Читать книгу Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent - Alfred von Reumont - Страница 17

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Like every unsuccessful conspiracy, this also contributed to strengthen the power of those whom it was intended to ruin. In the proclamations of the Republic to foreign powers it was particularly emphasised, as we can well understand, that the freedom of state and city had been saved from great danger, and the rescue was of course acknowledged with praise and thanksgiving. ‘Already,’ wrote King Ferrante, on September 28, to Lorenzo de’ Medici,[135] ‘we loved you on account of your excellent qualities and the services done by your grandfather and father. But as we have lately heard with what prudence and manly courage you behaved in the late revolutions, and how courageously you placed yourself in the foremost ranks, our affection to you has grown remarkably. We wish, then, the illustrious Piero all happiness with so worthy a son, and congratulate the Florentine people on so eminent a protector of their freedom, and ourselves on a friend whose excellent gifts increase visibly every day. Perhaps it would be our wish to incite you to praiseworthy actions, but your noble and active nature does not need encouragement, not to mention that you have the example of your grandfather and your father constantly before your eyes.’ The Republic had informed the French king of these events on September 28; the answer came from Bourges only on January 14 in the following year, but it expressed Louis XI.’s friendly feelings.[136] It was very important to him to remain in good understanding with Florence. He was long in friendly relations with the house of Medici, and during his residence at Mont Luçon in May 1465 granted to Piero and his legitimate heirs the privilege of bearing the lilies in their coat of arms.[137] The blameless and well-deserved reputation, says the King, which the deceased Cosimo de’ Medici had gained during his life by his actions and in all his transactions, which were conducted with prudence and virtue, gives his children and relations a claim to honourable consideration.

The influence exercised by Louis XI. on the development of the Italian affairs of his time makes it necessary to give a retrospect of the policy and situation of this monarch, under whom the French kingdom began to assume that form which was completed by Richelieu. Louis XI. had in 1461, on the death of his father, whom he succeeded at the age of thirty-eight, found the country freed indeed from foreign foes, after a hundred years’ struggle, but loosely held together. For half the provinces of his kingdom recognised the King indeed as their supreme lord, but were independent of him with regard to their administration. They pursued a policy of their own, concluded alliances of peace and war, while, as in the case of the most powerful of these great feudatories, Charles Duke of Burgundy, the union of French districts with foreign territories belonging nominally to the German empire, constituted a power which, if they won over their neighbours to their interests, might enter the lists with royal France. Louis, as Dauphin, long at variance with his father and the government, had relied upon Duke Philip the Good. Under him the dukedom, comprising the greater part of Belgium of the present day, the Netherlands, with Burgundy, Artois, Picardy, and Franche Comté, rose to the height of its prosperity and power. Scarcely had Louis ascended the throne, however, than he took measures against the great feudatories which kindled the war known under the name of the War of the Public Good (Guerre du bien public), in which Burgundy was also involved. This war was indeed terminated in 1465 by the treaties of Conflans and St. Maur, but only to break out afresh in another shape two years later, when Charles the Bold had succeeded his father on the ducal throne. Thus fully occupied at home and threatened in his own capital, Louis had closely connected his foreign affairs with his internal policy. At the commencement of his reign he had declared the pragmatic sanction of his father, which placed limits on the authority of the Holy See in his country, to be abrogated; nevertheless, when Pius II. refused to comply with his wishes in political matters, he permitted a contradiction on the part of his parliament which practically destroyed that authority. In 1462 he had allowed John of Anjou to be defeated in the war against King Ferrante, and thus made enemies of this family, to whom Provence belonged, while he likewise estranged Duke Charles of Orleans by allying himself closely with Francesco Sforza, whose states, as we have seen, were claimed by the former on the ground of his mother’s hereditary rights. The Duke of Milan had at least shown himself grateful by sending him, during his war with the allied princes, the auxiliary troop which Galeazzo Maria was commanding when his father’s death summoned him home.

The year 1467 did not begin peacefully. It was very well known in Florence that the exiles, untaught by the failure of those who had made a similar attempt under far more favourable circumstances, after the fall of the Albizzi, had, for the greater part, quitted the places of exile assigned them, and retired to the Venetian territory. Here they tried every means of returning home with foreign assistance. Some applied even to the Venetian Signoria, and others to the General-in-Chief, Bartolommeo Colleone.

Venice had no honourable excuse for breaking with the Florentines. Outwardly the two states were in harmony. In the beginning of January 1467, both had joined the defensive alliance concluded at Rome under the protection of Pope Paul II. which was to secure peace in Italy. Florence had accepted the conditions, stipulating that ‘the French King, whose authority essentially aided the preservation of peace and the safety of the different states, should be permitted to join the alliance at his pleasure, with authority next to that of the Pope.’[138] This stipulation, however, did not appear to satisfy the Republic when, before long, the political sky was clouded, so that in the following March, Francesco Nori, a confidant of the Medici, was sent to Louis XI. to propose an offensive and defensive alliance, irrespective of their engagements with the other Italian powers.[139] The hostile disposition of Venice was unmistakable, although an open breach of the peace was avoided. The old grudge on account of the views on Milan, frustrated by the Medici, came again into the foreground. It was proposed to employ the hatred of the exiles in order to obtain in Florence a government with obligations towards Venice, and therefore dependent on her, and to overturn the power in Milan already shaken by Francesco Sforza’s death. Bartolommeo Colleone was to be the instrument.

Whoever stands on the Piazza near the church of St. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice will be reminded of long-vanished times by an equestrian statue in bronze, almost more than by the surrounding buildings. A slight, graceful pedestal supports a war-horse in a quiet but powerful attitude, whose strong limbs do not prevent a mannerised treatment of the neck and head. Upon this, on a high saddle, and holding the richly-adorned bridle, sits the somewhat thick-set figure of a knight, clothed in mail from head to foot, and showing beneath the helmet a bold, marked countenance, which, slightly turned to the right, seems to challenge an enemy. Thus has a Florentine artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, depicted Bartolommeo Colleone, whose magnificence and wealth may be admired in his chapel built in the cathedral of Bergamo, which contains his tomb and that of his daughter Medea. Born within the territory of this city, and acquainted early in his paternal home with the miseries of war, Bartolommeo had earned his spurs in the Neapolitan wars, had fought under the unhappy Carmagnola for Venice, against Sforza for the Milanese republic, then in Venetian service against the same enemy, and after the peace of Lodi retired to his castle of Malpaga, in the valley of the Serio, enriched by his campaigns, a strong man, but resenting his fate, because, although the republic of St. Mark had chosen him as their captain-general amid great honours, and had paid him a considerable sum, there was no prospect before him of fresh laurels to be gained. The exiled Florentines now came to him, having already had connections with him, and excited his ambition. Diotisalvi Neroni was at Malpaga in October 1466, from whence he wrote to a confidant that great events were approaching; if he could be with him for two hours, he would tell him things to astonish him.[140] It seems that a prospect was held out to the condottiere of a dominion in the many-lorded and fickle Romagna—nay, of even gaining Milan itself. His old connections in various quarters, as well as the disturbances always prevailing under the minor dynasties, which gravitated now in one and now in another direction, would enable him to bring a considerable number of troops together.

In the Romagna—a name which is here employed in its widest signification for all the country from the Lombard frontiers to those of the march of Ancona, but which in a restricted sense comprises Ferrara, Bologna, the exarchate of Ravenna and Romandiola—the abnormal state of things still prevailed to which Dante alluded when he answered the question of Guido of Montefeltro, in the lower world by saying, that in the hearts of his oppressors the land was never free from war, even if peace prevailed there for the moment.[141] On February 14, 1279, Rudolph of Hapsburg relinquished this province, which had been till then regarded and governed as a part of the empire, in favour of the Church, which put forward old claims to a part, and the inhabitants had promised to be true to the Roman Church as heretofore to the Roman Empire; they wished their allegiance to be measured by their former obedience to the empire, of which the Church was the rightful successor. But the Popes had from the beginning shared their authority with the great and small lords who ruled in the various cities, the propinquity of which only made the feuds of the Signori and citizens more frequent and bitter. When the poet mentions the Polentani of Ravenna and Cervia, the Ordelaffi of Forli, the Malatesta of Rimini, Mainardo of Susinana, in Faenza and Imola, these are only a few out of the great number of those who allowed only a general superintendence to the representatives of the Popes, the Counts of Romagna and the legates sent from Rome or Avignon, while they governed almost unrestrictedly in their cities and the counties appertaining to them. When Pope Clement VI. sent the Cardinal D’Albornoz as legate to this state, about the middle of 1353, Romagna was lost to the Papacy. Albornoz regained, partially reconquered it; but he left the domination of the different families mostly as he found it, taking into account the inclinations and traditions of the cities themselves, and contenting himself in most cases with restoring the Papal authority as the supreme presiding power. In this way the municipalities retained their statutory rights and financial administration, were exempted from taxes and levies on payment of a very moderate feudal contribution, and chose their officers themselves, or, as happened with regard to the office of Podestà, presented the candidates to the Pope or to his legate. The position of the Papal plenipotentiaries was, however, all the more difficult when they took up their residence in great cities, where factions always prevailed; and the tedious insurrection which, actively participated in by Florence, spread itself over Romagna at the time of the last Pope in Avignon, Gregory XI., beginning at the Patrimony and Umbria, showed on what a weak footing the Papal power stood in the trans-Apennine provinces not long after the death of Albornoz.

In the time of which we are treating circumstances were very different in different parts of Romagna, not only from internal and local causes, but also in consequence of the interference of neigbouring powers. For as already, in the middle of the preceding century, Giovanni Visconti, Archbishop and Lord of Milan, had seized upon Bologna, so did Gian Galeazzo fifty years later. Central Italy was probably preserved only by the death of the most powerful of the Visconti from subjection to their supremacy; and subsequently the last of that ambitious house did actually get the great city, though only for a time, into his power. Venice had already begun to fix her gaze on Romagna, and had taken a firm footing in Ravenna in 1440, having declared Ostasio da Polenta, her former protégé, to whom Filippo Maria Visconti had also attached himself, to have forfeited the ancient inheritance of his house, and sent him and his sons prisoners to Candia, whence none of them returned. While the republic of St. Mark thus began to gain territory on the seaside, and pursued a policy which some sixty years later brought about a most dangerous conflict with the Papacy, Florence made an attempt on the side of the Apennines, just as if the land was without a master. In various ways, by purchase and mortgage, by the subjection of petty lords such as the wide-spread Guidi, and the voluntary resignation by the communes of their independence (which happened with Modigliana in 1445), the Republic had extended its dominions more and more over the ridge of the mountain range, and created the territory, reaching far towards Faenza and Forli, which down to our day has borne the name of Grand-ducal Romagna. This was, however, not enough. The Accomandigia which has been spoken of in connection with the Tuscan lords and territories extended likewise to many in Romagna, and formed a political connection which would have been in direct opposition to the Papal sovereignty had this sovereignty not been so loose in its form. The Malatesta of Giaggiuolo, the Manfredi of Faenza and Imola, the Alidosi of Imola and Castel del Rio, the Ordelaffi of Forli, the counts of Montefeltro and Urbino, were all Florentine Raccomandati, as was the case with many families of Umbria, bordering upon Romagna and partly dependent upon her—the Accoromboni, Brancaleoni, Gabrielli of Gubbio, the Vitelli of Città di Castello, the Fortebracci of Montone, and the Trinci of Fuligno. The duration of the Accomandigia was very various; it was concluded for a certain number of years, just like a condotta or mercenary contract, or for life. The renewal followed then generally after a fixed interval, or from the successors of the stipulating parties in the former manner. The lords in the States of the Church made the reservation not to be obliged to fight against the Pope or his vicars, the legates or governors; some of them even refused to fight against the Angevin kings of Naples or the Roman people. What difficulties and perplexities must therefore arise from the frequent contests between the Popes and their feudatories, or between the former and their neighbours, out of such associations, is evident.

The state in this province actually most independent of Rome was Ferrara.[142] In the beginning of the thirteenth century the Ferrarese had elected Azzo VI. of Este their hereditary ruler, and the investiture granted him by Pope Innocent III. of considerable possessions in Romagna, as well as in the province of Ancona, had given the house much distinction. A century later, in consequence of a family quarrel, Venice attempted to put forth her claims to Ferrara, and Pope Clement V. was obliged to give way. The attempt of the latter to hold the town in the immediate control of the Church, at first successful, soon failed, and the citizens in 1317 recalled the family of Este, who were eleven years later invested with town and territory by Pope John XXII. The imperial fiefs acquired by the lords of Ravenna, from which they received in 1452 the ducal title from the Emperor Frederick III., nineteen years before Pope Paul II. granted it to Borso d’Este for Ferrara, made their position more independent than that of the other Papal feudatories; but certain rights relating to the republic of Venice, as well as the not always friendly neighbourhood on the lower Po, gave rise to complications which might easily become dangerous. Far less great in territory and power were the counts, afterwards dukes, of Urbino;[143] they, with their little land, were in the same political circumstances between Tuscany and Umbria, Romagna and Ancona. Their family was invested by Frederick Barbarossa with the hilly region of Montefeltro, which afterwards formed the north-western part of their state. In the first decade of the thirteenth century they established themselves in Urbino, which was subject to the Papacy, and gradually extended their possessions on both sides of the mountains—to the south by the acquisition of Gubbio and Cagli, to the north at a much later time as far as the Adriatic sea. They were a warlike race which had once given to the contest of Guelphs and Ghibellines a courageous general in Guido of Montefeltro, and had now one of the best and most highly-prized condottiere in Federigo, who assumed the government in 1444, and for whom Pope Sixtus IV. afterwards renewed the ducal title which his brother and predecessor had borne.

The Malatesta, Ordelaffi, Manfredi, and Alidosi were legally dependent only on the Popes. But they were just the families who caused perpetual strife. The Malatesta had established themselves in Rimini in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and in the following century enlarged their possessions by talent and skilful use of circumstances, but had again weakened their power by dividing into several lines. The three sons of Galeotto Malatesta, of whom the history of the wars of Visconti and Albornoz has much to relate, formed the lines of Rimini, Cesena, and Fano, the second of which expired in 1465 with Malatesta Novello; while Sigismondo, the legitimised son of the lord of Fano, had after the death without children of his uncle Carlo lord of Rimini, become his successor, and Rimini remained the centre of the dominions of this family. Sigismondo is a prototype of the city tyrants of the fifteenth century—talented, active, enterprising, a good warrior, the patron of intellectual effort, but passionate and untrustworthy, and stained with faithlessness and cruelty in a measure unusual even in those wild times. In 1447 and again in 1451 he fought in the pay of Florence against the Neapolitan Aragonese, then shared in Anjou’s enterprise against Naples, and was so pressed by Federigo of Montefeltro that only the republic of Venice, which he had served in the Morea, saved for him the remnant of his possessions. Pope Pius II. prevented Rimini from falling into the hands of the Venetians by investing Sigismondo with the sovereignty of the town and a little territory, reserving its lapse to the Holy See in case of his decease without rightful heirs, as had happened at Cesena in 1464. In 1466 Pope Paul II. endeavoured to persuade Sigismondo, on his return from the Morea, to relinquish Rimini, offering him the government of Spoleto and Fuligno—certainly a rich compensation, had not the intention too evidently been to weaken the Malatesta by detaching them completely from their native country and from the sea. His son Roberto, born like himself out of wedlock, but legitimised by Pope Nicholas V., had taken possession of Cesena in 1464, but was unable to retain it against the Papal strength, as the inhabitants, tired of the endless oppressions of the violent dynasties, rather surrendered themselves to the direct rule of the Church, which allowed them greater freedom in their movements and did not annoy them with taxes.

Confusion enough prevailed in the house of the Ordelaffi, who had taken a firm footing in Forli in the last decades of the thirteenth century, and at times ruled over Cesena. Albornoz had no worse opponent than Cecco (Francesco) Ordelaffi, whom only Venetian protection saved from complete ruin. His son Sinibaldo had returned by means of Florentine support in 1375 to Forli, where he fell, ten years later, a victim to a conspiracy of his two nephews. Antonio, the son of one of the latter, had joined the Florentines during the wars of the last Visconti in Romagna, and in 1441 they received him into their Accomandigia, and obtained for him the investiture of Forli from Pope Nicholas V. His two sons Cecco and Pino ruled at first together, but the latter in 1466 rid himself by violence of the former, who had been as bitter an enemy of Florence as Cecco was an ardent friend of the Republic. With the Manfredi too, who ruled in Faenza from 1314, there was nothing but quarrels and repeated changes of party. The towns of Faenza and Imola belonged in common to the different members of the family, and in such a manner that the eldest always conducted the government. But at the death of Guido Antonio, Taddeo Manfredi took possession of Imola in 1448, to the prejudice of his uncle Astorre, to whom the administration should have passed, and a contest arose which Pope Pius II., Francesco Sforza, and Florence tried to appease, without however procuring a real peace. Taddeo passed from one side to another, fought first in Florentine, then in Aragonese, and then again in Florentine pay. His uncle was not more constant. He had taken up arms for the Visconti in 1440, had been taken prisoner in the battle of Anghiari, and brought to Florence. Freed from prison, he had murdered him into whose power he had fallen in the battle at Bologna, for which Francesco Sforza set a price of a thousand gold florins on his head. Yet he succeeded in reconciling himself with the Republic, in whose service he fought against the Neapolitans in the Chiana valley in 1452. Florence had repeatedly concluded defensive alliances with both lines of the Manfredi since the year 1384. The Alidosi, once reigning in Imola, which they lost now to the Church, now to the Visconti, and now to the Manfredi, had been obliged to content themselves with the little Castel del Rio in the territory of Imola, towards the mountains, with which in 1392 they had joined the Florentine Accomandigia. A younger family had associated itself with these elder dynasties. Alessandro Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, had in 1445 acquired the lordship over Pesaro, by the cession of Galeazzo Malatesta, maternal grandfather of his wife Costanza da Varano, and maintained it under many changes of fortune. Pope Nicholas V. had invested him with the government; he had been an essential support to his brother in the contest for Milan, and he afterwards performed mercenary service for King Ferrante and for Venice.[144]

Among all the towns of this province, Bologna was the largest, richest, and most powerful, and would have been destined to exercise the greatest influence on the fate of Romagna, had not irreconcilable factions weakened her internally, and robbed her of the fruits of that heroic time in which she so gloriously conquered the Emperor Frederick II., and the lion of San Marco. The supremacy of the Church, which obtained greater authority here in proportion to the weakening of the civil constitutions of Lombardy and the bordering countries, was not able to suppress the factions which in 1337 brought the Pepoli to power, and thirteen years later gave the city into the hands of the Visconti, from whom Cardinal Albornoz wrested it after a possession of ten years. Even then the quarrels did not cease, which in the beginning of the fifteenth century brought the Visconti back again, who were again expelled by Cardinal Baldassar Cossa, to return a third time in 1438 and assume the position beside the Bentivogli (who had risen to the first rank among the contending native families) which belonged to the Popes. The evident endeavour of Filippo Maria Visconti to convert this relation into unlimited power, soon led to war. Supported by Florence and Venice, who fought here in their own cause as well as in that of Bologna, Annibale Bentivoglio completely defeated the Milanese army, August 14, 1443, on the plain of San Giorgio, only to fall two years afterwards beneath the dagger of murderers of high rank who were in league with the Duke. It was especially important for the Florentines not to let a party serviceable to their hereditary enemy rise to power in a city which they rightly regarded as a protection against the power of the Visconti. The members of the Bentivoglio family were, however, either too young, or not in a position, or not inclined to take the lead. Under these circumstances they hit upon a peculiar idea. The exiled Count of Poppi, Francesco da Guidi, then in Bologna, is said to have related that a cousin of Annibale Bentivoglio had had a love affair with a girl in the above mentioned castle of Casentino, and had a son who lived there with his maternal relatives. Cosimo de’ Medici, and, at his suggestion, Neri Capponi, who knew more about Casentino than anyone, took up the matter, and the end was that Sante, the nephew of Antonio da Cascese, was recognised as Sante Bentivoglio, waited upon in Florence most respectfully by deputies from Bologna, who escorted him to their city, where he succeeded in maintaining himself till his death by prudence, not unmixed with acts of violence towards his opponents.

As the Florentines had done the most in enabling Sante Bentivoglio to seize on the power, so they made it easier for him to preserve it. The Bolognese ambassadors had represented how the position of the city was such that they must throw themselves into the arms of the Duke of Milan if the Holy See did not deal mercifully with them. ‘Beg his Holiness,’ so wrote the Signoria on February 3, 1446, to their ambassador to Pope Eugenius IV., Paolo da Diaceto,[145] ‘to be gracious towards the poor Bolognese people, who have been so afflicted by oppression and misery, by fierce civil discord and strife, that it must move everyone to pity. The Bolognese hope from the gentleness of his Holiness, and the authority of the Republic of Venice, that it may be possible to discover some decent form of paying the Pope a reasonable tribute; but remaining otherwise in their present freedom, without Papal legates or other officers in the name of the Church. Do you make the observation that with people who are accustomed to bloodshed and full of suspicion, violence does not suffice; and that one must rather temporise in order to attain from them afterwards by love what violence cannot effect.’ So much, indeed, Bologna did not attain in the agreement concluded at Rome with Pope Nicholas V. on August 24, 1447, for she was obliged to receive a legate who shared the administration with the senate and the city magistrates. But the choice of these bodies was free; the city had its own militia and unrestricted power over its revenue, while the Papal troops were bound to protect her from foreign enemies. It is clear that such a relation might easily afford an opportunity for difficulties, and it is to be accounted a merit in Sante Bentivoglio that none arose under his government. When he died on October 1, 1463, his party appointed Giovanni, the son of Annibale and Donnina Visconti, then twenty years old, as his successor. By a treaty concluded with Pope Paul II. in 1466, the latter acquired a legal power such as none had had before him. This treaty secured him a seat and two votes in the Senate, which consisted almost entirely of his partisans and was renewed every six months, and thus placed him at the head of the citizens who, after Sante’s death, had already shown themselves so complaisant that they had conferred upon the youthful Giovanni the dignity of Gonfaloniere, to which only men of mature age could usually attain. By his marriage with Ginevra Sforza of Pesaro, Giovanni Bentivoglio entered into relationship with Milan, in which he hoped to gain some support against any hostility on the part of the Pope. That he held fast to his friendship with Florence was, to say nothing of the tradition of his predecessors, caused by his connections with Sforza. We have seen that it was he who gave Piero de’ Medici information of the unfriendly movements of Ercole d’Este.[146]

This was the state of Romagna when the country became the scene of warlike events. The Florentines had not ceased to negotiate with Venice, but in vain. Only by assuming that this Republic wished to fish in troubled waters can we find a key to the events of 1467. The last Visconti had accustomed his neighbours to his sending his condottiere upon them without declaration of war, under the pretext of dismissing them from his service. Venice had, however, not yet given so bad an example. There was a pretence of pacifying Bartolommeo Colleone, whose mercenary compact was expiring; but the condottiere must have known better the real intentions of the Signoria, for he would hardly have entered upon a daring undertaking had he feared their serious displeasure, instead of being certain of their opportune support, at least with money. When the Florentines saw that war was imminent, they concluded on January 4, 1467, at Rome and with Papal consent, the compact already mentioned with King Ferrante and the Duke of Milan. It was called ‘for the preservation of peace in Italy,’ and Venice acceded to it in due form; while Siena, Lucca, and the Margrave of Mantua were invited to join.[147] On the 18th, the alliance was proclaimed in Florence. An extraordinary tax of a hundred thousand gold florins was proclaimed to cover the first expenses of the war. In the preceding November the government had been already empowered by a special law passed in the Balia to enlist 1,500 horse and 500 foot, or, if necessary, twice as many; with power to raise extraordinary taxes, which excited violent complaints, as contrary to the freedom of the people and to good order,[148] for though they wished to be safe they did not like to pay. As the Duke of Milan had more troops than were necessary, two thousand of his cavalry were taken into pay. Donato Acciaiuoli had conducted the negotiations with Sforza. His cousin Agnolo was an exile, his sister-in-law a daughter of Diotisalvi Neroni; but his patriotism was trusted, and he deserved this confidence. Federigo of Montefeltro was appointed general-in-chief, and he accepted the offer, though Venice tried to turn him from it. Astorre and Taddeo Manfredi both took service with the Florentines. The Neapolitans, under the command of Napoleon Orsini, Count of Tagliacozza, crossed the Tronto in April, twelve squadrons of cavalry strong, and joined Federigo’s troops in Romagna.

On May 10, Bartolommeo Colleone crossed the Po. The lords of Mirandola and Carpi, Ercole of Este, and the Count Deifebo of Anguillara, who had been banished by the Pope, and was son of the old disturber of the environs of Rome, had joined him immediately. On his further march, the Ordelaffi of Forli and Alessandro Sforza of Pesaro came to him, the latter of whom, won over by Venice, opposed his own nephew; while Astorre Manfredi faithlessly turned his back upon Florence. Colleone’s army soon numbered 8,000 horse and 6,000 foot. Galeazzo Maria Visconti, persuaded by the representations of the Count of Urbino, now first set out with his troops and marched against the Count by way of Bologna, from whence men were sent to reinforce the allies. The general of the latter, now of equal strength with Colleone, would willingly have given battle; but he, on the one side, true to the old system of marches and counter-marches, avoided a decision, and on the other the presence of the Duke of Milan, whose experience did not equal his rank and claims, hindered the allied commander in his movements. At last Sforza was persuaded to visit Florence, and yield the command to Roberto da Sanseverino. Meanwhile the Count of Urbino attacked the enemy on July 25 at Molinella, in the territory of Imola. From a skirmish of the outposts of both armies a general battle arose, which was all the more bloody because light field-pieces were employed, and a Milanese troop of horse was enticed into an ambuscade; whereon, the Count, whose horse had been killed under him, commanded that no quarter should be given. The fight lasted for seven hours, in which, according to one of the lowest estimates, 300 men and 400 horses were killed—a great number for Italian warfare at that time. At nightfall they ceased to fight on Colleone’s proposal, and then the Count of Urbino and Alessandro Sforza, whose son Constanzo was amongst the prisoners, rode up to one another and shook hands.

The battle was, as we have said, undecided. The dread of the Venetians that their frontiers might be threatened—a dread which urged them to stir up Savoy and the Genoese exiles to make a diversion for the Duke of Milan, which was successful—shows on which side the advantage was. To this was added, that King Ferrante, however much he longed for peace, for which he exerted himself to the utmost by his ambassadors, voted for energetic continuance of the war in order to bring peace, and sent considerable reinforcements through his son Alfonso. Those reinforcements were indeed outweighed by the conduct of the Duke of Milan, who, discontented that a battle had taken place in his absence, returned home notwithstanding all warnings, and called his troops home to protect his own country. Galeazzo Maria has left a sad name in history; but that he did not lack political insight is shown by the representations he made to a Venetian ambassador travelling through Milan, in respect to the policy of the Republic. ‘You Venetians,’ he said, ‘who possess the most beautiful state in Italy, you are very wrong not to be contented with that, but to destroy your peace and that of your neighbours. If you knew how everyone is against you, your hair would stand on end, and you would leave all in peace. Do you suppose these Italian powers leagued against you really wish each other well? Not in the least. The necessity of protecting themselves against you has brought them together, and each one will do what it can to clip your wings. Do you think to have accomplished something grand by arming all Italy? Let others live! You have set everything in excitement by this Bartolommeo of yours; you will see how far it brings you profit. You have expended a quantity of money, and caused others great expense too; you preach peace and sow war. May you reap the result. At the death of my father, it seemed to me that a beautiful estate had fallen to me, and I thought of nothing but leading a pleasant life; you have obliged me to join King Ferrante, and to win my father’s principal adherents who I formerly did not know. The Pope who has sprung from your nobility will act more against you than all the rest; and if the war lasts, he will demand Faenza, Forli, Ravenna, and Cervia back again. The King of Naples is your declared enemy; and if his power equalled his evil intentions, it would go hardly with you. How Florence and Genoa are disposed towards you, you know, and it is not much better with the other Italian commonwealths. You throw your money away, and have nothing but disgrace from it; for it is said that, according to your custom, you wish to swallow everything. Now you are in pecuniary difficulties. I know with what pains you collect levies, and how your criers march through the whole town. I know that you have raised loans from banks and private persons which you will not be able to repay.’ (‘He spoke,’ adds the ambassador, ‘as if he had witnessed everything in Venice.’) ‘Ruling lords have one great advantage over republics—they act for themselves, and swiftly; while in these, the individual is always dependent on several. A Signor with fifty thousand ducats is worth more than a free State with a hundred thousand, because he can superintend the soldiers, and these act in his presence. It depends upon you to have peace or war. If you choose war, you will see all leagued against you, not only here, but beyond the mountains. Believe me, your enemies will not sleep. I know all that you have plotted against me with the Duke of Savoy and Fiesco, and the Archbishop of Genoa. I pray you, annoy no one: keep peace for your own advantage and that of Christendom.’[149]

Galeazzo Maria was right. His warning regarding foreigners referred to the French King, who directed a letter, written in an angry tone, to the Republic, saying that he knew of their machinations to disturb the peace, and entreating them not to cause the Duke of Milan any further annoyances in his territory, if they did not wish that he should regard their foes as his friends.[150] But Galeazzo Maria, on his side, had given Venice and Savoy much cause for suspicion and complaints, planning even then an attack upon Vercelli, the possession of which he had been promised at his marriage by King Louis XI. as dowry.[151] So stood it then with Italian affairs and Italian princes. The Venetians, moreover, relied on the want of harmony among the allies, which the Duke could not deny. None trusted the other. It was the Florentines who principally held the league together. However much King Ferrante wished to agree with Piero de’ Medici, and whatever the Republic might effect through her financial connections, she was yet too weak in military matters to exercise preponderating influence. Between the King and Sforza distrust and aversion prevailed, and Ferrante said repeatedly that he suspected a separate peace with the enemy, in which he was not deceived. The Pope said neither Yes nor No. He had entered the league, but entrance into the league did not imply fulfilment of the stipulations. He wished to free Romagna from the war that desolated the country, but he had no inclination to make overtures to Venice, his native country; always put the tardiness of the Neapolitan’s movements forward as a pretext; wished for peace after the battle of La Molinella, especially because he feared being drawn into the thick of the contest by the allies, and wished to prescribe the conditions of this peace, while he really did so little to bring it about. But beside this, the war had displayed more than any other the defects of the Italian armies, and from this point of view it deserves more attention than it would otherwise claim. When we consider that the two most famous generals of Italy at that day, Federigo of Urbino and Bartolommeo, stood at the head of a considerable army; that a Duke of Milan and Crown Prince of Naples were there; that the lords of Lombardy and Romagna, who passed their lives in arms, and the best Neapolitan warriors, the Sanseverini, Orsini, Davalos, &c., were in the field; when we consider, on the other hand, the miserable results of this eight months’ campaign, we shall anticipate the approaching complete decline of that system of war which Alberigo da Barbiano had inaugurated a century before, and which had passed through many glorious days of military art and valour, although an evil lay in the very existence of mercenary troops from which other countries had to suffer.

The Neapolitan troops were certainly not among the worst, and had practised leaders. And yet how did they prosper? Even before they had marched out, there were the most unfavourable opinions as to their quality and discipline. ‘When you hear from ill-wishers,’ wrote the King on February 10, 1467, to one of his agents, ‘that our soldiers will run away as soon as they have passed the frontiers, you must not heed this, for, with God’s assistance, we hope to send them out in such excellence and order, that they would rather attract others than go over to them.’ But the result did not correspond with the expectation of the monarch, who, however, devoted untiring care to military affairs. The Duke of Calabria employed three months in crossing the Tronto and dragging his army through Tuscany and Umbria, while the enemy was in the heart of Romagna. The militia dispersed without fighting. ‘It grieves my very soul,’ wrote the King on August 1, ‘this flight of a part of our men-at-arms. But as the fault lies in their badness and cowardice, and not in the treatment they had experienced from us, we will bear it more easily.’ And on January 15, 1468, during the truce: ‘Most of the soldiers leave the camp and return home, which does not promote the general good, and is highly displeasing to us.’ The Duke of Calabria was amusing himself in the meantime in Florence and Milan, whither his consort had gone to sweeten for him the hard campaign, in which he never faced the foe. With the money advanced by the Florentine banks, those of the Medici, Strozzi, Gondi, &c., the desertion of the enemy’s horse and foot was purchased, while the Neapolitans, as they remained without pay, acted in friendly countries, in the districts of Arezzo and Cortona, as if they had to do with their enemies.

Besides Louis XI., another foreign sovereign tried to put a stop to a war so prejudicial to the common Christian interest in a moment when the progress of the Turks menaced both Italy and the Danubian provinces. It was Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, who sent George Hasznoz, afterwards Archbishop of Colocza to Venice, in order to bring about an arrangement.[152] The Hungarian envoy, getting nothing but empty words, went to Colleone’s camp, and meeting there with the same ill-success, proceeded to Florence and Rome, to give an account of his negotiation. More than six months had passed since the day of La Molinella in useless marching and treating, in the midst of mutual reproaches and quarrelling. Tommaso Soderini at Venice, Otto Niccolini in Rome, acted with zeal and ability as Florentine ambassadors; the Marquis of Ferrara did his best as mediator; Florence itself had made many efforts, but in vain. At last, on Candlemas day 1468, Pope Paul II. proclaimed peace in the church of Sta. Maria Araceli, on the Capitol. The existing league, including Venice, was to be renewed. Bartolommeo Colleone was to be sent to Albania to fight the Turks, with an annual salary of 100,000 gold florins as captain-general, after resigning the places in the Romagna held garrisoned by him. He had, besides, demanded thrice the sum as compensation for the expenses of a war which he had himself begun! King Ferrante protested four days later; shortly before, he had declared he would do the Holy Father’s pleasure in everything reasonable, but he would rather lose everything than give Colleone a farthing. Galeazzo Maria was of the same opinion; he said his money should not serve for an attack upon his state. The Florentines seemed to have most wished to come to terms, and were much disturbed when the King, Sforza, and Venice took up arms again. Finally, the Marquis of Ferrara succeeded in reconciling the parties, though Pope Paul was very angry; and on April 25 the definitive peace was proclaimed at Rome, and two days later at Florence, in which Colleone was not mentioned, and every one was to receive his own again. In Florence the peace was solemnised by church festivals and illuminations. Bartolommeo Colleone, then seventy-five years old, but still in full strength, did not go to Albania, where the death of Scanderbeg, which had happened in the February of the same year, 1468, would have made a valiant general necessary, if the tactics of Italian condottieri had been suitable for such a land and such an enemy. A throne such as the Florentine exiles had placed in his view, he certainly was as far from obtaining as he was from reaping laurels in his last campaigns. But he enjoyed for seven years longer the highest honours paid to him by the Republic of Venice and foreign and Italian princes, in his castle, where he died February 1, 1475, having made a use of his colossal fortune which more honoured him than many of the means by which it had been brought together.

The ill-success of Bartolommeo Colleone’s undertaking put an end of course to all the exiles’ hopes of returning to their homes.

The biographer of Donato Acciaiuoli, Angiolo Segni, observes rightly, ‘The war excited by the exiles was soon ended. Bartolommeo’s army was not defeated in battle with the allies, but it was equally far from conquering, and the cause of the rebels was lost thereby. For those who ruled in Florence it was enough not to be defeated; not so with those in the field. Only by a victory could they expel their enemies, and regain their home.’ All the distinguished men of the losing side had been with Colleone—foremost of all Diotisalvi Neroni and Niccolò Soderini, who in Venice opposed his own brother, whom Florence had sent thither as her representative. Agnolo Acciaiuoli joined them at last. Persuaded at length by the representations of his friends, he had quitted Barletta and gone to Naples; King Ferrante, who, remembering old connections, wished him well, vainly sought to persuade him not to trust to the matter, nor to break the exile pronounced on him. He went to Rome, and from thence to Romagna. When he saw the organisation of Colleone’s troops, he is said to have anticipated the result at once. When peace was concluded, he was declared a rebel with all the others, his property confiscated, and a price put upon his head; he returned to Naples, where he lived on the support afforded him by the King, and passed his days mostly in pious exercises and the companionship of the Carthusian monks, whose order had stood in intimate connection with his family for more than a century. Niccolò Soderini went to Ravenna, where the Emperor Frederick III. made him a knight and Palatine on his second journey to Rome—cheap honours then, which could hardly have sweetened the exile in which he died, 1474. Niccolò, says Alamamo Rinuccini, was far more courageous than prudent; he did not know fear. Had his advice been followed when he wished directly to give battle, his party would not perhaps have had to submit, but Messer Luca, either cowardly or bribed, betrayed his party and himself. Diotisalvi Neroni, at first banished to the island of Sicily, saw sixteen years of exile pass away, and died in extreme old age at Rome, where his tombstone is to be seen in the Dominican church, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, which contains many Florentine monuments.[153]

One event during the war shows how high the waves of party feeling rose. Lucrezia de’ Medici was at the Bagno a Morba with her son Giuliano, the bath in the district of Volterra employed, perhaps even in the times of the Romans, for rheumatic complaints. It is a lonely spot on the southern side of the chain of hills which, separating the valley of the Arno and Elsa from the sea-shore, bears the old Etruscan town on its ridge. The retired situation had long attracted many a prowler, and made the desolate region unsafe. One evening a hasty messenger from Piero came to his wife with the command that she was to repair without delay with the youth to Volterra, as it had been announced in Florence from San Gemignano that the exiles meditated a coup-de-main to carry off both mother and son, whom they needed as hostages. Giuliano had set off for Florence that same day; Madonna Lucrezia, ill as she was, was carried to Volterra, fifteen miles distant, in a litter by night, by the arrangement of the officials of the place and vicinity, and here she was in safety. After having rested here, where she was kindly received, she returned to her family.[154]