzesco advocate in a letter of warning addressed to Lodovico il Moro on Jan. 10, 1496.

At this date, the usurper Lodovico (possessed by the family conviction that at some time his grandfather, Filippo Maria Visconti, must have made a will bequeathing Milan to Lodovico’s mother) had entrusted his friend and kinsman Giason del Maino elegantissimo et celeberrimo legista, (if we may(if we may trust the verdict of Corio) with the task of searching the Milanese Archives to this end. Del Maino discovered nothing concerning Madonna Bianca; but instead he found two highly compromising copies of the will of Giangaleazzo Visconti, which had come to light in the 194house of Messer Giovanni Domenico Oliari, notary of Pavia, son of Andriano Oliari (an obstinate and honest servant of the Visconti dukes), of whom my readers will hear more upon a future page.

“As for these copies,” wrote Messer Giasone, “though they are only copies, and by no means according to the terms, I entreat you to have them seized at once, as well as three other copies which I have reason to believe are in the possession (1) of the brothers of the Certosa of Pavia, (2) of Manfredo da Ozino, and (3) of the Signore della Mirandola. You will do well to keep them safe, for they would be of the greatest value to the Duke of Orleans, since this testament and fidei-commissio provides that, should the sons of Giangaleazzo die without male heirs, one of the sons of Madonna Valentine shall succeed to Milan. And, though I could find it in my heart to maintain that the Duke of Orleans has no right to obtain anything, as to Milan, from you or your illustrious children, none the less you will do well to keep these copies safe.”

Lodovico took the hint. Of the five copies mentioned not one exists to-day. Only the forgotten letter remains to show the intention of Giangaleazzo Visconti. Sudden death and swift oblivion rudely damaged his dexterous intrigues—so much here for France, so much there for Germany—an even balance held neatly in a steady hand. The plague numbed that cunning hand for ever in the autumn of 1402. Murder soon removed the elder son of the great duke; and the bastard Gabriello died on the executioner’s scaffold in hostile Genoa. Both died childless, and 195Milan fell to their younger brother, Filippo Maria. He ruled in peace and splendour for more than thirty years in Milan. But two marriages brought him no sons; only one daughter, and she illegitimate, cheered his magnificent palace. As the Duke grew old, men began to ask each other who should succeed him in Milan: his natural daughter, married to the great captain Francesco Sforza? or his nephew, his sister’s son, the Duke of Orleans? or his wife’s relations of Savoy? or, after all, must Milan return, a lapsed fief, into the foreign hands of the German emperor.

II.

Meanwhile a melancholy fate had pursued the French heirs to Milan, the children of Valentine and Orleans. This is not the place to explain how their young dissensions with their father’s murderers summoned the English into France; or how the youngest, John of Angoulême, was sent to England, a mere child, in 1412, as a hostage for his brother’s debt; or how, three years later, the defeat at Agincourt sent Charles of Orleans to join him there. The sons of Valentine remained in prison all their youth. When, in 1440, the son of their father’s murderer, the gentle Duke of Burgundy, ransomed the Duke of Orleans out of bondage, Charles was a man of forty-six,^[55] who returned home to find his estates half ruined by disastrous wars; his brother Philip dead; his half-brother a 196hero—Dunois, the restorer of his country. It was late to regain his position in this altered world, but at least he lost no time. In the same month of the same year (November, 1440) Charles married a niece of Burgundy, Mary of Cleves. In 1445 his brother, John of Angoulême, newly released from England, married a neighbour of his sister’s—Marguerite de Rohan, to whose elder sister he had been contracted in his youth. The two princes were determined to recover their inheritance, to raise up children, and restore the ancient dignity of their house. Much of Angoulême and much of Orleans and much of the inheritance of Bonne d’Armagnac was still in the hands of the English. The estates of Orleans in France were grievously diminished. And outside France Asti had been lost also.

In the year 1422, when Charles of Orleans had lain already seven years, and John ten years, in an English prison, when Philip of Vertus was dead, when France was paralysed, and Henry VI. of England crowned the king of France in Paris, the county of Asti, in great fear of the English (those Goths of the Riviera) and of the nearer jealousies of ambitious Montferrat, sent to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and begged him to receive Asti under his guardianship and protection^[57] until such time as either of his nephews should be released from England. The Duke of Milan consented willingly. Asti was the Calais of Italy, and from the Italian point of 197view it appeared intolerable and unnatural that this one county should remain a little island of France in Lombardy, a pied-à-terre across the mountains for invading Gaul. And now, after twenty years of undisturbed possession, the Duke of Milan turned a deaf ear to his nephew’s reminder that he was home again and ready to reassume his inheritance. As a fact the Duke did not dare to restore Asti. In 1438 he had made Francesco Sforza his lieutenant there; and he was afraid of Sforza. It was in vain sending letters and requisitions; so in the beginning of the year 1441 the princes of Orleans sent Dunois to Milan.^[56]

There were other matters more important even than the restitution of Asti, upon which it was well that a man so wise, so experienced, so persuasive as Dunois should confer with the uncle of his half-brothers. The Duke of Milan had no sons, one daughter only, and she was illegitimate. Therefore the princes of Orleans considered themselves the heirs to Milan. But they were not alone in expecting this inheritance. The Emperor pointed to the clause in the investiture of 1396 which declared that, in default of males, Milan should revert to the empire. Jacopo Visconti, a distant 198cousin of the Duke’s, brought forward some pretensions of his own. Sforza, the husband of the Duke’s natural daughter, thought of the house of Este and of other Italian houses where more than once a bastard, if courageous and beautiful, had succeeded to his father before legitimate heirs; and as to the fact that Madonna Bianca was a woman, had not Giovanna I. of Naples succeeded to King Robert, even in defiance of a Salic law? Meanwhile the princes of Savoy remembered that when the Duke of Milan had married the Savoyard princess he had made, upon receipt of her dower, a promise to her father and her brother that if no children sprang from this union, he would bequeath the titles of Milan to Savoy. It is significant of the strange confusion of the laws of inheritance in Italy that all these princes believed in the right of a Duke of Milan to bestow by testament, or deed or gift, or marriage-contract, that which was, in fact, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire. But the rights of the empire had fallen into long disuse across the Alps, where a strange confusion of kinship, bequest, investiture, or election by the people regulated the succession to Papal and Imperial fiefs. Some princes succeeded in one way, some in the other. To the eyes of contemporaries they all appeared justifiable alternatives, giving some shadow of right to that which a strong hand meant to grasp and meant to keep. “Most of the princes in Italy,” wrote Commines fifty years later, “hold their lands by no title unless it be given them in heaven, which we can but divine.”

Thus eyed suspiciously by rival heirs, Dunois, as 199the representative of Orleans, crossed the Alps in 1441 and came to Milan, both to require the restitution of Asti, and also, as Ventura remarks, to confer on other matters with the Duke. The Duke of Milan was a sad, timid, indifferent man, old at five-and-fifty and harassed by an almost lunatic suspicion of danger from his friends. As he grew older his fears and doubts grew stronger, and he saw no motive for any sort of conduct beside the desire to succeed him in Milan. Oppressed by hypochondria, corpulent to deformity, fatigued by the weight of his body, and exhausted by the heaviness upon his spirits, this timid and sceptical Volpone of Lombardy found his sole amusement in weaving into a complicated perplexity the expectations of his heirs. Sitting immovable in his corner at Milan, like some huge spider spinning in the dusk, he crossed and recrossed, twisted and confused, in his dreary web, the hopes of Sforza and of Orleans, of Savoy and of the bastard cousins of his house.

No one could be sure of the succession. Sforza, the object of his senile fondness, was the object also of his insane suspicion. The Duke had tried a score of times to shuffle out of a promise to give him his natural daughter; and the very week that he had finally consented to their marriage, he sent a private messenger to Lionello d’Este, offering him the hand of Madonna Bianca. Nevertheless, in 1441 Sforza married Bianca, a mere girl, but bringing in her dowry the Signories of Cremona and Pontremoli, in addition to his lieutenancy of Asti. After the marriage he was no more sure of the Duke of Milan than 200he had been before. The uncertain seesaw of the Duke’s caprices continued as unsteady as of old. On the one hand, the Duke was aware that Sforza, though the son of a peasant, was the most remarkable Italian of his day, courageous, frank, spirited, kind of heart, and cunning. His immense strength of will both attracted and repelled the vacillating and suspicious Visconti. He admired Sforza, and Sforza was the husband of his only child. Still more, Sforza was secretly supported by Agnese del Maino, the mother of Bianca, the sole woman whose influence had ever touched the indifferent and preoccupied heart of Filippo Maria. On the other hand, the Duke was afraid of SforzaSforza—and to fear, in timid natures, is to hate.

When fear and suspicion sank the scale, Visconti inclined to his wife’s relations of Savoy, who, having no right at all except such as he chose to give them, presented no cause for fear. Or he encouraged the claims of Jacopo Visconti. Osio, in a note, informs us that this Jacopo Visconti was the son of Gabriello, the bastard of Giangaleazzo, and had this been the case Jacopo Visconti would have had a certain claim. But Gabriello left no children, and Jacopo must have been the son of one of the numerous children of Bernabò. Nevertheless he considered himself to have pretensions. When all these had been weighed in the balance and found wanting, there remained the princes of Orleans.

In early life the Duke of Milan had been inclined to France; and he had been a suitor for that Princess Marie d’Anjou, who afterwards married King Charles VII. From 1420 to 1427 the pages of Osio abound in 201messages and treaties. Then the vexed question of Asti began to embitter his relations with France, and to increase that fatal suspicion which ever made him turn with sudden loathing from his former friends. While his discontent with Anjou was still undecided, the Genoese handed into his custody the enemy of Anjou, the prince of Arragon, taken prisoner at sea. In their suzerain Visconti, the ally of Anjou, the Genoese imagined that they had found a sure custodian for Arragon. But they had not reckoned upon the personal charm of Alfonso the Magnanimous, nor upon the capricious indifference of Visconti. Young, handsome, engaging, fearless, their chivalrous captive won the heart of his timid jailer, and easily turned his fluctuating policy from Anjou towards Arragon. Visconti suddenly deserted his own subjects, released Alfonso without consulting the Genoese, and supported him upon the throne of Naples.

With some thought in his heart, doubtless, of the success of Alfonso, Dunois turned his steps to Milan. He also was handsome, persuasive, rhetorical; and if no longer young, his comely head was encircled by the aureole of heroic victory. But Dunois lacked the enthusiasm, the spontaneity, that, in Arragon, had warmed for a moment the numb and chilly heart of the Duke of Milan. Dunois was as cold, as sceptical, as wise, as worldly as himself. His flowers of speech made no real effect upon the weary Duke, who, to get rid of him, made, doubtless, some magnificent promise for the future; for Dunois did not insist on his demand for Asti, but returned almost immediately to France, hoping to settle matters by the friendly intervention 202of the Emperor Frederic; but at that time the customary malentendu as to the occupation of Alsace estranged France and Germany, and Frederic declined to interfere with the projects of the Duke of Milan.

Dunois had not impressed the Duke, who was impressed only by youth, fearlessness, and a never-daunted will. He thought he perceived these qualities in the young Dauphin, half in disgrace on his estate in Dauphiné. Him also Visconti determined to drag into the tangled web of the Milanese succession; and about this time negotiations with the Dauphin Louis began to complicate the difficulties of Transalpine policy.

Already in the spring of 1445^[58] a minute in the Archives of Milan, transcribed by Signor Luigi Osio, records the willingness of the Duke of Milan to further the Dauphin in his plan of an Italian invasion, provided that Louis agree to help the friends and not the enemies of Visconti. Asti should be confided to a person equally trusted by Orleans and Milan, and after the expiration of a given term should be freely handed back to the eldest son of Valentine. Notwithstanding this fair-spoken scheme, Visconti finds it necessary to caution his young ally against certain persons on the French side of the Alps who use threats and menaces towards the Crown of Milan. By these it is clear that he intends his nephews of Orleans. He has no friendship for them. Noluit restituere, briefly remarks Secundino Ventura.

203The negotiations with Louis proceeded briskly, and in May the Milanese ambassador arrived in Paris, where he found grande garra e divisione between the restless Dauphin and King René of Sicily, who he remarks (to our unfeigned surprise) è quello che governa tucto questo reame. Meanwhile Louis, young as he was, had already learned a maxim as true in policy as in almsgiving: he let not his right hand divine the secrets of his left; and while on the one side he treated with the Duke of Milan, on the other he practised with Savoy. According to the latter plan Savoy and the Dauphin, aided by Montferrat and Mantua and Ferrara, were to conquer between them the north of Italy; France was to take Genoa, the Lucchese, Parma, Piacenza, Tortona—all south of the Po and east of Montferrat; Savoy was to gain Milan and keep the Riviera; Alessandria was to be handed over to Montferrat, and the Duke of Ferrara and the Marquis of Mantua were, for the present, to keep their actual possessions; but this significant phrase was followed by one more significant still: “All future conquests are to be divided at the rate of two shares to France and one share to Savoy.”^[59]

An intimate acquaintance with documents inspires little confidence in the rectitude of human nature. Of all these personages, Charles of Orleans, a simple lyric creature, kept fresh and wholesome in arrested 204youth behind his prison bars, and Sforza, an honest, grasping and ambitious soldier, alone inspire respect or sympathy. This old duke, conscious that in a few months his immense possessions will have dwindled to a single grave, amusing the last hours of his sceptical, indifferent existence by juggling the expectations of a dozen heirs; this child-prince, without an impulse or an illusion left of youth, successfully deceiving a couple of enemies who each believes himself his sole ally—these unfortunately are no exceptions to the rule of the game.

Savoy, in the act of drawing up this project of conquest, was encouraging the Milanese to trust him to secure them a free republic on the death of the Duke. Montferrat and Mantua, pledged on the one hand to conquer Italy with the Dauphin, were as deeply pledged to Venice^[60] to oppose the invader and preserve the peace. Each had been careful to risk something on every possible event, so that no sudden turn of the wheel of Fortune could bring about complete disaster.

On the 9th of February, 1447, an indiscreet French squire, riding to Rome upon a message, let out to the Florentines that a league had been formed between the Dauphin of France and the Duke of Milan.^[61] According to this report Visconti had offered to aid 205the lad to recover Genoa, and had volunteered, in defiance of the rights of Orleans, to make him lord of Asti. A document in Osio (t. iii. ccclxxiii.) dated the 20th of December, 1446, and a series of letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale,^[62] confirm this remarkable statement, which, if it spread horror throughout Italy, caused no less indignation among the heirs of Valentine. Strangely enough it was Sforza, at that time the Milanese governor of Asti, who advocated the cause of the Dauphin. “Give him Asti, and he will do you excellent service. Pay him well; and yet contrive it in such a way that none but your Highness shall be cock or hen in this country.” This advice was rendered still more unpalatable to the Italians and to the house of Orleans by a rumour that the Duke of Milan intended to adopt the Dauphin as his heir. Before the month was out the north Italian princes formed themselves into a counter-league against France and Milan, and Orleans and Dunois had despatched to Milan the baillie of Sens, a certain Reynouard du Dresnay, with a demand for the immediate restitution of Asti. This time they would brook no refusal, they would be tempted by no future benefits. Indignant and disenchanted, they instructed their lieutenant to press the matter home; and on the 4th of May, Asti again returned to France. The conditions of the surrender were peculiar. The county was not directly given back to Orleans, but yielded to Du Dresnay as the lieutenant of the king, 206so long as the said king should preserve the good will and consent of Charles of Orleans, directus dominus ipsius civitatis et patriæ.

In this matter at least the shifty Duke of Milan was outwitted. Asti had slipped from his grasp; France had again her hand upon the key of Lombardy. Much of his interest in the game was gone. As the summer waxed and waned, the Duke grew more than ever heavy, indifferent, and lethargic. He was not seriously ill, but, as I have said, his interest in the game was over. In August his health, always feeble, sank in the great heat of the summer. Immense in his unwieldly corpulence, the Duke sat in a darkened chamber of his palace brooding over his unfinished testament. He suffered no physician near him, and his illness—a low fever—was kept a secret. But the faint heart of Filippo Maria could no longer animate the weight of his body. On the 13th of August, 1447, he died—less of his illness, it was said, than of utter indifference, as one who, weary of the spectacle of existence, left his seat and retired whence he came.

Above the corpse, scarcely yet cold, the rival heirs, in eager expectation, gathered to the reading of the will. The Duchess-dowager represented Savoy; Madonna Bianca appeared for the absent Sforza; Raynouard du Dresnay came to Milan on behalf of Orleans; while, at a distance, Montferrat and Jacopo Visconti looked to their own interests; the Venetians had hopes of their own; the Milanese, as we know, intended to inaugurate a republic; the emperor, serene above these petty quarrels, declared that by feudal law Milan had already devolved to him. 207Absent or present, there was not one of these, save him, but had some promise of Filippo Maria’s in his mind when at length the testament was opened. The will was dated August 12th,^[63] the day before the death of the Duke. There was no mention in it of his daughter, Madonna Bianca, none of his wife, none of any of his nephews or kinsmen. He left Alfonso of Arragon his universal heir.

Perhaps, as Guicciardini suggests, love of his people induced the dying Duke to leave his city to a distant tyrant; perhaps, in his suspicion of his present friends, his fancy turned with pleasure to the good bright youth who had been his captive long ago; perhaps his defeat at Asti made him like to think of the evil turn that once he had done the French in Naples; or, it may be, the mere desire of outraging the detestable cohue of his quasi-legal heirs proved irresistiblyirresistibly fascinating to the sceptical old man. At least so it was. Every right was outraged;^[64] the King of Naples was left the Duke of Milan. “Nevertheless come here as soon as you can,” wrote Antonio Guidoboni to Sforza^[65] on the 14th; “once on the spot and half the game is won.”

208

III.

It was at this moment that for the first time the French claim to Milan became a question for practical politics. Frederic the Pacific was not the man to press the rights of the German Empire in Italy, rights which at this time were continually disregarded, and which nothing less than a military occupation could enforce. Even the Ghibellines in Lombardy declared, not for the Emperor Frederic, but for Count Francesco Sforza. Yet the Emperor Frederic was, so far as the legal and abstract side of the matter was concerned, the one really serious rival of the Duke of Orleans.

For Alfonzo of Arragon showed no inclination to take up arms in defence of his unexpected bequest. Although, in the city of Milan itself, he had a considerable party in his favour, at this time neither Alfonso nor his rivals appear to have regarded the will of the late duke in any serious spirit. The story ran in Milan that, in the week before his death, when that astounding testament was made, Filippo Maria had smiled and said, “It will be good to see how it will go to pieces when I am dead.” A cynical pleasure in aggravating as much as possible this imminent ruin must, I think, have prompted the Duke to leave Milan to Alfonso. And if his detached, amused, malevolent soul could really from any extra-mundane point of vantage have watched the events which quickly followed his decease, he would have found the spectacle as exciting and as novel as he wished. The Milanese at once declared themselves a free republic, governed by various Princes of Liberty. Whereupon 209all the subject cities announced that if Milan was a republic, so was each of them, for they would not submit to bear the yoke of a city no nobler than the rest. Hereupon such of the cities as were not strong enough to stand alone gave themselves, some to the Venetians, some to Savoy, some to Genoa, some to Orleans, some to Montferrat, some to Ferrara; and all these powers sent armies into Lombardy to protect their rights. Matters were still further complicated by the dissensions of the Bracceschi and Sforzeschi, the Guelfs and Ghibellines. In Pavia alone, for instance, the Guelfs declared, some for Venice, some for Orleans, some for the King of France, some for the Dauphin; the Bracceschi declared for Alfonzo of Arragon; Savoy and Montferrat each had a faction at their service, but the great body of the Ghibellines were in favour of Count Francesco Sforza, to whom finally the city submitted. This was a blow to the free republic of Milan next door; but in the miserable state of their dominions, the unfortunate Princes of Liberty did not dare to remonstrate with their too potent commander, and Count Francesco, sovereign at Pavia, continued to be the servant of the Milanese republic.

So soon as the news of the death of the Duke of Milan came to France, the French prepared to assert the rights of Orleans. On September 3rd Charles VII. wrote from Bourges to Turin, recommending the rights of Orleans to Savoy:—

“Nostre tres-cher et très-amé frère, le Duc d’Orléans, à présent Duc de Milan [asserts the king] par le décès 210du feu Duc son oncle, qui est naguères allé de vie à trespas, comme son plus prochain hoir, nous a bien exprès faict dire et remonstré le bon droict qu’il ha au dict Duché de Milan.”^[66]

And Savoy, in all his further proceedings to obtain the protectorate of Milan for himself, excepts the French claim, against which he avows himself powerless to protest. This claim, theoretically so strong, had also in its favour the devotion—the veneration, says Corio—which the royal name of France inspired in the Guelfs of Lombardy; and in this moment of revolution the Guelfs, the democratic party, were exceptionally powerful. The governor of Asti, Raynouard du Dresnay, infected by the ardour of the times, could no longer await the coming of his master, but on September 22nd, furnished with 3,300 golden ducats of Asti, at the head of a little force of 1,500 men-at-arms, sallied out to plant the royal lilies of Orleans upon the soil of Milan.

Almost at once the inhabitants of Felizzano, Solero, Castellaccio, and Bergolio yielded to his arms. So many of the fortresses in the Alessandrino followed suit that Alessandria and all the country round were filled with fear. The force of Raynouard was very small, but inspired with so much fury, such fervour and cruelty of battle, that the softer Italians did not dare resist him. The smaller cities opened at his 211knock, and even in the larger cities there was a party which, afraid of his vengeance, and fascinated by the prestige of France, would have welcomed him with open arms. Yet there were many, hating the stranger and his barbarian ferocity, who sent messenger after messenger to Sforza, bidding him arrive and deliver them. “Patience!” said Count Francesco. “In the first onslaught the French are more than men. Soon they will weary, and then we will attack them.” But meanwhile, with undiminished energy, day after day the victories of Raynouard proceeded, and further and further into Lombardy advanced the banners of the king of France.

On October 1st an embassy from the unhappy republic of Milan arrived in Venice requesting aid and counsel. This, of a truth, was seeking sweetness in the jaws of the lion; for Lodi, Codogno, and other cities had already revolted to the Venetians, who hoped in time, by skilful management, to possess the greater part of Lombardy. But the bewildered Princes of Liberty knew not in whom to place their trust. Venice and Florence were leagued together, and each hoped to obtain something from the dismemberment of the territories of Milan; Montferrat, Mantua, Savoy, Genoa, and France, in open arms, were spoliating the corpse of their neighbour—for a corpse indeed it seemed—and of the captain-general of their own forces these heads of the republic were more profoundly suspicious than of any open foe. Too many of the nobles in Milan were secretly in favour of this adventurer. Only the people, the Guelfs, sustained their republican ardour with violent rhetoric, and 212declared that they would rather be the servants of the Turk, or of the Devil, than of Count Francesco Sforza.

There was this in favour of Venice, that she detested Count Francesco (who had left her service for the Duke of Milan’s) as bitterly as any Guelf in Lombardy. And Venice, the most aristocratic of oligarchies, was for complicated political reasons greatly favoured by the Guelfs. Therefore, not without hope in their hearts, the delegates of Milan awaited the answer of the Venetian senate. Three practicators, or agents, were deputed by the Ten to confer with the ambassadors concerning the proposed alliance between Milan and Venice; but these agents were secretly bidden in no way to commit or bind the Venetian government (nichil obligando nos); for the conference really was to be only a means of extracting information as to the true condition of affairs in Milan.^[67] And it would be as valueless to us, as to the hapless, bamboozled Milanese, were it not that here we get, I think, the first evidence of the Venetian inclination to pronounce for France.^[68]

There was no help here from the violence of Raynouard. Venice especially declared that against France and Genoa she would do nothing. And every 213day recorded the conquests of the French. The Milanese ambassadors returned very sadly, “despised by the Venetians,” says Corio, “and treated as perniciously as possible.” In vain they bade Francesco Sforza give battle to the audacious little force of Raynouard. Count Francesco, who had ever been favourable to France, pursued his waiting game, although Bosco Marengo, closely besieged by the French, was almost at the end of possible resistance, and the fall of Bosco meant the loss of Alessandria. At last the Milanese succeeded in scraping together about fifteen hundred soldiers, and these, under Coglioni, they sent to Alessandria to harass the enemy. The French were taken between two fires—on the one side Coglioni, on the other the Alessandrian reinforcements; yet at first they gained the day, but so furious was their anger, and so long they dallied in the slaughter of their enemies, that before they had despatched the last, a further reinforcement of the Milanese, and a successful sally on the part of the besieged, intercepted their return. Raynouard was taken prisoner with many of his men; the cities which had revolted to him returned to the allegiance of the Milanese republic; and the royal troops, leaderless and disbanded in the very hour of victory, fled home as best they might to Asti.

This was on Oct. 17, 1447. Twelve days later the Duke of Orleans himself arrived in Asti. There he made a solemn entry on Oct. 26th, riding under a däis borne by the notables of the city robed and hooded all in white, pro majori letitia adventus ipsius domini ducis. Charles of Orleans was now a man of fifty-seven, 214amiable and sanguine. Something of the charm and of the inefficiency of youth appeared to linger around this aging poet, who, taken captive a youth of twenty-four, issued into the world again almost a man of fifty. Those intervening years had held for him none of the serious business of life: and his experience was still the experience of charming, ardent, and unhappy youth. Since Agincourt he had counted his years by lyrics, not by battles; and now perhaps one of the serious things to him in this contentious Lombardy was his friendship with Antonio Astesano, professor of eloquence and poetry at Asti, himself no inconsiderable versifier, and author of a poetic epistle on the victories of the Maid of Orleans, which in 1430 he had sent to the Duke in his English prison. Charles, with his serene unpractical temper, his interest in literature, his inexperience of life, hoping all things, doing nothing, appears a strange figure in that distracted Lombardy: a garlanded maypole stuck in the front of battle.

At first the arrival of the Duke of Orleans appeared an event of immeasurable importance. The Guelfs in every Lombard town, who at first had thought only of Venice, began, more loudly even than during the campaign of Raynouard, to declare for France. The Duke came armed with promises from France, from Burgundy, from Brittany, from England. There were no bounds to the magnificence with which he declared himself about to take the field. But perhaps it would not be necessary to take the field at all. The Duke sent a deputation to the Milanese republic; the 215lord of Cognac, one of the nobles of Ceva, Caretti (whose family all the while were practising none too secretly with Montferrat), Secondino Natti, Antonio Romagnano, and Francesco Roero, requested the Milanese to submit to the allegiance of their lawful duke. But the Milanese were all too well aware of the hateful consequences of tyranny. Men were still alive whose brothers and whose children had been torn to pieces, limb by limb, by the hounds of Giammaria Visconti, the uncle of this man. The suspicion, the cunning, the timid fear of Filippo Maria had succeeded to that oppression. “This time,” said the people of Milan, “we will preserve ourselves a free republic.”

A show of force would at least be necessary to induce them to change their minds; and in December, 1447, Charles of Orleans sent an embassy to Venice,^[69] requesting the Council to enter into an arrangement with him, and to furnish him with troops. He repeated his assurances of aid from France, England, and Burgundy; and if such aid as this were really forthcoming, Venice, animated by a limited Venetian and not by a national Italian patriotism, would certainly hesitate to cross his path. So bitter was the hatred of Venice towards Sforza, that any other candidate appeared preferable to him; and this douce, unready Charles would be easier to manage than a man of that heroic and ambitious type. Yet in a matter so important it was, before all things, necessary to be circumspect; and the Venetians put off the Duke of Orleans with many assurances of their 216devoted adherence and affection, many warnings against the cunning and the machinations of Sforza, while they wrote to their allies of Florence requesting an opinion. At this instant Sforza was so dreaded in Italy, and his victory appeared so imminent, that if a few of the promised battalions had appeared in Piedmont the Venetians would gladly have espoused the cause of Orleans. But Sforza, left almost without money, with no ally that he was really sure of except his valiant wife, found the situation untenable. He had not a friend in Italy, nor a friend across the mountains. Peace, if only the feint of peace, was imperative while he collected his unvanquished forces for a further struggle. Early in January he wrote to Florence, proposing peace. The Florentines and the Venetians were bound in so close a league that peace with the one meant truce with the other; and though, at least twice, in solemn terms, the Council of Ten warned the Florentine Signory that there was no substance in this matter, for peace was contrary to the real interests of Count Francesco, yet in the end Venice agreed to accept this peace for what it was worth, using the hour of respite to further her stratagems in other quarters.

The peace was not worth much. On May 9th Andriano Ricci of Asti arrived in Venice with a message from the Duke of Orleans.^[70] “The French reinforcements will soon be here,” said the sanguine Duke; “will you also be my auxiliary?” The Venetians, though still cautious, replied in terms of alacrity—

217“We are ready to grant you all possible aid and favour, and there is no other prince on earth whom we so warmly desire to be our neighbour in Milan. Hasten the King of France, for if any good effect is to follow our endeavours, the troops should come at once. And rely upon it, so soon as your French auxiliaries are in readiness, we also will provide a satisfactory contingent to help in the conquest of Milan. And we are the readier to do this, since the peace which we had begun to treat with the Milanese republic is already broken, and we at this moment are in open war with Milan.”

But, just at the instant when it would have given most pleasure to Venice to support the claims of Orleans, she began to feel grave doubts as to the solidity of his pretensions. Those promised armies of France, England, Burgundy, and Brittany, which had been on the road ever since last December, would they never cross the Alps? As yet not a single soldier had appeared. How far could Venice trust the assertions of the fanciful and sanguine Orleans? A strain in him of the Visconti shiftiness mingled with the rhetoric of his father, and for all his amiable simplicity Charles of Orleans was not a man to inspire conviction. The Venetians were, however, aware that Burgundy was really in his favour. It was Burgundy who had paid the ransom of Orleans, and Burgundy had twice sent his ambassadors to Venice, entreating the Ten in favour of his cousin. There was a great friendship between the good Duke Philip and the gentle Duke Charles; it seemed as if, having overcome 218the tremendous barrier of an hereditary vendetta, these two men, whose fathers had each been murdered to satisfy the feud, entertained for each other an affection that had gained by the obstacles it had surmounted. If Burgundy, the richest duke in Europe, supported Orleans, it might be well to aid him even in the absence of France, England, and Brittany. But it would be disastrous to support the inefficient duke alone against such mighty odds. Yet some aid against Sforza was immediately desirable. To the Venetians, to have two strings to your bow was the first axiom of policy; and on May 20, 1448, the Ten despatched to Asti a secret messenger, one Messer Bernardo Neri, who was to interview the Duke,^[71] to obtain all possible information as to his army and his auxiliaries, and then, in the utmost privacy, to proceed to Savoy in order to judge in which direction it best would suit the Venetian cat to jump.

Messer Bernardo stayed over a fortnight at Asti, although his commission was only for five days; and from this we may suppose that at first he really had expectations of the success of Orleans. But on June 10th^[72] he left, ostensibly to return to Venice in order to receive the answer of the Senate; but in reality he went only a little way on the Venetian road and turned aside at once into Savoy, for at Turin he knew he should find further instructions from the Senate. He could only spend a day or two over his negotiations with the Duke there, for he had to return to Asti on the day when an answer might reasonably 219be expected to reach that place from Venice. But his interview with Duke Louis was evidently satisfactory, for it is the first of a long series of negotiations.

Meanwhile Orleans in Asti found his affairs did not progress at all. The Venetians, though so prodigal of offers of assistance, declined to come forward until he had an army at his back. The Milanese refused to recognize him. Worst of all, the French appeared to have forgotten him. It seemed best to return to France and collect his forces. So on Aug. 10th, after a stay of nine months in Asti, Charles of Orleans with all his household went home again across the mountains. The Duke took back with him his friend Antonio Astesano, and ever afterwards he retained a strong affection for the country of his mother. The visit of Charles of Orleans to Asti was important as an introduction of Italian fashions, Italian architecture, Italian arms, jewels,^[73] and vestments into France. It caused a pure whiff of Italy to breathe across the Gothic style of Charles VII. But it made little or no effect on the furthering of the French claim to Milan.

Orleans had scarcely crossed the Alps before he was as completely disregarded as though he had never seemed the most dangerous pretender to the throne of Milan. Savoy had taken his place. The claim of Savoy was quite childish and ridiculous. He pretended that, on the payment of his sister’s dowry to the late Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria had promised to leave his duchy, in default of sons, to the Duke of 220Savoy.^[74] It was evident that the Duke had done nothing of the sort; he had left his throne to Arragon. Besides, it is difficult to see how his testament could dispose of property which, by his father’s will and his sister’s marriage contract, was entailed on his nephews of Orleans, and which, by feudal law, must return to the Holy Roman Empire. But, however shadowy his claims, the Duke of Savoy was a great person to the Milanese. He was loved by them and he was feared by them; and had he hazarded a bold stroke instead of counteracting his own efforts by a perfect maze of petty intrigues, he might easily have made himself, if not the Duke of Milan, at any rate protector of the Milanese republic.

But Duke Louis was afraid to hazard all his chances on any single throw. In 1446 he had intrigued with the Dauphin to divide the Milanese with France; on the 3rd of May, 1448, he drew up a secret and solemn contract with the Milanese to protect their republic, in consequence of which, a few months later, the grateful city privately elected him her chief. In June, 1449, he was arranging with the King of Arragon to conquer the estates of Milan with this ally, and divide them at the rate of three-fifths for Arragon and two-fifths for Savoy;^[75] and in the autumn of the same year he was making a very similar proposal to the Venetians. In the pains he took to win something, however little, Savoy effectually safeguarded himself from winning all. Yet at one time he appeared to have great chances in his favour.

221In the summer and early autumn of 1448, both Venice and the Milanese believed that a republic under the joint protection of Venice and Savoy might flourish in Milan, were it not for the undying energy and resolution of Count Francesco SforzaSforza. To be rid of this man was to be rid of war; and twice in August and once in September the Ten wrote to a certain Lorenzo Minio, captain of the Brescia, that they accept a certain proposal he had made: “If the person he suggests will in truth deal death to Count Francesco we shall be his debtors.”^[76] According to the discretion of Minio they offered his candidate from ten thousand to twenty thousand ducats; or, should he be of the sort that stoops not to money, he should have the captaincy of a regiment, of from two hundred to four hundred lances. “But,” they proceeded, “let not the matter stick for a trifle—cheer him and inspirit him so that his resolution come to a good effect, and that speedily; put him in heart with his work and let it be done well.” The plain English of these phrases means that the Venetian Council was willing to pay a great sum of money to any one who would undertake to poison Count Francesco Sforza.

But before the proposal was carried out, a second message, five months later, bade the friend of Minio stay the destruction in his hand. “Count Francesco having entered into good and faithful relations with the Senate, we withdraw the order for his death.” As suddenly as before and for as short a time an alliance was declared between the Venetians and the Milanese.

222This alliance, as before, was merely an occasion for the resumption of intrigues. Arragon and Savoy, Savoy and Venice, Venice and Milan were secretly determining an arrangement which should exclude Francesco Sforza. It seems scarcely worth while to have countermanded the order for his death, since by some means or another to be rid of this adventurer was the aim and end of all this policy. The Guelfs of Milan sent to Venice a certain Arrigo Panigarola, who throwing himself upon his knees before the Ten, with tears and prayers implored the Venetians to defend his hapless city from Count Francesco. The Council was impressed, but decided to reserve its answer for a little while.

A few months after the arrival of Panigarola, the Duke of Savoy sent an ambassador to Venice upon a similar errand. How was it possible that the Venetians, so respectable a state, could support a wearisome adventurer like Count Francesco? Savoy gave the Venetians to understand that if they continued to supply soldiers to the camp of Sforza he should reckon his behaviour on their part a casus belli. How much better it would be if the Venetians would acquiesce in an honourable peace between the Milanese republic and Savoy and Venice! This threefold league would effectually crush Francesco Sforza, and would establish plenty and security in devastated Lombardy; whereas if the present dissensions continue, both Orleans and Arragon would certainly come across the mountains to seek their profit here, and so should a great fire be lit in Italy which much effusion of blood would never quench. The Savoyard ambassador 223waxed really eloquent over the blessings of peace; for at this very time his master was writing to his father the Antipope at Lucerne: “The Milanese have secretly elected me chief, but what am I to do with Italy for Sforza, Germany for the emperor, and France for Orleans?” All indeed that he could do was faire entretenir les Milanais par tous moyens, sans avoir dict encore ne non, ne ouy; et, d’aultre part, envoyer à Venise, et aussi envers le Comte François, et aultres où il est nécessaire practicquer quelque bons moyens par voye d’accord.^[77] Of all these various plots the most successful for Savoy would have been a peace strong enough to set at naught Francesco Sforza, to restore prosperity to Lombardy, and to enable the Milanese to elect him, with apparent spontaneity, protector of their state. The first step was to secure peace with Venice; and he found the Venetians in an acquiescent mood. The important city of Crema had followed the lead of Lodi and Codogno, and had declared itself the subject of Saint Mark; and the Venetians, who could not keep Crema and continue to ally of Count Francesco, suddenly came to terms with Panigarola, declared themselves the champions of the Milanese republic, and offered the Duke of Savoy not merely a friendly neutrality but an offensive alliance.^[78] They resumed their negotiations for the assassination of Count Francesco, and, “without a thought,” says Corio, “of the league or law divine,” despatched him a message informing him that they, 224his comrades in arms of yesterday, should become to-morrow his enemies upon the field of battle.

Count Francesco received the news with great gravity, without a sign of anger, or sorrow, or displeasure; although his situation was becoming really desperate; for, as the Venetian legate maliciously informed him, the Venetians were negotiating alliances with Savoy, with Arragon, and with the Pope. As to Savoy, Sforza forestalled them; for he forthwith despatched a messenger to Turin with terms so advantageous to Duke Louis that that unstable personage put the Venetians out of mind and settled into peace with Sforza: who, enabled to turn his entire force against Venice, drove his late allies back beyond the Adda, defeated them utterly at Caravaggio, made peace with them as a victor with success before him, and in the middle of October turned his arms against the Milanese republic.

Sforza had disarmed Savoy and conquered Venice; but he had not yet come to an end of his enemies. In November, 1447, Charles of Orleans seriously resumed his intentions of a Milanese campaign. Already in July, Burgundy had rewritten to the Venetians entreating them to favour Orleans; and the council had replied^[80] that though their acts of late may have appeared hostile to the cause of Orleans, yet nothing but the instinct of self-preservation had ever induced them to make peace with Francesco, and their sentiments were still most loyal to the house of France. Nothing appeared more likely than a French invasion; Savoy already had warned the Venetians of 225it. On the 14th of November the Duke of Orleans wrote to the city of Asti,^[79] saying that he was now positively certain of the alliance with Brittany and Burgundy, and that before Christmas, his army, under Jean Focaud, would arrive in Lombardy. This letter, written in a tone of the cheerfullest high spirits, was followed a week later by one equally sanguine and happy: Dei gratia, omnia negotia Lombardie ad nos spectantia sunt in his presentibus optime disposita. Jacques Cœur has pronounced himself favourable to the affair. And on the 4th of December Orleans writes that the companies of Foix and Bourbon are on the point of departure; and that John of Angoulême is arranging with the king for the reinforcement from the royal troops.

But Christmas came, and the phantom armies of the expectant Orleans remained as visionary as before. Yet on the 7th of January he writes, still sanguine, still bent on conquering his castle in the air: “The army will be larger than we thought; for all the French princes will lend their aid. Burgundy is sending great sums of gold and abundant troops into Lombardy.” The Duke is as full as ever of his schemes and hopes. But this is the last of his letter; and before his messenger could bring an answer home from Asti, Milan had found a master among the ranks of Italy.

For famine and weariness and civil discord had broken the spirit of the Milanese republic. Even 226Savoy, even Venice, were seized with pity, and murmured to each other that almost any change would be desirable, ut hec afflicta et misera Lombardia, dudum guerrarum disturbijs lacessita, aliquando quiescere possit; tot populis, tot calamitatibus, totque oppressorum vocibus compatiendum et miserandum erat. Anything short of the success of Count Francesco would be a happy alternative to such disaster. And in Milan itself the discontent was as pronounced. The Guelfs still vociferated against Francesco, but the Ghibellines, the party of the nobles, grew slowly and strongly in favour of the Count. All parties at last were out of conceit with this miserable liberty, which was but another name for civil disunion and ruin. Some were for the Pope, and some for Charles of France, and these were the Guelfs. Some were for Savoy, some for the King of Naples. But all these princes lived a long way off; they had no armies ready to combat the Venetians, whom each and every faction dreaded now and hated worse than famine. When one day Gasparo de Vimercato rose up in public conclave, and suggested that Milan should give herself to Count Francesco Sforza, it was incredible how suddenly the whole mind of the city turned towards the Count. The Count was the son-in-law of the late duke. The city was familiar with him. He was known to be humane and generous and strong. Should the city elect him, in one day he could dissipate the famine, the battles, the fear of enemies, and the suspicion of treachery, which for thirty months had made the misery of Milan. Leonardo Gariboldo, Aloigi Trombetta, and Gasparo da Vimercato were 227sent at once to acquaint Count Francesco, that by the free voice of the people he had been elected lord of Milan.

Among the innumerable conspirators, intriguing diplomatists, and successful tradesmen who filled the high places of the Italy of that day, Francesco Sforza appears at least a man. Simple, direct, and brave, no sudden honour and no reverse of fortune took from him that natural dignity of a balanced mind which is one of the finest attributes of the Italian. Good sense and kindness made a moral force of this captain of adventure. He disciplined his troops, erected a court-martial, and punished offences of rape and violence by death; so that while the miserable populations of Lombardy had everything to fear from the other armies that occupied their soil, gradually they learned to feel themselves secure in the rough, mailed hands of Count Francesco. Among the soldiers his reputation was more than mortal. We have to leap over a dozen generations before the prestige of the Little Corporal present an analogy to such devotion. But Count Francesco was loved and respected even by his enemies; and there is a story of him which has ever struck me as among the most charming in military history. It was at the siege of Como, in that very February of 1450, when, unknown to him, the Milanese who had so long and so furiously resisted him, were crying, “Sforza! Sforza!” in an ecstasy of hungry enthusiasm in the great piazza. Meanwhile Sforza and his men were occupying Monte Barro; by means of a little hill in front, overlooking the Adda, and fortified by five bastions, they kept in 228check the troops of Venice and Milan, ranged in impotent lines along the further side of the river. The bulwarks of the little hill were but slight, improvised in a few days for the occasion, and the poor Italian artillery of the fifteenth century, wrought no great destruction; yet such was the spell of Sforza’s name, that the two armies across the Adda never ventured to try the place by assault. One night, however, it leaked out that Count Francesco was not in the fort; he had gone up the mountain to arrange a fresh disposition of his troops upon the summit of Monte Barro. In his absence it was decided to attack the hill, and in the late February dawn the Venetians and Milanese poured under the slender bulwarks, armed with artillery, which silenced that of the fort, and, planting their scaling ladders against the ramparts, they soon were in possession of the place. Now, as it happened, unknown to either army, late at night Count Francesco had returned home, and hearing the clamour in the place, he started out of sleep and strode at once to the ramparts, ignorant that the enemy had taken the place by surprise and that his soldiers, unaware of his presence in their midst, had already given the sign of surrender. “Defend yourselves, for I am here!” rang out the clear voice of the Count; and at that moment he perceived that he stood alone in the midst of his foes. But the mere fact of his presence was a better defence to his bastions than a world of soldiers. The assailants, like chidden children, withdrew from their positions, dropped the guns and pieces they were carrying away, and with uncovered heads made for their scaling-ladders. 229As they passed the Count, standing alone there, they made for his hand—kneeling, crowding to touch it. “Father and ornament of Italian arms we salute you,” cried the soft Venetian voices; and in little knots and groups, as quickly as they might, they dropped over the walls into the moat again, leaving Count Francesco the master of his ramparts. It was to this man, so eminently the hero of his hour, that the three Milanese delegates brought their news of the submission of the city.

On Feb. 25, 1450, Count Francesco Sforza rode into Milan. He rode at the head of his troops, and he had taken care that his future subjects should welcome the army; for every soldier was hung all over, from corslet, from waist, from shoulder, and from arm and hand, with loaves of bread—great clustering rolls and loaves that hid the armour underneath, as much as every man could carry. It was fine, wrote Corio, to see how the famished Milanese fell upon the troops, avidly tearing the longed-for food from neck and arm, and falling to at once (con quanta ingordigia!) upon the delicious bread. “Sforza! Sforza!” cried the citizens, a thousand times more eagerly than before. Some of them cried out in the words of the Psalms Hæc est dies, quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et lætemur in ea! Sforza was in the city; his troops and his bread had effectually secured his future. The Venetians might brew another poison. Charles of Orleans at Chauny might return that loan of men and gold which his cousin of Burgundy had lent him. Louis of Savoy wrote to his father at Lucerne: Le Comte François a obtenu ceste ville par 230intelligence, déceptions et pratiques et non mie par force de guerre. All these pretenders, who had felt the bird already in the hand, must dissemble as best they might their disappointment. But Genoa^[81] and Florence welcomed the chance of peace, and in November, 1451, joined in a defensive league with Milan against the Dauphin, King of France, the Duke of Savoy, and the Venetians. Lombardy was no longer the devastated battlefield of doubtful victory. Count Francesco Sforza was effectually the master of Milan.

IV.

It is one thing to have a thing by might, another to hold that thing by right. The theory that might is right appears sufficient in the hour of conquest, yet it is but a slender basis for future government; and Francesco Sforza, safely lodged in Milan, hedged round with troops, greeted as duke by the very citizens who had so long repulsed him, was none the less aware that men regarded him merely in the light of a successful usurper. Even in Milan there were many who regretted the loss of a legitimate dynasty; there were those who looked to the King of Naples, the adopted heir of the late duke; and there was a party anxious to proclaim the suzerainty of the Emperor; and a larger party still who placed their faith in Charles of Orleans, the legitimate descendant of the great Giangaleazzo. In the eyes of such men as 231these what claim had Captain Francesco Sforza, soi-disant> Duke of Milan? He was merely a successful soldier, the husband of the late duke’s bastard daughter, unmentioned as heir to Milan in any testament or codicil, who by force and famine had succeeded in imposing himself, as the alternative to starvation, upon the miserable Milanese. In the sight of the Emperor, Francesco Sforza had compromised whatever shadow of right he might once have had by accepting from the illegal hand of the people the imperial gift of his duchy.

Before the feudal law Francesco Sforza was merely a usurper, and a compromised usurper. To Orleans he appeared the representative of the illegitimate branch defrauding the legal heirs of their just claims. To Arragon, Sforza was the man who pockets treasure bequeathed expressly to another. The humiliation of this position is apparent. Yet Sforza, with much magnanimity, refused to ruin his subjects with taxes in order to buy the imperial investiture—a purchasable commodity, as his successors and his predecessors knew, and one which would have legalized his situation. At first, in the triumph of success, he appears to have enjoyed his illegal honours, his glory as a popular hero; and he affirmed that he preferred to rest his claims upon the people’s voice. On March 25, 1450, they pronounced him Duke of Milan.

Sforza made a good ruler. Under him Milan ceased to be the prey of miserable dissensions and disorder, and the streets no longer ran with the cries of Guelf or Ghibelline. The soldier proved an excellent despot; not harsh or selfish, as might have been 232expected from a man sprung from so little and taught in so rude a school. He governed the people for the good of the people, making his own gain but an accident of their advantage; and that magnanimous and disastrous impulse which made him refuse to tax the poor in order to purchase his investiture is characteristic of the man.

Yet even in Milan there were many ill content to thrive under the orderly government of this benevolent usurper. Many voices that famine had silenced soon began to whisper—Republicans, Orleanists, Guelfs, Ghibellines were alike jealous and ill at ease under the military dictatorship of Sforza. Another party in the city headed by the Dowager-duchess still kept alive the pretensions of Savoy, and he was able to write to Lucerne that on the whole the news from Milan was not bad, for the people were already beginning to dislike Francesco Sforza, and that Madame de Milan proved herself an efficient supporter of his claims.

But if there was discontent in Milan, outside the walls the success of Sforza was regarded with unqualified hatred and desire for vengeance. Savoy wished to oust him from his seat. France and Orleans and Arragon and Germany thought it sufficient for the present to brand him as usurper. But the hatred of the Venetians for the man who once had been their servant was of a deeper kind, and they did not shrink from plotting his murder. On April 22, 1450, they had already decreed his death, and by August 26th the plan was in full train. The Council had heard through that gentleman and soldier, Ser Giacobo 233Antonio Marcello of Crema, that Vittore dei Scoraderi, the squire of Francesco, est contentus occidere Comitem Francescum; et sicut omnes intelligere possunt, mors illius comitis est salus et pax nostra et totius Italiæ. Nothing was to be sent in writing to this person which might compromise the Venetian Senate, but Marcello was instructed to offer him ample terms. Further injunctions were despatched on September 2nd, and early in December we hear again of a candidate, una persona intelligente et discreta, not a Venetian subject, who promised to despatch Count Francesco with aliqua venenosa materies.^[82] To this intelligent assistant the Council recommended the use of certain little round pellets which, thrown upon the fire, exhale a most sweet and delectable odour; but before they were despatched for experiment on so illustrious a subject a secret trial was to be given them in Venice on the person of a prisoner condemned to death for larceny. In May, 1451, the Council added three other persons to the conspiracy, and by June the proffered reward had grown to the extravagant sum of 5,000 ducats, with a yearly revenue of 1,000 ducats in addition, and liberty to recall four exiles. In return for so much munificence it is expected that Count Francesco “shall by your industry be despatched before the end of October.” But in August an extension of leave was granted until December. Then the messages became frequent; and it is easy to divine that the noble person who is to despatch the Count is none other than Innocentio Cotta, a man of one of the great 234Guelf houses of Milan, who, despite his blue blood, was the most ardent champion of popular rights, and who is familiar to the readers of Corio’s history as the head and front of that little group of nobili audacissimi, who in 1459, unbroken by famine and long misery, spurred the people of Milan on to resist the arms of Sforza, and plundered the party of the Ghibellines for money to furnish troops to defend the city. The success of Count Francesco had added ruin to the chagrin and hatred of this man, and one of the conditions that Cotta demanded of the Venetians was that he should regain quelle forteze, terre e possessioni mie chio goldeva al tempo de la felice memoria del duca passato. To this man, even as to the Council, it appeared that the death of Count Francesco could only be useful and fertile in good (practica non potest esse nisi utilis et fructuosa, quum ex ea nullum damnum sequi potest), and with the sentiments less of an assassin than of a lofty classic tyrannicide—a character ever dear to the Italians—Innocentio Cotta received, in his Brescian exile, the little round and perfumed pellets of poison.

No less than eighteen times between the August of 1448 and the December of 1453 did the Venetian Council instigate their assistant to the deed. Poisons were despatched to him and apparently administered. But the venom of the Venetians was more odious than fatal. Their poisons, sublimated from an irrational medley of volatile substances, had no regular chemical action, and the receipts of them which remain exhibit an incoherent confusion of mercury, sal-volatile, copperas, cantharides, burned yeast, salts 235of nitre and arsenic, from which, after the endless simmerings and powderings of their preparation, the most deadly qualities had evaporated, and which left (according to the analysis of Professor Boutlerow) a comparatively harmless combination of ammoniacal chlorides.

The sedative prescription made no perceptible effect upon the iron constitution of the soi-disant Duke of Milan. He probably remained in total ignorance of the poison so frequently administered in the unbroken Venice glasses; but he could not remain equally unaware of the distaste and suspicion which environed him, and he grew to desire some superior show of legality. The troops and bread, with which he had convinced the Milanese, were admirable agents, but they could not do everything. Francesco Sforza had six young sons, and in his heart there increased that invincible longing to found a dynasty which has overcome so many conquerors. Somewhere in the Archives, he began to think, in some unfound testament or neglected codicil, there must be surely some mention of his wife, the late Duke’s only child. With possession already in its favour, the slightest mention in the old Duke’s will would serve to legalize the dynasty of Sforza. But nowhere in will or codicil was there any last reversion in favour of Madonna Bianca. The searchers only brought to light the testament of Giangaleazzo, which bequeathed Milan, failing direct male heirs, to the sons of his daughter Valentine.

Still, if Francesco Sforza could not legalize his own succession, he could at least secure himself against 236the raising of better-founded claims. On February 19, 1452,^[83] Count Francesco wrote to Andriano Oliari of Pavia (the Oliari were a family of notaries to whom for generations the Archives of Milan were entrusted) commanding him to come at once to Milan and to bring with him to the palace the original will of Giangaleazzo Visconti,

“for [he explained], because of certain matters

which fall out at present, it is necessary that we see

the testament made by the illustrious quondam duke

the first.... Thou must come to-morrow, Sunday,

the twentieth of the present month, here, to our

presence, and bring with thee the said original will....

And we advise thee, that for the viewing of the

said will we will deal with thee according as thou

wouldst.”

Oliari and his father before him had been servants of the legal Dukes. Something in the tone of Sforza’s letter, its awkward mingling of the menace and the bribe, gave pause to the faithful notary. He had no mind to render up so sacred a deposit to the tender mercies of this blunt old soldier, who signed himself “Cichus” (Frank), and who was wholly without the dignity of the legitimate tyrants. Oliari wrote back and said that he believed a copy of the original will would be found to answer every purpose.

The so-called Duke of Milan was irate, and despatched 237a curt letter to the suspicious and insubordinate lawyer, and by the same messenger he sent a line to the Castellan of Pavia, informing him that Oliari had not come, and bidding him despatch the notary at once, cum dicto testamento et non cum la copia. But neither the Duke nor the constable of the castle could induce Oliari to go back from his decision. “I really cannot come,” he replied to Sforza on February 24th, “for I have neither money nor horses.” Now Pavia is not so long a journey from Milan, but that, to serve a sovereign, a man might borrow his neighbour’s hackney. The same day, the 24th, the Duke replied in anger, both to Oliari and to the castellan, that he could not conceive why it should be so difficult to come at the said testament. “And forasmuch as you hold dear our favour, and under pain of rebellion, you must be here with us to-morrow with the said will, for if you dost not come we will make you repent it.” Oliari dared not hold out against so ominous a command. He made in secret five copies of the precious document, and then we may suppose that he took the original to Sforza, for no more letters require it from his custody. Thus the original will of Giangaleazzo Visconti was destroyed.

But while Sforza was stooping to a crime in order to protect himself against the rivalry of Orleans, as a fact that pretender was less dangerous than he had been before. However good his claim might be, his inefficiency was a terrible counterpoise. When,^[85] at 238the new year of 1454, Alfonso the Magnanimous wrote to Venice requesting the government to continue their relations with Orleans, the Venetians replied that Orleans was too far off and too unready. They were as desirous as Arragon to get rid of the usurper. A month before they strove to enlist Arragon in favour of their novel candidate, they had written to Savoy,^[84] asking Duke Louis to join with them in requesting the Dauphin of France to invade Italy and suppress Francesco Sforza. They proposed that the Dauphin should conquer the Ticinese and Piacenza for himself, and the Duchy of Milan for the Duke of Orleans. In case the Duke was not minded to go to this expense and danger for a cousin’s sake, the Venetians let it be understood that any French prince would be agreeable to them upon the throne of Milan.

V.

The House of Orleans had no more dangerous enemy than the royal house of France. Matters had greatly changed since, immediately after the liberation of Orleans, Charles VII. had seconded his claim to the Milanese. The reduction to insignificance of the great feudal houses in general, and particularly the reduction of Orleans, was now the policy of the French crown; and at that moment the policy of the already inscrutable Dauphin appears to have been the conquest of a kingdom which should comprise the Dauphiny, the Ticinese, Asti, the Piacentine angle of 239the Emilia, and the entire stretch of Liguria. To the restless contriver of a plan so bold the claims of Sforza and of Orleans came equally amiss; and, in secret, the chief enemy of either credulous pretender was the Dauphin.

Sforza, however, had little to fear from Orleans, and less from the French. In fact, in King Charles he found at this difficult period his ablest friend. The records of the Archives of Milan, from the year 1452 until the death of King Charles, abound in friendly letters, and are evidence of the cordial relations existing not only between the Duke of Milan and the King of France, but between the House of Sforza and the royal Governor of Asti. In 1459 the King besought Francesco to ask the hand of the little Princess Marie d’Orléans for his only son; but we may presume that Orleans would not consent to so much recognition of the usurper, for the negotiation came to nothing. Yet with the Court of France Francesco continued on terms of affectionate friendship and mutual respect.

In 1453 the Dauphin still had designs on Italy, and offered to the Venetian Signory his aid in Italy to combat Count Francesco.^[86] It was arranged that he 240should come with from eight to ten thousand men, dispossess Sforza, and conquer for himself a Duchy 241of Milan to extend from Adda to Ticino, from Padua 242beyond Piacenza. Or, if the King and the Dauphin would guarantee the army, Venice professed herself willing to aid the Duke of Orleans in the same undertaking. But while these princes were arranging their future conquests, a spirit stronger than they was making these conquests impossible—a spirit which, a score of years ago, had begun to draw together Scotland and England, those ancient enemies, to the alarm of France; a spirit which had estranged Burgundy and Brittany from their English companions in so many battles, and which was leading them to the feet of the long-despised and outraged King of France; a spirit which now should reconcile Venice with Sforza, Florence with Milan, and make, for a brief moment of millennium, those immemorial foes at peace together; a spirit which awoke in these middle years of the fifteenth century—aroused Heaven knows whence or how—and strangely changed the world it breathed across: I have named the spirit of Nationality.

At Christmas-time in 1453 the Venetians spared neither pains nor prayers nor promise to induce the Dauphin to come and suppress Count Francesco Sforza. In April of the next year^[89] they sent to tell him, as delicately as possible, that they had no further need of his services (a refined way of informing him that they would oppose him), since they had made peace with the man whom four months ago 243they had called the Common Enemy of his countrymen, and whom they had so many times endeavoured to assassinate. And probably the Dauphin was not sorry. For the spirit that animated these Italians inspired him also. Already it had touched his intelligent and sensitive spirit. Already, in 1447,^[88] he had laughed for joy when the French lost Genoa, and had declared “le Roy se gouvernoit si mal qu’on ne pouvoit pis.” In the five years between 1445 and 1450 the Dauphin had passed from the friendship of Orleans to the friendship of Burgundy, and his ideal had changed. He raged to see the King prefer Italy to the north, and amuse himself with taking Genoa and securing Asti when he should have set to conquering Normandy. He said aloud that the true place for such a King as that was in such a Hermitage as the Duke of Savoy’s. He plotted to seize the government of affairs himself, and leave the King, in prosperous desuetude, to amuse himself with his Belle Agnès and his pleasures. As we know, the plot fell through, and the impatient Dauphin, a discomfited fugitive, was himself the one to seek a hermitage at the Court of Burgundy. There he spent five years of chafing exile and mortification while his father ruled France, not unsuccessfully, after his own fashion, pursuing shadows indeed in Italy, yet at home administering affairs and inventing a regular army with no less zeal and skill for this extraneous ambition. Louis was still at the Court of Philip of Burgundy when, in 1461, he heard the news of his father’s death. And 244the prince who, of all others, should do most for the reintegration of his country ascended the throne of France.^[87]