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 death 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.

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 to 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 Bernabò 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.

Milan 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 in 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 Rome. 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 of 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.

In 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

In 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 the 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 design 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 that 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 matter 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 enough 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 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 house 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 Milan 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 hero—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 view 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 cousin 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 the 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 he 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 Sforza—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 messages 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 of 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.

The 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 youth 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 the 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, so 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. Absent 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 irresistibly 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.”

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 all 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 du 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 knock, 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 declared 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 day 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, amiable 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 lord 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 devoted 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—

“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 the 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 be 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 Savoy.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.

In 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 Sforza. 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.

This 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 waxed 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, his 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 it. 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 Savoy, 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 sent 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 check 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. As 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 intelligence, 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 these 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 expected 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 Antonio 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 Guelf 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 of 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 the 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 a 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 the 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 the 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 should come with from eight to ten thousand men, dispossess Sforza, and conquer for himself a Duchy of Milan to extend from Adda to Ticino, from Padua beyond 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 they 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 the prince who, of all others, should do most for the reintegration of his country ascended the throne of France.87

As we know, the law of historic necessity required that the Dauphin should renounce his ambition of a North Italian state—he had, in fact, already renounced it; that he should abandon his early visions and his early friends, and adopt for his counsellors the very men who once had ruined him. Henceforth he must bend the whole strength of his spirit to the furthering of that policy which he had so long, and at so great a sacrifice, resisted and attempted to destroy. The interests of the time required that France should forego all ambitions foreign to herself in order to consolidate herself; that she should sacrifice the south in order to insure the north; that she should also sacrifice the aristocracy to the people; and Louis XI., who, as a prince, had paid so dear for his adherence to the rights of the nobles, became the monarch who more than any other was governed by men of low and base condition—who more than any other oppressed and resisted the pride of feudalism. Those who had been his friends became his enemies; those likewise who had been his enemies became his friends. Francesco Sforza, from whom he had been so eager to take his duchy, became the one man alive whom he admired and respected. Yes, this successful captain of adventure, who for years had prevented him in Milan, in Naples, and in Genoa, who once had been the chief stumbling-block in the path of the Dauphin, became the corner-stone of the policy of the King. Like Catherine de’ Medici, like Rodrigo Borgia, like most unscrupulous rulers, there was something oddly magnanimous in the moral indifference of Louis IX. Sforza never suffered for his enmity of yore. The new King of France was a being as destitute of rancour as devoid of gratitude.

With Savoy, Orleans, Dunois, and Anjou the new king was ill-disposed to treat. He had learned the secret of their intrigues and their ambitions. On May 10, 1463, he wrote to Sforza that he was content to come to an understanding with Milan, if Milan would utterly disavow Savoy. This conspirator, versed since boyhood in all the dismal ins and outs of treachery, was too well aware of the tricks of his confederates.90 It still might be possible that his enemies were honest. They at least were the only people he could trust; and more than any other he confided in Francesco Sforza. In December, 1463, he made to the de facto Duke of Milan the significant cession of the French claim to Genoa.91 He also arranged for the cession of Savona. Negotiations were even begun for yielding Asti to Francesco Sforza; but the inhabitants declared that they would stand by the house of Orleans.

At first the cousins of the King could not believe that he had actually abandoned them—he who had begun his career as the pupil of Dunois, and had suffered so long as the champion of the nobles. So late as October 10, 1465, the descendants of Valentine Visconti sent a very secret embassy to Venice 92 to propose to the Ten a league between their government and the Duke of Orleans, the Count of Angoulême, and the Duke of Brittany, for the purpose of ousting the usurper, Count Francesco, and delivering the Duchy of Milan to Charles of Orleans. This league, which could not be confirmed by the Pope, a political adversary, might, it was suggested, be headed by the King of France. Probably the Venetians were better informed as to the real intentions of Louis XI. Certainly they knew that it was too late or too early to dream of dislodging the Sforzas from Milan. They replied that they loved the house of France, but that peace also was dear to them: they begged to be excused from attacking Count Francesco.

After this for many years the house of Orleans ceased to struggle. Before the year was out Charles of Orleans was dead, and the French pretender to the crown of Milan was only an infant, three years old. Before the child was six Dunois was also dead. Dunois—who had not suffered the children of his adoptive mother to be cheated of their inheritance in Asti—would, had he lived, have instructed his nephew in the details of his claim to Milan. But Louis II. of Orleans, born in his father’s seventy-second year, was naturally doomed to lose in infancy his father’s contemporaries. As the child grew up every link was severed that might have bound him to the past, and he knew little or nothing of the pretensions of his house. His mother, who had a romantic worship for the memory of Valentine Visconti, related to her son many a legend of the quasi-royal power which during the last century his ancestors possessed. But that supremacy seemed at an end for ever. In France, in Italy, the star of Orleans suffered a long eclipse. By his own experience in rebellion Louis XI. was aware how dangerous to the Crown and how disastrous to the kingdom was the power of the great feudal houses. Alençon and Armagnac and many another he diminished by confiscation and captivity; Dunois, Bourbon, Saint-Vallier, Sancerre, he attached to the Crown by royal marriages. Kinship in subjection, independence in imprisonment: these were the two alternatives presented by the King to the nobles of France. Among the most unfortunate of those who accepted the former gift was the young Louis d’Orléans. Louis XI. had decided that with this young man the house of Orleans should end; and when its representative was eleven years of age, the King married him to Jeanne of France, a gentle girl, deformed, incapable of offspring, and so ugly that when she was brought to court for her wedding the king himself exclaimed: Je ne la croyais pas si laide. To this bride the young duke was married in 1473. “They will have no expense with a nursery,” wrote the malicious King to Dammartin: ils n’auraient guères à besoigner et nourrir les enfans qui viendraient du dit mariage: mais toutefois se feroit-il.

Meanwhile the six sons of Sforza had grown to manhood; and the eldest ruled in Milan, accepted, by the mere fact of his unchallenged succession, as the lawful inheritor of his father’s duchy.

VI

When Louis II. of Orleans had reached the age of twenty he was the best archer, the most dexterous horseman, the most adroit and brilliant man-at-arms about the Court of France. He was handsome, fond of the arts, and well instructed. He had an engaging manner, gentle, gracious, and benign. A brave and eager cavalier, he was ready for adventures; but a strong hand kept him down, a hand whose cruel restraint was never lifted from that audacious brow. Suddenly the pressure ceased: the hand was gone; on August 30, 1483, King Louis died.

He was succeeded by a child of fourteen, an ugly, ignorant youth, who had grown up neglected in the castle of Amboise, far from the Court, alone with his gentle forsaken mother, Charlotte of Savoy, who had taught him the only thing she knew, the plots of innumerable romances of chivalry. For Louis XI., partly afraid of injuring the delicate constitution of his only heir, and partly remembering his own dangerous and rebellious childhood, denied any solid education to his son. He never saw the boy, leaving him for years at a time to grow up as best he might alone with his mother at Amboise. “Let the body grow strong first,” said the King; “the mind will look to itself.” And, according to tradition, the sole food that he provided for the eager mind of his son was one single Latin maxim: Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare. This was all the Latin that was taught to Charles VIII., and on this solitary morsel of classic attainment he was never known to act. Louis XI., for all his subtlety, had forgotten that by simply withholding one sort of education you cannot insured vacuity. The child at Amboise knew nothing of history, nothing of geography, nothing of the classics. But his mind was stuffed with the deeds of Roland and Ogier, and the beauty of La belle dame sans merci. Suddenly one summer day, unwonted messengers knocked at the gates of Amboise; they fetched the child away to see an old, misshapen, suspicious man, whom he did not know—who was his father. The next day Charles VIII. was king of France under the regency of his married sister, Anne de Bourbon. Madame Anne inherited her father’s dislike and distrust of Orleans; but her sister was his wife and adored him, and her brother, the king, admired him. She did her best to repress Orleans in France; but her hand, though firm, had not the solidity of her father’s. Orleans grew and expanded.

Just at this moment Venice was in sore distress. Almost every power in Italy was against her, and she turned for help to France. On January 16, 1484, she sent Antonio Loredan to Charles VIII., complaining of the aggressions of Naples, Milan, and Ferrara, and desiring a resumption of the Franco-Venetian league of Louis XI. That league had been a very tame and passive piece of policy; the Venetians hoped a bolder favour from a younger king. Loredan was bidden to insist upon the suggestion that the kingdom of Naples occupied by Ferdinand of Arragon, belonged in fact to France.95 “Nor content with that,” run the instructions of the Senate, “this king it was who instigated Lodovico Sforza to the usurpation of Milan.” Lodovico il Moro,94 the fourth son of Count Francesco Sforza, had, as a matter of fact, usurped the position of his nephew in 1481, and, though nominally regent, conducted himself as Duke of Milan. But this intrusion was not the seizure which now the Venetians meant to blame. They wished to suggest, as the lawful claimant, not the young son of Galeazzo Sforza, but the Duke of Orleans.

“Express to the Duke of Orleans in secret our desire for his exaltation [run the instructions given to Loredan], and explain to him how good is the opportunity for him to recover the Duchy of Milan, which belongs to him by right; and how his claim would be favoured by the differences and dissidences at present existing between ourselves and Milan, as also by the discontent of the Milanese with their tyrants. Inform the Duke that Lodovico Sforza aspires to seize the sovereignty for himself, amid the murmurs of his people, and that he will certainly massacre all who uphold the claim of the Duchess Bona. Inflame and excite as best you can the Duke of Orleans to pursue this enterprise,... and if the French should choose to make good their claim to Naples as against the tyrant Ferdinand, they could not find a better time than now.”93

This is the programme of the great invasions of 1494 and 1500; but the times were not yet ripe. On February 4th the Ten despatched a second missive to the Duke of Orleans,96 instigating him to the speedy conquest of Milan, and offering him the entire Venetian army for this service. The young Duke appears to have taken these proposals very seriously, and the project created some disturbance and quarrelling at Court. But the Venetians were incapable of any sustained policy in foreign affairs; to serve Venice in the way that at the moment appeared most advantageous was their only aim, and thus their attitude was one of constant unrest. In August they made peace with Naples and Milan, and sent word to Orleans that they were glad to hear that all disunion was at an end between him and the King. The same thing had happened in Italy. Peace had set in under the happiest auspices, and a fraternal affection united the King of Naples and the Regent of Milan with the Venetian Senate.

So ended the project for a French succession. Louis of Orleans, thwarted of his foreign ambition, strove for greatness at home, and contested the regency with Anne of Bourbon. The civil war, the flight into Brittany, the pretensions of Louis to the hand of his beautiful cousin (the heiress to that duchy), the defeat of the Orleanist troops at Saint-Aubin on July 28, 1488, and the three years’ captivity of the Duke, are matters of common knowledge. But as Charles VIII. grew out of the tutelage of his sister, more and more he grew to favour his imprisoned cousin. There was little to fear from him now that the King was a major, and Anne of Brittany the Queen of France. In 1491 the Duke was released; and when in 1494 Charles at the head of his troops invaded Italy, Louis of Orleans preceded him across the mountains, chief in command, master of the fleet, destined to drive the Neapolitans from Genoa, and thence to lead the fleet of France into the port of Naples.

VII

The invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. appeared, even to contemporaries, a miracle. The young King, ill advised, without generals, without money, with the impromptu army of a moment’s whim, traversed hostile Italy as glorious as Charlemagne. Charlemagne, in fact, was the true leader of his forces: for that glorious phantom marched before him, filling with dread the hearts of the enemy, and blinding them to the actual penury of the invader. With the events of that romantic campaign we have no business at this moment, for, notwithstanding his commission to lead the fleet to Naples, the Duke of Orleans did not go south of Lombardy. While Orleans was gaining the battle of Rapallo, suddenly the King arrived at Asti. It was Sept. 9th, a malarious season. Across the wide plain, the marshy fields of Lombardy, Orleans galloped, fresh from victory, to a council with the King. He had scarcely arrived at Asti when Charles fell ill of the small-pox. The attack was slight, and within a fortnight he recovered. But the very day the King began to mend, Orleans sickened of a quartan ague, and when his cousin was well again and ready, on Oct. 6th, to set out for Naples, Orleans was still unfit to take the road. He sent his company south with the royal troops, and with a handful of squires and servants remained behind in his hereditary county of Asti, among the subjects who had loved his father, and who had served himself, far-off, unseen, through years of peril and intrigue, with as devoted and chivalrous a spirit of loyalty as ever the highlanders of Jacobite Scotland dedicated to an absent Stuart.

Sforza and Orleans were now the nearest neighbours, bound to each other by their interest in the King. Fate has seldom brought about more ironic complication. When Lodovico Sforza, out of revenge and anger towards King Ferdinand, had revived the French claim to Naples, and had instigated Charles to enter Italy, he had not foreseen the accident that left the Duke of Orleans within a league or two of Milan. Charles VIII. entered Italy as the friend and guest of Lodovico il Moro, the Regent of Milan. To the external and uninitiated world the French claim to the duchy appeared about as actual as the claim of the English kings to France. Lodovico il Moro, familiar with the France of Louis XI., knew that the claims of Orleans were not likely to be countenanced by the throne.

The present is never clear to us. Its Archives, its Secreta, are not given over to our perusal. Lodovico il Moro was probably uninstructed in that secret policy of the Venetian Senate which, in 1483, had so strongly urged the half-forgotten rights of Orleans. But we, familiar with those silent manuscripts, are not surprised to find that no sooner had the King gone south than Venice and Florence began to interfere with Orleans. The very day the King left Asti,97 a secret messenger from Piero de’ Medici entered the city. His errand was to Orleans. In their desire to stop the progress of Charles VIII., and in their hatred of Lodovico who had invoked the stranger, the Italian princes proposed to offer Milan to the French in place of Naples. Orleans himself suggested, unknown to his chivalrous young cousin, that the King would be satisfied if Ferdinand would pay him homage for Naples, and, besides a war indemnity, a yearly pension such as the kings of France pay to England. For himself, and as a just fine on Lodovico, he intimated that the Duchy of Milan might be divided between the houses of Orleans and Sforza. But as time went on, and the arms of France were everywhere successful, he grew bolder in his demands, and “Milan for the heir of the Visconti” was his cry.

But Charles, ignorant of the intrigues of Orleans and Florence, of Venice and of Sforza (who also for his private ends wished the King to keep this side the Apennines), crossed the southern range as he had crossed the Alps, and by the new year he was in Rome. Then, afraid of the French success, the Italians began to draw back from their conspiracy with Orleans. They had wished the French to take Milan instead of Naples, but Milan as well as Naples was too much.

VIII

When the French had entered Italy, Orleans had had no legal rival to his claim, unless, indeed, the Emperor be called his rival. To the people of Lombardy, oppressed by taxes, hating their tyrant, he appeared as the rightful heir, the last of the Visconti. Round the history of a past not yet remote there had grown a mist through which all things appeared of vague, heroic, and mysterious proportions, of which the King Arthur, the legendary glory, was the first duke—“Saint Giangaleazzo,” as one of the brothers of Pavia called him in the presence of Commines. “This saint of yours,” cried the amused historian, “was a great and wicked, though most honourable, tyrant.” “That may be,” said the brother; “we call him saint because he did good to our order.”

This was also the feeling of the Milanese, for whom Giangaleazzo had invented security and peace, for whom he had conquered immense possessions. They forgot his sins, his crimes, and the first duke became the hero of the place. To be the last descendant of this man seemed in itself a claim to inherit his possessions, to sit in his place, to expel the usurper. While this was their feeling, in October the usurper died.

Giangaleazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, a youth of five-and-twenty, kept in prison by his uncle, the Regent Lodovico, died no less suspiciously than the little princes in the Tower. He left behind him a son four years old, his legitimate successor. But, with ominous prevision, a year before this time, Lodovico the regent had negotiated with the Emperor to obtain the reversion of the duchy. He had admitted that his father, his brother, his nephew were no more than illegal usurpers: moreover they had prejudiced the rights of the empire by receiving their titles only from the people. Thus the infant son of Giangaleazzo was the son, not merely of a usurper, but of a man who had forfeited whatever rights he originally had. Conceding this, Lodovico besought the Emperor, of his free grace and bounty, to bestow the duchy on himself and his descendants, even as once before an emperor had bestowed Milan upon a man who had no legal claim—namely, on Giangaleazzo Visconti. Maximilian consented, and on Sept. 5, 1494, the Imperial letters of promise 98 were despatched from Antwerp, letters for which the Regent paid the sum of 100,000 ducats.

This document, kept in the deepest privacy, can have arrived in Milan but a few days before Giangaleazzo died. Every one believed that the young man had died of poison. It was a piteous thing. But the son of the murdered man was only four years old; and the French were in Lombardy—the guests of Lodovico. “To be short,” says Commines, “Lodovico had himself declared Duke of Milan, and that, as I think, was his only end in bringing us across the mountains.” Terrorised by the presence of the French, the people hailed the Regent as their duke, “and crying Duca! Duca!” (wrote Corio), “and having robed him in the ducal mantle, they set him on horseback, and he rode to the temple, the men of his faction proclaiming him the while, and they set the joy-bells ringing, while all this time the dead body of Giangaleazzo was lying still unburied in the great cathedral.”

Conscious of the secret diploma in his pocket, Lodovico could enjoy the pleasure of this ceremony with a feeling of security. Yet his crown did not sit quite smoothly on his brows. Orleans in Asti was assuming an intolerable air of patronage. And behind that thin row of partisans shouting with their hired voices, “Duca! Duca!” there was a sullen, silent crowd. Those, and the rest of Italy, believed that Lodovico had poisoned the father in order to usurp the inheritance of the child, Francesco. Of the three pretenders, by far the most popular was the unconscious infant, who bore so quaintly in his mother’s arms the beloved and redoubtable name of his grandfather, the great condottiere. “Nearly all the Milanese,” wrote Commines, “would have revolted to the King had he only followed Trivulzio’s advice and set up the arms of the child-duke.” But Charles refused to injure the claims of his cousin of Orleans.

Meanwhile the relations between the French and Lodovico were growing difficult and strained. The presence of Orleans in Asti, the miraculous success of Charles, inspired the Duke of Milan with the bitterest regret that ever he had called his allies across the mountains. He had used them as a weapon, and now their use had passed. When, on Feb. 27, 1495, he heard the news that the French had entered Naples, he simulated every sign of joy. But while the bells were still ringing in the steeples, he drew aside the Venetian envoy. “I have had bad news,” he whispered. “Naples is lost. Let us form a league against the common enemy.”

This was in the end of February. During the next month there was much secret business in the diplomatic world. Ever since the entry of the French into Rome the great powers had looked unkindly on the triumph of Charles VIII. The Emperor beheld with dismay the alliance of Ghibelline Milan and the Ghibelline Colonna with the King of France. The Pope believed with reason that France, the Colonna, and the Savelli might depose a pontiff so unpopular as Alexander VI. Ferdinand and Isabella declared that the intention of Charles was nothing less than to make himself the king of Italy and then proceed to conquer Spain. So likely did it seem that this ungainly, limping, ill-instructed youth might justify the name he had assumed—Carolus Octavus, Secundus Magnus.

At Venice in the dead of the night the secret council used to meet. There, with the Venetian Senate, the ambassadors of Germany, Castile and Arragon, and Milan conferred together. They were negotiating a league to expel the French from Italy. On March 31st, while Charles was still shut in the Neapolitan trap, the quintuple alliance was proclaimed. The last name among the allies was the name of the man who had called Charles into Italy, now given for the first time among his equals his new dignity of Duke of Milan. Lodovico hastened to legalize this official recognition. In May the Imperial privilege, formally promised in the preceding autumn, arrived at Milan. In presence of the Imperial envoys the privilege was read aloud at Lodovico’s solemn coronation.

IX

Lodovico had sprung a disagreeable surprise upon the Duke of Orleans, for his title, derived directly from Maximilian, was now as good as that of Giangaleazzo Visconti himself. To conquer Milan by arms, to force the Emperor into revoking the privilege of 1495, to induce him to grant a new one confirming the Visconti succession—this was the only course that remained to Orleans.

Secret as the Council had been at Venice, it had not escaped the notice of Commines, who wrote in March to Orleans bidding him look to the walls of Asti, and sent a messenger to Bourbon in France bidding him despatch a reinforcement to the scanty force of Orleans. The young Duke at Asti was not sorry to receive the message. He had now been six months in Lombardy; he had done nothing; and he was eager to come to battle with Lodovico. To all the French, by this time, Il Moro appeared a traitor and a secret poisoner. To Louis of Orleans he appeared all this and also the usurper of his inheritance.

Great were the pomp and beauty of Milan in the year 1495, humbled as yet by no centuries of foreign servitude, ruined by no battles and untouched by time. Wonderful in the fresh whiteness of its stately cathedral; delicate with the unblurred beauty of the new frescoes by Lionardo; rich with statuary, broken now and lost for ever; gay with the clear fine moulding of its rose-red palaces, Milan in the rich plain was a fountain of wealth to its possessor. When Orleans beheld this earthly paradise of the Renaissance, his claim to Milan, which had been at first but a shadowy pretension, took certainty and substance in his mind. And as the attention of the young man was drawn to his Visconti ancestors, and to the marriage of his grandfather with the daughter of the Duke of Milan, he and his counsellors began to reconstruct the half-forgotten title that he had to Milan.

No one was very clear as to the point. The ducal secretaries found themselves compelled to suppose, to invent. Nicole Gilles, the chief of them, declared that Filippo Maria Visconti had married Madame Bonne, daughter of King John of France (a lady who had she existed, would have been a good forty years older than her husband), by whom he had two girls, Valentine, who married the Duke of Orleans, and Bonne, who married the lord of Montauban in Brittany. Besides these he had a bastard child, Bianca Maria, the wife of Sforza.

This is perhaps the clearest of these singular genealogies pour rire. Louis was glad to escape from their confusion and bewilderment to the plain issues of the field of battle. There seemed a good chance for him. Lodovico was so hated by his subjects 99 that they would welcome almost any change. Almost at the same moment that Piacenza offered herself to King Charles if he would undertake to support the child Francesco, the cities of Milan, Pavia, and Novara were secretly practising with Orleans, and Commines declares he would have been received in Milan with greater rejoicings than in his town of Blois.

On April 17th Lodovico il Moro insolently summoned Orleans to quit Asti and cross the Alps again with all his men. Thanks to the warning of Commines, Orleans already had fortified the town.

“This place,” he replied,100 “and its dependent castles are a part of my inheritance, and to put them in other hands, and to go away and leave my own possessions, is a thing that I never meant to do. Tell your master,” he added to the messenger, “that he will find me ready for combat, either waiting for him here or going forth to meet him on the field of battle. I have received a commission from the King, and it is my intention to fulfil it.”

Unfortunately, the real commission that Orleans had received from his cousin was to keep quiet and on no account to break the peace (for the league was defensive, and did not menace the royal troops if they retired without offence) until Charles and his diminished army had arrived at Asti. They would be in imminent peril if any rash act of Orleans should let loose upon them, amid the bewildering passes of the mountains, the eager concourse of their vigilant enemies. But Orleans did not remember this. He was burning for personal conflict with his rival, indignant at his treachery, and persuaded that he could easily secure the whole of Lombardy to France. Thrice in April he wrote to Bourbon entreating succour. “Only send me the reinforcements at once, and I think I shall do the King a service that men will talk of many a year.” The forces came; and Orleans saw himself the master of 5,000 foot, 100 archers, 1,300 men-at-arms or thereabouts, and two fine pieces of artillery.101 He was aware that Lodovico was so out-at-elbows that he could not pay his army. He knew the discontent of Lombardy. He felt himself so much older and wiser than the King that he found it hard to obey his commands. His secret practice with the nobles of the Lombard cities informed him that all was ripe for a sudden stroke. On the last night of May, in the safety of the dark, twenty men-at-arms under Jean de Louvain rode out from Asti across the Lombard plain, until at daybreak on June 1st they reached the gate of San Stefano at Novara. The gate was opened to them by the factors of the Opicini, two nobles of the place; the citizens ran out to meet the French; the handful of Sforzesco troops within the town barred themselves in the citadel. By June 13th, Orleans, with the flower

No sooner was he there than, first Pavia, then Milan, offered to receive him. He ought to have gone at once, before the armies of his enemies could encircle him in Novara. But his whole soul was invaded by a deep distrust of the Italians. It seemed safer to temporise until the royal troops came up. Long before these could possibly arrive, on June 22nd, the Venetians protected Milan with 1,000 Grecian stradiots, 2,000 foot, 1,000 cuirassiers.102 It was now impossible to take Milan, which a little boldness might easily have gained. It was impossible even to evacuate Novara. And when, after many difficulties heroically overcome, the little army of Charles arrived in Asti on July 27th, sorely in need of rest and of refreshment, a new and arduous task awaited it; for Orleans and his soldiers were perishing of hunger in besieged Novara.

X

Commines has set dramatically before us the division between the army and the council of the King. He himself warmly espoused the cause of the army, which frankly declared a battle impossible against such overwhelming odds: unless reinforcements arrived from Switzerland, Orleans must be released by composition from Novara. But the council insisted on an immediate engagement. The soldiers commonly said that Orleans had promised Briçonnet an income of 10,000 crowns for his son, if Milan should still be gained and the siege of Novara raised. The Swiss did not come; the army was too small. In September there began to be a serious talk of peace. On the 26th of that month, Orleans and his army were released by composition from Novara. Over 2,000 of them had died of hunger, and many fell by the roadside from sheer weakness and died there as they lay. (Commines found fifty of them dying in a garden, and saved their lives by a timely mess of pottage.) Most of those who lived to reach the camp perished of the dangerous abundance. More than three hundred of their wasted corpses were cast upon the dunghills of Vercelli.

This was a heavy price to pay for one man’s disobedient ambition. All the harder did it seem to buy nothing with so great expense. There were many who were still unwilling for peace. Orleans had endeared himself to his troops by his conduct during the hunger of Novara, where he had fared and fasted like any common man-at-arms, setting aside the ducal mess for the use of the sick in hospital. His mess-fellows were willing still to die for him. By an ironic turn of fate, on the very day on which the army evacuated Novara, 20,000 Swiss came to the relief of the king. With such a reinforcement as this, cried Orleans, Ligny, D’Amboise and their men, Charles might not only conquer Milan, but make himself master of the whole of Italy. But the negotiations for peace already were begun; Novara was lost; the French soldiers were few and much enfeebled; and it was rumoured that the Swiss meant no less than to capture King Charles with all his nobles, carry them off into the impregnable fastness of the Alps, and then exact a fabulous ransom for their liberty.

The King thought it best to dismiss at once these dangerous allies, and take his homesick soldiers back to France. On Oct. 10th peace was concluded. The king promised—on condition that Lodovico Sforza renounced all claim to Asti, made no obstacle to the relief of the French in Naples, and paid to Orleans a war indemnity of 50,000 ducats—not to sustain his cousin’s right to Milan. Orleans was enraged and disappointed. In secret he negotiated for the support of the Swiss captains, and with these and with 800 of his men-at-arms he meant to march from Vercelli upon Milan. But the night before he was to leave, when all was ready, suddenly he demanded the consent of the King. Charles refused to sanction this breach of the peace, and bade his cousin join the army in marching back to France. By Nov. 7th Orleans, none the richer for his endeavours, was with the King at Lyons.

A little more than a year after this the King would gladly have sent his cousin of Orleans to conquer Milan: it was the Duke who made excuses and would not go. For soon after the French returned to France, the Dauphin died. Charles, who had inherited that terrible distrust of his own children from which he had suffered in his father, did not greatly mourn, or so at least Commines assures us. But if the quickness of a little child of three—his own son—had given him concern, much more did he dread his new heir, the Duke of Orleans. The queen, bewailing the loss of her child, had fallen into a lamentable melancholy, and Charles, with an absurd idea of cheering the poor mother, ordered a masque of gentlemen to dance before her. Orleans was among them, and he danced to such purpose, with such lightness of heart and heel, such buoyancy and gladness, that the sorrowing queen was seriously offended; and Charles himself determined, if possible, to send his cheerful heir a little further from the throne.

An opportunity soon offered. Florence, faithful against all the world to France, sent to the King at Amboise, asking him to come and uproot the Sforza out of Milan. She offered to furnish 800 men-at-arms and 5,000 footmen at her own cost. The cardinal of St. Peter in Vinculis, the Orsini, Bentivoglio of Bologna, Este of Ferrara, Gonzaga of Mantua, all had promised to hire their forces to the King. Genoa was to be conquered by Trivulzio while Orleans marched on Milan. The plan of campaign was settled, the troops were all drawn up, Trivulzio had already entered Italy with 6,000 infantry and 800 men-at-arms, when, on the very night of his departure, Orleans suddenly abandoned his post. On his own private quarrel, he declared, he could not and he would not go; as the King’s lieutenant, and at his express command, he was ready to depart—not otherwise. “I would never force him to the wars against his will,” exclaimed Charles, and, though for many days the Florentine ambassadors besought him to exercise the authority of the throne, he refused to interfere with Orleans. “Thus was the voyage dashed,” relates Commines, “spite of great charges and all our friends in a readiness. And this was done to the King’s great grief, for Milan being once won, Naples would have yielded of itself.”

What, then, had happened to change the mind of Orleans—Orleans, disobedient at Novara, and disobedient again to-day for so opposite a reason? “He shunned this enterprise,” continues our historian, “because he saw the King ill-disposed of his body, whose heir he should be if he died.” “He would not go,” relates Guicciardini, “for he saw that the King was ill, and to himself belonged the succession of the crown.”

Just a year after this, on the morning of Palm Sunday (April 8, 1498), Louis of Orleans, fallen into a sort of undetermined half-disgrace, was standing at a window in his house at Blois, when he saw in the street some soldiers of the royal guard, running quickly. “God save the King!” they cried; “Vive le roi Louis XII.!” This was the first King Louis heard of the sudden death of his cousin. The day before, Charles VIII. had fallen down, suddenly stricken to death, as he and his wife were watching a game of tennis from the gallery at Amboise.

XI

The French claimant to Milan was now the King of France. From this moment the pretensions of Orleans became a factor in European history. The plans of the first Duke of Milan went so grievously astray, that, instead of France and Germany each holding the other in check, for half a century their armies occupied the soil of Lombardy, nor, when they withdrew, was the land left at peace, but, baffled and paralyzed, the helpless prey of Spain.

This Iliad is too important to be contained within the slender limits of an essay. We can but briefly indicate the events which developed and then extinguished the right of the French to Milan. Conquered in 1499, by Louis XII. of France, Lombardy remained for five and twenty years an intermittent province of that kingdom, continually revolting, continually reconquered. During this time several privileges and investitures, extracted from the Emperor, confirmed the victories of France, and annulled the claims of Lodovico Sforza. These investitures are worthy of at least our brief consideration, since, from the moment of their bestowal, the French claim to Milan, already emphasised by the rights of heredity, testamentary bequest, and contract, received the final sanction of the feudal law.

The first of these Imperial investitures was bestowed on King Louis XII. by the hand of Maximilian on April 7, 1505.103 It secured the Duchy of Milan (non obstante priore investitura illustri Ludovico Sfortia prius exhibita) to the King of France and to his sons; or, in default of males, to his daughter Claude. At this time, through the influence of Queen Anne, Claude was most unnaturally betrothed to the permanent enemy of her country, the future Charles V., and in this document he is mentioned as her husband and co-heir—a fact he did not allow to slip. But fortunately the heiress of Brittany, Orleans, and Milan, was not allowed to marry the great rival of France. On June 14, 1509, a second investiture confirmed the inheritance of Claude, and associated with her therein her future husband, Francis of Angoulême, her cousin, equally with herself the offspring of Valentine and Orleans.104 This Imperial document explicitly admits the right of feminine succession to a Lombard fief,105 for Claude, it affirms, is the heiress to Milan through her father, the grandson of Madame Valentine. But it says nothing of the descent of Francis of Angoulême, although it provides that if Claude should die in childhood, and the King have no other children born to take her place, then Francis of Angoulême shall be recognized as in his own right Duke of Milan because he is the heir of the King of France.

These are the rights of Francis I. to Milan, rights absolute and impregnable. But it was only by continual conquest that the French could keep their hold upon the Milanese. For the tendencies of ages go to show us that there is a natural right more potent than the claims of blood, succession, testament, adoption, or investiture. The French dukes of Milan were, in their own dominions, foreigners. And, as the wise Commines foresaw—

“There is no great seniorie but in the end the dominion thereof remaineth to the natural countrymen. And this appeareth by the realm of France, a great part whereof the Englishmen possessed the space of four hundred years, and yet now hold they nothing therein but Calais and two little castles, the defence whereof costeth them yearly a great sum of money. And the self-same appeareth also by the realm of Naples and the Isle of Sicily, and the other provinces possessed by the French, where now is no memorial of their being there, save only their ancestors’ graves.”

It was the fatal battle of Pavia which really lost her Italian dependencies to France. The treaty of Madrid, extorted by compulsion, which proved so powerless to restore to the Emperor Burgundy (already become an integral part of France), resigned to him for ever the dominions of the French in Italy; not, however, without a struggle. No sooner was Francis released from Madrid than he declared that extorted contract void. He despatched protest after protest 106 to all the courts in Europe: but what availed to retain his hold on Cognac, proved vain to regain him the Milanese.

Immediately after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. had invested Francesco Sforza II., the son of Il Moro, with the duchy of his fathers. But what should happen on the death of Francesco Sforza, a childless man? Foreseeing this event, the hopes of the king of France were not extinguished; and the ten years between 1530 and 1540 are filled with the various endeavours, menaces, persuasions, by which he strove to obtain from the emperor the Duchy of Milan for the second son of France. Since it was evidently impossible to induce Charles V. to let Milan be an adjunct to the French Crown, the ambition of the king persevered upon a lower level, and a French Duke of Milan became the sum of his desires. At two different moments the realization of this scheme appeared possible. In 1535, after the death of Francesco Sforza II., negotiations were set on foot to obtain the Milanese for Orleans. A document still existing in the National Library at Paris 107 proves how lively and how sanguine at this moment was the hope of Francis I. to recover Milan. The king offered a promise never to unite this duchy to the Crown of France, and declared himself ready to expend an immense sum on its investiture. But the Venetians,108 aware of the danger to themselves which a great French state must create in Italy, temporized and manœuvred so well that the matter came to nothing; for Charles V. was in a humour to credit their assertions, that any time was better than time present. The affairs of Italy were dull and dead to him. All his energies were fixed upon the idea of the crusade against Algiers. It was proposed that Orleans should join him in this enterprize,109 and that, hand to hand in this holy fight, emperor and prince might consent to forget the bitter memory of bygone days. But in 1536 the eldest son of Francis died, and Orleans became the Dauphin of France. The schemes, the policy which during several years had endeavoured to secure for the husband of Catherine de’ Medici an Italian principality, collapsed before that unexpected stroke of fate. Orleans was not to be the head of an Italian kingdom reaching from the Alps to Rome, and in 1540 Charles V. invested his own son, Philip of Spain, with the Duchy of Milan. Yet France could not acquiesce in this alienation of her transalpine inheritance, and in 1544 the disastrous treaty of Crépy provided that, in two years from that date, either Milan or the Netherlands should be bestowed upon the third son of Francis. But before the time of the engagement had expired, Prince Charles was dead, and Milan fast in the grasp of the Spaniards.

Notes

49. J. 409, No. 42. Contrat de Mariage. 42 bis, Vidimus du Contrat et Acte de la remise d’Asti. Pavia, April 8, 1387. 42 ter, Confirmation du Contrat par Clement VII. à Avignon. For further documents on the subject see Carton K. 553.

50. Additional MSS., No. 30,669, fo. 215.

51. Champollion-Figeac, “Louis et Charles ducs d’Orléans,” p. 253. The will is dated Oct. 17, 1403: Pisa was probably counted in the “autres terres que puis avoir.”

52. In the ordinary imperial fiefs, which, even so late as the end of the fourteenth century, still in many cases preserved their original idea of military service granted in return for territorial possessions, a woman could not succeed without direct and especial mention of this fact in the investiture, or in some subsequent privilege. But in a purchased fief daughters were admitted to the succession in default of males. Milan was an imperial fief, derived directly from the emperor, and held by the peculiar sort of tenure known as Fahnlehen, from the homage of a banner or standard paid by its possessor to his feudal lord; it was destined, even if not explicitly reserved, for masculine operation only. Giangaleazzo Visconti paid the enormous price of 100,000 florins (about £50,000 sterling) for the title and investiture, but I am not aware whether this is or is not sufficient to grant the fief the looser privileges of a feudum emptum.

53. “Ann. Med.,” in Muratori, “Rer. Ital. Script.” xvi.

54. Dumont, ii. clxxxix.

55. He was born 24th of November, 1394. See for the release of Orleans the excellent chapter in the Marquis de Beaucourt’s “Histoire de Charles VII.” t. iii., Paris, 1885.

56. See M. Leopold Delisle, Collection Bertrand d’Estaing, a long note about F.M. Visconti’s protection of Asti, and secret instruction of Orleans to Cousinot, p. 135-40.

57. “The Bastard came with this requisition in the year 1442 to Milan, where I, Secundinus Ventura, saw him” (“Memoriale Secundini Venturæ”). Dunois went twice, February, 1441, and in 1451. In spite of Ventura’s line, the date is fixed by a document communicated to me by Count Albert de Circourt (Pièces Originales Fontanieu, dossier 1185, No. 38): “Payez 200 écus d’or à nostre comis et féal frère le bastard d’Orléans sur ung voiage qu’il a fait pour nous au pais de Lombardie partant de nostre dicte ville de Blois au dict mois de Fébrier dernier passé.” Blois 22nd Mai 1441.

58. Feb. 23 (The Milanese began the year upon Dec. 25). Osio, vol. iii. cccxviii.

59. B. de Mandrot. See also MSS. of Bib. Nat., Lat. 17779, fos. 53-56; and for the correspondence of Pope Felix with his son, Duke Louis of Savoy, upon this subject, an exhaustive article by M. Gaullier in the eighth volume of the “Archiv für schweizerische Geschichte.”

60. Feb. 14, 1447. Reg. 17, fol. 106, Secreta, Venice. This document records the dismay of Florence and Venice upon learning the league of France and Milan. These two cities with Montferrat, Mantua, Angleria, and the other Lombard powers, joined in a solemn convention to oppose the common enemy and to preserve the peace.

61. Desjardins, “Nég. dipl. avec la Toscane,” t. i. p. 60.

62. Bibl. Nat. MSS. Ital. 1584, Nos. 21 and 84, quoted by the Marquis de Beaucourt in the “Revue des Questions Historiques” for October, 1887.

63. “Archivio Storico Lombardo,” Anno iii. fasc. iv.

64. Osio, ii. note to p. 2. In the hour of his death, on August 14th, the Duke drew a codicil leaving everything to Alfonso. Two days before he had left Alfonso erede universale, and Bianca erede particolare. Of course in either case she remained mistress of Cremona and Pontremoli.

65. Osio quotes this letter, which exists in the Archives of Milan: Fece el Re d’Arragona erede del tutto, non facta mentione veruna di M.B. [Madonna Bianca] ne de la mogliere ne d’altri.... Vegnate pur voi via senza veruna dimora; zonto siate qua lo mezo del giocho e vincto.

66. This letter is quoted in M. Gaullieur’s interesting collection of documents from the correspondence of Duke Louis of Savoy, published in the eighth volume of the “Archiv für schweizerische Geschichte.” Also in M. de Beaucourt’s “History,” op. cit.

67. Secreta, Reg. 17, fol. 171, tergo.

68. Sed si in colloquiis fieret mentio per ipsos oratores de serenissimo Rege Francorum, et de Januense, qui occupassent de locis que fuerant quondam ducis, in hoc casu, praticatores ipsi iustificare debeant, in modesta et convenienti forma verborum, factum præfati Regis, et Januensis; videlicet, quod per nos, contra eos, honeste et convenienter fieri non possit.

69. Reg. 17, fol. 194, tergo. Dec. 30, 1447.

70. Reg. 17, fol. 221, tergo.

71. Reg. 17, fol. 220. Secreta del Senato, MS.

72. Reg. 18, fol. 3, Secreta del Senato, MS.

73. Viollet-le-Duc, “Mobilier Français,” iv. 454.

74. Olivier de la Marche, “Mémoires,” livre i. chap. 17.

75. Secreta del Senato, Reg. 18, fol. 106, MS.

76. Lamansky, “Secrets d’Etat de Venise,” p. 160.

77. Gaullieur, op. cit.

78. Reg. 18, fol. 83. April 21, 1449. Secreta del Senato, MS.

79. Secreta del Senato, MS. Reg. 10, fol. 93. July 3. 1449.

80. These four letters are quoted by M. Maurice Faucon from the Milanese Archive in his report of his two missions in Italy in the years 1879 and 1880, pp. 35-37.

81. Archives of Genoa. Materie Politiche, mazzo 12, 3. See also Charavay’s “Report on the Italian Letters of Louis XI.,” 1881.

82. See the documents in Lamansky, “Secrets d’Etat de Venise,” 161, 14, &c.

83. Ghinzone, in the “Archivio Storico Lombardo,” Anno ix, Fasc. 2, 1882, quotes the original documents from the Milanese Archives, Reg. Miss. N. 12, foglio 40. The letters are all of the greatest interest.

84. Reg. 20, fol. 1. Secreta del Senato, MS. January 3, 1454.

85. Reg. 19, fol. 232. Secreta del Senato, MS. December 11, 1453.

86. “Secreta,” tome (sic Reg?) xix. fol. 211, under date August 31, 1453, quoted M. Étienne Charavay in his “Rapport sur les Lettres de Louis XI. conservées dans les Archives d’Italie.” The following documents from the Venetian Archives—as yet, I believe, unpublished—form the natural sequel to this interesting letter:
“Senato” I., Reg. 19, fol. 232, under date December 11, 1453.—The Venetians send Venier to ask Savoy to join with them in requesting the Dauphin to invade Italy: “Venier must ascertain the views of the Duke of Savoy as to Sforza, since King René comes into Italy. Let him clearly understand that Sforza is a most ambitious man, and that if he continue to prosper as he does he will certainly turn his thoughts towards Savoy. Venice not only intends to secure her own estate, but for the sake of her friends and allies will as much and as resolutely as possible repress the said Count Francesco Sforza, who may become the Common Enemy. And to this end Venice has determined to request the aid of France, and among others the aid of the Dauphin, asking the said Dauphin for the common good to invade Italy with a force of from 8,000 to 10,000 men. And we of Venice entreat Savoy to send a suitable ambassador along with ours to persuade the said Dauphin to this undertaking. And our intention is to grant the said Dauphin a suitable subvention in money and whatsoever he may conquer from Adda to Ticino, and from Padua to Piacenza, except the domains of Savoy and Montferrat.... Let Venier then discover how many men and of what sort and when Savoy could supply to the field.... And if my Lord Dauphin stand out for the consent of his father, you shall offer on our part to implore it and procure it for him. And if he wish you to go to the King you shall go, and, as best you can, procure his consent.... And if the said King or Dauphin say to you this undertaking regards the Duke of Orleans, say it is true that on the death of Filippo Maria he sent to us notifying his claims (and fain would we see a prince of the house of France on the throne of Milan!), and saying he expected supplies from France, and we assured him of our delight and pleasure; and if indeed the King or the Dauphin, at your instance, will supply the said Lord Duke with an army of from viii. thousand to x. thousand men, we will aid and assist him upon the same terms and conditions as my Lord the Dauphin. And go then to the Duke of Orleans and persuade him to the enterprize.”
Reg. 20, fol. 26, July 23, 1454.—This document concerns a League meant to secure Italian peace by means of an offensive and defensive alliance, against all breakers of the peace, to be made between Venice, Milan, Florence, and Naples. Florence desires an exception in favour of the house of France. At this Milan, much alarmed, desires Venice by a secret and separate agreement to sign the First Clause at least with him. Venice sends ambassadors to Florence and to Milan, pointing out that the First Clause is absolutely necessary, since, without it, there is no reason why the King of Arragon should enter the League. Indeed if an exception be made in favour of France, it will only and justly irritate him, and thus the alliance would bring rather discord than peace into the Peninsula. No specific mention need be made of the house of France, to which Venice entertains the most friendly feelings. But if the First Clause were signed and Arragon induced to enter the League Italy might look forward to many years of peace and tranquillity.
Reg. 20, fol. 103, October 8, 1456.—The Marquis of Varese, ambassador to the Duke of Milan, informs the Venetians that the Doge of Genoa—notwithstanding his open alliance with France and apparent subjection to her—has made a second and secret alliance with Arragon and Milan, in which Venice is prayed to join, against the French. The Venetians reply that, owing to the mutability and diversity of Genoese affairs, it is impossible to give any solid advice.
Reg. 21, fol. 21, October 10, 1465.—The descendants of Valentine Visconti—i.e., the Dukes of Orleans and Brittany and the Count of Angoulême—sent secret ambassadors to Venice to treat concerning the recovery of the Duchy of Milan from the hands of Count Francesco Sforza. Venice replies with compliments, but expresses herself desirous to keep the peace.
Reg. 22, fol. 176, July 28, 1466.—French ambassadors have been received at Venice from Louis XI., King of France. Venice assures him of her excellent disposition towards the new Duke of Milan as well as of her “antiqua benivolentia” towards his father. Venice believes a resumption of the Italian League is not at that moment necessary, extols King Louis for his intention to proceed against the Turk, and congratulates him on the quiet of his realm.
The Latin originals of these documents will be included in the volume of “Pièces Justificatives,” for my History of the French in Italy, 1378-1530.

87. Reg. 20, fol. 17, April 26, 1454.—“Ordre à Francesco Veniero de prévenir le dauphin, avec tous les ménagements possible, qu’ils ont faiz la paix avec Francesco Sforza et qu’ils n’ont plus besoin de ses services” (Charavay, loc. cit.).

88. Quoted by the Marquis de Beaucourt, iv. p. 244, from the “Procès de Mariette.”

89. “Procès de Mariette” in the Preuves de Matthieu d’Escouchy, p. 290. See Marquis de Beaucourt, “Histoire de Charles VII.,” pp. 207 et seq.

90. March 14, 1451, Amédée of Savoy had promised to assist the Dauphin against all, “even against the King of France” (Charavay, l. c. p. 34). This had a different aspect after Louis’ coronation.

91. Dumont, iii. ccxxviii.

92. Secreta del Senato, MS. Reg. 21, folio 21.

93. MSS. Secreta del Senato, Reg. 31, fol. 123, tergo.

94. Many reasons have been given for the assumption of this surname. As a fact it appears to have been a baptismal name. In February, 1461, Bianca Maria Sforza sent to the shrine of the Santo at Padua the silver image of a child, ex voto for the recovery of her fourth son, Ludovicus Maurus, filius quartus masculus, aged five years. (“Archivio Storico Lombardo,” Anno xiii; Caffi on B.M. Sforza.)

95. Reg. 31, fol. 131, tergo.

96. Reg. 32, fol. 87.

97. The messenger left Florence Oct. 3, 1494. See for further details of these schemes the first vol. of Desjardins’ “Nég. dip. dans la Toscane.”

98. The copy is to be found in Corio, 457-59. I do not know where to find the original document, but MSS. copies, evidently from the Archives of Pavia, are to be found among the British Museum documents, Additional MSS., 30, 675. Giovio mentions a report that after the death of Francesco Sforza II., Count Massimiliano Sforza found the deed and restored it to the Emperor. Lodovico il Moro ever insisted that he received Milan, not by succession, but direct from the Emperor. He called himself the fourth, and not the seventh, duke.

99. “Era molto odiato dai popoli a cagione dei denari.”—“Bello Gallico,” i. p. 176.

100. For this letter, and for the letters of Orleans to Bourbon, quoted from the Library of St. Petersburg, vide vol. ii. of Cherrier’s “Histoire de Charles VIII.,” p. 184, et seq.

101. This is the Venetian estimate. Guicciardini says, 300 lances, 3,000 Swiss, and 3,000 Gascons.

102. This is the Venetian estimate. For the figures of Giovio and Corio, see Cherrier, ii. 197.

103. Luenig, sectio ii. classis i.: “De Ducato Mediolanesi,” xliv.

104. See in Luenig, June 14, 1509, No. xlv., and also, with some unimportant variations of text, Bib. Nat. Paris, MS. 2950, Ancien Fonds Français.

105. Præfatus rex ex ducibus Mediolani originem trahit, medio illustris quondam dominæ Valentinæ aviæ suæ, filiæ quondam illustris Johannis Galeatii Mediolani ducis.

106. See for example “Protestations de François 1^er,” Bib. Nat. MS. 2846.

107. Bib. Nat. MS. 2846, No. 57: Instruction baillée au Seigneur d’Espercieu après la mort du duc de Milan, Sforce, &c.

108. Ibid.: Les Vénitiens ont practiqué bien avant cette mattière et laissent, ce semble, le dict Sieur de Granvelle entendre qu’ils parlent autrement que le roy, par aventure, ne pense; l’ambassadeur parle assez publiquement de diviser le dict estat en plusieurs pièces.

109. Ibid.

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