Note 61 — Chapter I · —How the King of France cajoled the English after the Duke of Burgundy’s Death, for fear they should have interrupted him in the Conquest of the Territories belonging to the said Duke.—1477.

Federigo da Montefeltro, second Duke of Urbino, succeeded his natural brother Oddantonio, in 1444. His character is thus sketched by a writer in the Edinburgh Review (xciv. 348.): “He was a man for whom every human being that becomes acquainted with him is bound to express his love and reverence. He himself was of a loving, a reverencing, and a thankful nature. He was a soldier, yet a lover of books; religious, but not bigoted; energetic, but superior to anger; severely bred, yet cheerful; voluptuous by temperament, but not by habit; a prince at once magnificent and paternal; a right gentleman and fellow-creature; and, above all, a man true to his word in an age of liars. He had the good fortune to receive an excellent education, as far as one person could give it. His master understood the training both of mind and body. At eight years of age he was affianced, and at fifteen he was married. He studied the art of war under Piccinino and Sforza, whose different systems of daring and caution he is said to have combined. He had long and successful contests with Sigismund Malatesta, his neighbour, a ferocious dilettante, who committed murders, and struck medals. He had also the honour of being excommunicated by Pope Eugene the Fourth for adhering to an unfortunate friend; became successively Captain-General of the Florentines, of the Duke of Milan, and of the King of Naples, the last of whom he delighted by his honesty; was then general in the service of the Church; refused to break his word with the most faithless of his enemies; built a splendid palace and library, and kept a stately court, which did not hinder him from mixing in the pleasantest manner with his people; was chosen commander of the first National Confederation, prototype of the measure so often since desired by Italians, and so invariably nullified by their divisions; helped to procure for his country, nevertheless, twenty-eight years of comparative tranquillity; attended with pomp the convocation of Pope Sixtus IV., who invested him with the dukedom, and married a nephew to his daughter; received the order of the Garter from our Edward IV., which, though truly fit for such a mirror of knighthood, was bestowed with an eye to his good offices with the Pope; indulged his love of scholarship and philosophy, and patronised art and science; rejected with scorn and horror a proposal to aid the Roman Court in the assassination of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother, yet thought it no dishonour to conceal the plot from its objects, and to conduct troops against them for his papal employer; found himself, nevertheless, in a short time fighting on the side of Lorenzo against papal encroachment; and on the 10th of September, in the year 1482, died of a fever, caught during a campaign, and rendered fatal by his refusal to quit his post.”—See Dennistoun’s Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino.