IN December the Duke of Urbino returned the challenge to a general engagement, which Chaumont had boastfully given him a few months before, and, after carrying some places of minor importance, encamped before Mirandola. To the surprise and no small scandal of all, the Pontiff, scarcely recovered from a dangerous malady, and braving the unusual rigours of the season, repaired to head-quarters. In reply to representations of his advisers against a step hazardous to his health, and unusual, if not unbecoming, in the head of the Christian Church, he urged the necessity of vigorously, and at any personal risks, meeting the disgraceful and schismatic proposal for a council at Pisa,[*240] by proving himself both able and willing to perform the duties of his high office, in wielding its temporal and spiritual arms against all enemies and perturbators of the Church, as well as in maintaining its doctrines, and supporting its friends. This ill-judged decision is said to have been strongly prompted by his evil genius the Cardinal of Pavia, who, speculating upon the chance of its cutting short his master's life, made sure of, at all events, turning to the advantage of his French friends the command at Bologna, which upon the Pope's departure would once more devolve upon him as legate. Guicciardini further charges him with promoting the bootless demonstration against Mirandola, in order to divert the army from Ferrara, whose inadequate defences might have rendered it an easy as well as important conquest. In the first days of the year, Julius reached the camp, attended by three cardinals, and took up his quarters in a cottage exposed to the fire of the walls. It is stated in an old chronicle, that a cannon ball having fallen close to his pavilion, the enraged Pontiff ordered it to be sent to Loreto as an ex voto offering, and threatened to deliver over the place to a sack. Severe cold and deep snow in nowise daunted him, and his presence alarming the garrison, whilst the besiegers were stimulated to exertion by his persuasions, the town was soon reduced, but, by extraordinary exertions on the part of Francesco Maria, was saved from pillage.[*241] Its garrison had been commanded by a natural daughter of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio,[*242] who, on being rudely asked by the Legate, in presence of Julius, if she were the woman who would hold the place against the Pontiff, replied, "Against you I could easily have defended it, but not against him."

Julius, satisfied with this success, retired to Ravenna: whilst his nephew, who about this time was warned by the Doge of Venice of a plan concerted by the Cardinal of Rouen for poisoning him, led the army towards Ferrara. As the best means of relieving that town, and perhaps in concert with the treacherous Legate, Trivulzio, who since Chaumont's death, commanded the French troops, amounting to fifteen thousand lances, and seven thousand infantry, now marched upon Bologna, avoiding a battle, which the Duke of Urbino would gladly have hazarded. The latter, however, by forced marches arrived there before him, and encamped at Casalecchio, three miles south of the city. The French army was by this time at Ponte Laino, about five miles north-west from the gate; and the Duke lost no time in advising the Legate of the position of affairs, offering to throw two or three thousand men and some artillery into Bologna. After losing much valuable time in consultation with some of the citizens, the Cardinal declined these as unnecessary. This answer appears to have converted into certainty the suspicions which Francesco Maria had long entertained of his coadjutor's good faith. He knew the garrison, consisting of about twelve hundred troops, to be utterly inadequate to resist the French; he was also aware that the exiled Bentivoglii, then hovering about at the head of a strong band of adherents, were eagerly looked for by their numerous partisans within the walls, to whom the Cardinal had rendered his ecclesiastical authority doubly odious, by a series of oppressive measures totally inconsistent with its usual mild sway, and intended, no doubt, to promote his own treasonable ends, by alienating the inhabitants from the established order of things. Strongly impressed with the urgency of the crisis, the young Duke persisted in his intention of reinforcing the garrison, but some older officers, persuaded by renewed assurances from the Cardinal, overruled him in council, and their march was postponed until morning,—a delay fatal to the cause, and pregnant with complicated evils.

So little was the Duke of Urbino satisfied with this resolution, that he posted videttes under the walls, and spent the night in reconnoitring with his staff. Midnight had just passed when a confused murmur from the city attracted his attention. The word Chiesa! or church, seeming to prevail amid the din, he had hope that the Legate's authority was maintained; but presently the watchword being heard more distinctly, it proved to be Sega! Sega! signifying "The saw! the saw!" a badge and war-cry of the Bentivoglii. After some time lost in painful suspense, it was ascertained from the sentinels that the French and the Bentivoglii were masters of the place. Aware of his critical situation, but retaining his presence of mind, Francesco Maria gave instant orders for a retreat, fixing a point of rendezvous five miles on the road towards Romagna. Thither he marched his cavalry in perfect order, by the level country, and was followed by the Venetian and other infantry along the high ground. The latter, being set upon at once by the enemy and the country people, fell into confusion, and, but for the Duke's strenuous persuasions, and a successful charge which he made with his cavalry upon their assailants, their officers would have given way to a general panic, and the army must have been annihilated. The coolness of their juvenile commander so far reassured them that the retiring army encamped on the morrow between ForlÌ and Cesena, without much further loss than their artillery and baggage.[243] The vast quantity of booty obtained for this misconducted affair the nick-name of "donkey-day."

Bologna was lost on the night of the 21st of May, and, beyond all question, it fell from the Legate's fool-hardiness or treason. The catastrophe which followed it called forth a bitterness of feeling fatal to impartial judgment, and the historians whom we have chiefly followed were friendly to the Duke of Urbino, and consequently prejudiced against the Cardinal.[244] Yet, after full allowance for this circumstance, there seems no reasonable doubt that the latter secretly favoured the French interests, and neutralised those measures by which Francesco Maria would have saved the city. He placed the gates in charge of noted partisans of the exiled family, by whom they were opened after nightfall to receive the Bentivoglii, followed by the main body of the French army. It was even alleged that he had previously sent away his most valuable effects; at all events, he wanted courage to share the success which had crowned his treason, and, in real or pretended panic, escaped upon a mule, disguised in a lay habit, and attended by only two followers. Nothing could palliate his flight without an attempt to warn the Duke of his danger, or to concert measures for the preservation of his army; and his whole behaviour lays him open to the suspicion of an intention to sacrifice both. Against such a combination of untoward events the friends of the Church could not struggle, and the mass of the Bolognese, smarting under recent oppression, welcomed their former rulers with joy, and vented their insensate fury in smashing the bronze statue of the Pope, which Michael Angelo had executed in the short period of fifteen months, and which was afterwards cast into a cannon bearing the Pontiff's name.

From Castel del Rio, a petty fief which his family had retained after losing the seigneury of Imola, the Cardinal on the 22nd sent courier after courier to Julius at Ravenna, preoccupying his ears with representations against his nephew, upon whose cowardice he cast the whole blame of the recent disaster. The latter, having sought an audience of the Pope, found him alike prepossessed against him, and deaf to his self-justifications; indeed, his attempts to unmask the traitor were denounced as suggestions of envy and malice, and he was superseded in his command. A temper less forbearing might well be incensed by this climax of injury, at the hands of one whose bad faith and malignity had long rankled in his fiery bosom. To see his uncle at once sacrificed and cajoled, to be himself made the scapegoat, while the true criminal was trusted and honoured, were trials beyond endurance, even apart from the taunt by which they were aggravated. As he quitted the presence-chamber, towering with just indignation, and accompanied by two officers and as many orderlies, he unluckily met the Legate on his mule, attended by a hundred light-horse. Regardless of his escort, the Duke rushed upon him and plunged a poignard into his entrails, which passed through to his saddle.[*245] The blow was repeated by the officers, his guard attempting neither redress nor vengeance, and in a few minutes the Cardinal had gone to his dread account, exclaiming repeatedly in Latin, "From crime comes mischief." This deplorable event happened on the 24th of May.[246] Its details are variously stated, and one account says that the rencontre occurred ere the Duke had seen his Holiness, while the Legate was returning from an audience; on the whole, we have preferred that of Giraldi, whose uncle was an eye-witness.

Francesco Maria was quickly aware of the horror of this outrage, and immediately after arranging matters in the camp, retired to his state, to repent, it is hoped, as well as to abide its results.[247] The sacrilegious nature of the offence might indeed be palliated in the letter, by the lay dress which the Cardinal chanced to wear, but his episcopal dignity and holy character as vicegerent of the papal authority were notorious, and the blind partiality of Julius seemed to have increased as his misconduct became more palpable. The situation of that old man was indeed calculated to bend even his stern nature. He had committed an enterprise of doubtful policy, and against which a large portion of the Church was openly declared, to his most trusted friend and to his favourite nephew. The design had utterly miscarried; Bologna, acquired by him so happily, was lost; a victorious enemy was within a few leagues of him; and his friend had been murdered by his nephew, after mutual recriminations of treachery. The attendant cardinals and prelates, jealous of a more favoured brother, exulted in the deed while condemning its manner; but their master is described by Paris de Grassis as giving way to the most exaggerated demonstrations of excessive grief, renouncing food and shutting himself out from converse. After hastily authorising negotiations with Trivulzio, he set out for his capital in a litter. At Rimini he was startled by a formal citation to appear before the Council of Pisa, and passed through Pesaro on the 11th of June. But on reaching Rome his spirit had rallied. On the 18th of July he summoned a general council at the Lateran, and declared that of Pisa schismatic and null; he thundered excommunications against Louis, the Florentines, and all its adherents; he deprived the cardinals who attended it; and declared war anew against France, as an enemy of the Church and of Italy. About the same time he suspended his nephew from all his dignities, and summoned him to answer at Rome for the assassination of the Cardinal of Pavia.

The accounts we have of the proceedings against the Duke of Urbino upon this charge are somewhat contradictory. Baldi says that his impetuous temper, ill-brooking the severity of one whom he was conscious of having honestly served, tempted him to throw off his uncle and seek an engagement under Louis; and the monitory issued against him by Leo X. in 1516 charges him with employing Count Castiglione on such a mission: but this foolish idea quickly passing, he obeyed the citation. On his arrival, attended by Castiglione, he was put under arrest, and obliged to give bail in 100,000 scudi to await the sentence of a commission of enquiry, consisting of six cardinals, one of whom was Giovanni de' Medici, afterwards Leo X. The process was long and complicated, for the Duke had many proofs, oral and documentary, to adduce of the Legate's secret intelligence with the French and the Bentivoglii. The pleading in his defence, by Filippo Beroaldo the younger, has already been referred to as in the Vatican library, and is a very remarkable declamation. Instead of urging the hot blood of one-and-twenty in extenuation of a sudden outbreak of fury under strong provocation, it justifies the assassination as merited by the Cardinal's notorious and nefarious treasons. Representing his life and morals in the darkest colours, it brands his boyhood as base; his puberty as passed in flagitious intercourse with bawds and gamblers; his youth as debauched by bribery, peculation and sacrilege; his mature age as degraded by the sacrifice of friends, the plunder of provinces, the open sale of sacred offices. It charges him with having had the throats cut of four eminent citizens of Bologna, against whom no accusation was brought, and leaving their bodies in the piazza; and further alleges that, having heard of the beautiful daughter-in-law of one of these victims, he sent for her to his presence, when his attendants, alarmed by fearful cries, broke open the doors and discovered him in the act of violating her person. After narrating his manifold treacheries towards the Pontiff and the Duke, the advocate, far from palliating the homicide, boasts of it as a public service, and, declaring that Francesco Maria was an instrument in the Almighty's hand for the great and benevolent purpose of ridding mankind of such a monster, only laments, for the public weal, that the holy inspiration which dictated it had not been sooner vouchsafed to this "liberator of the commonwealth." Lowering his tone, however, towards the close of this inflated oration, he appeals to the judges to spare a hero whose promise of future usefulness was precious to Italy, and in whose acquittal many princely personages were interested. The fierce philippic of Beroaldo was reproduced under a poetic garb in the satirical ode of Giovio, which Roscoe has printed. Neither authority can be deemed unprejudiced, but public feeling seems to have confirmed these invectives, and even Guicciardini attempts not to answer for the Cardinal's good faith.

Whilst this investigation was experiencing the law's delay, Julius was attacked by a quartan ague of a dangerous character. With wonted wilfulness, he refused all proper nourishment, eating only fruit, until his constitution was nearly exhausted. A fainting fit having occasioned rumours of his death, tumults arose, but were vigorously suppressed by the Duke of Urbino, who by a happy device got the Cardinal of S. Giorgio to carry him the viaticum. The apparition by his bedside of the person supposed likely to succeed him at once recalled his energies, and induced him to adopt the most likely means of disappointing such expectations. He therefore no longer hesitated to eat an egg, into which two yolks had been introduced by the Duke's order, that he might take twice as much sustenance as he was aware of; and from that hour his strength rallied. A deep-rooted affection for his nephew, rekindled by this double service, prompted him to a reconciliation, and in his first burst of gratitude he granted him absolution for his crime, and sent him home with a donative of 12,000 scudi. But as his Holiness had been induced to this reconciliation by personal favour, and perhaps by at length perceiving the Legate's faithlessness, Francesco Maria declined availing himself of such an acquittal; and the process for murder, resumed at its own instance, hung over him until, on the 9th of December, a consistorial bull issued, fully absolving him of the charge.

But to return to the seat of war, whence this untoward incident had removed the Duke of Urbino at a moment of peculiar interest. The King of Spain having contributed a powerful contingent, the new armament against Louis was placed under command of Raimondo di Cardona, viceroy of Naples, with the Cardinal de' Medici as legate. The Venetians, as before, were parties to this league, as well as Henry VIII.; Florence, still in the hands of its republican faction, and the now restored Bentivoglii, supported the French; whilst Maximilian, though its nominal adherent, was as usual equally inefficient in war or peace. Romagna again became the destined scene of the new struggle, and there, as in Lombardy, its chances proved adverse to Louis. The Duke of Urbino, apparently from an unworthy jealousy, refused to act under the Viceroy's command, but he gave free passage to the army on its route through his state, supplying it with provisions, and permitting his troops to march under its banner. He even repaired to Fossombrone, to testify respect and hospitality to the general, but, suddenly taking alarm, and suspecting sinister intentions, he withdrew to Urbino in a somewhat ungracious manner. Light may be thrown upon these eccentric movements from the correspondence of Castiglione, by which it would seem that Julius, relapsing into suspicion, had about this time spoken of his nephew as a traitor, who deserved to be quartered for maintaining, through Count Baldassare, a secret understanding with France and Ferrara; indeed, that he even diminished his company by sixty men-at-arms, and threatened to place the Duc de Termes over his head. It is not unlikely that, disgusted by this new insult, he may have intrigued with the French party in a moment of weakness. At all events, so deeply was the Pope mortified, that, in an access of renewed irritation, he declared him rebel, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance. Francesco Maria was consequently absent from the bloody field of Ravenna, where his early friend the chivalrous Gaston de Foix met a heroic but premature death. The French army which he commanded paid dearly, by his loss and that of their best troops, for a nominal victory which eventually proved a ruinous reverse. It was gained by the Duke of Ferrara's well-timed charge, and of forty thousand left dead in the field, above half had fought under the lilies of France. Indeed, but for the Viceroy's disgraceful flight, in a panic by some attributed to his suspicion of the Duke of Urbino, it might have been considered a drawn battle. So great was his terror that he passed through Pesaro with but two attendants, leaving his Spaniards to regain the Neapolitan frontier as they might.

This remarkable engagement took place on Easter Day, the 11th of April, but four days after the Pontiff had issued the bull against his nephew.[*248] Notwithstanding this fresh provocation, the latter afforded every support to Cardona's troops, who,

"Masterless, without a banner fled";

and, after placing his family out of harm's way, in S. Leo, hastened to Rome to console the Pope. But his Holiness was in no melting or wavering mood. With the brief remark, "At all events, I have united our enemies," he quickly repaired the recent breach by recalling the bull against Francesco Maria, and presented him with the baton of command. The Duke, remedying past misunderstandings by new exertions, hurried to Romagna to rally the broken battalions of the league, and to raise fresh levies. Ere the French could recover from the paralysing effects of their dearly bought success, he had regained that country, and, on the 21st of June, took possession of Bologna without a blow. Following up his advantage, he mastered with equal ease Modena, Parma, and Piacenza; but Reggio offered a resistance worthy of the heroic ages. It was held for the Duke of Ferrara by Count Alessandro Ferrofino, who, having detected some of his soldiers attempting to spike the guns, set them astride upon a mortar, and blew them into the air, assuring the bystanders that he most willingly would serve his Holiness in the same way. When ecclesiastical censures were thundered against the garrison, he made its chaplain return a pop-gun excommunication of the Pontiff. After two months had passed in this bootless struggle, Alfonso sent his countersign to the commandant as an authority to surrender; but, aware that his master was then at Rome, in the Pope's power, the Count returned it, vowing that he would not yield till hunger had driven him to eat off his right hand; adding, however, that, if his Highness had a fancy to give away the fortress, he was ready to consign it, with all its contents, by inventory, to whoever might be commissioned to relieve him of the command. This proposal was complied with, and the indomitable captain marched out his little garrison, with a safe conduct from the Pope whom he had defied.[249]

The Emperor, ever ready to abandon a falling cause, withdrew his contingent from the French service, and acknowledged the authority of the Lateran council, which had been opened on the 3rd of May. The Duke of Ferrara, too, thought it full time to make his peace with the Pope; while Louis, thus abandoned, could no longer maintain a footing in Italy, where but a few strongholds remained in his possession; and Milan was restored to Maximiliano Sforza, son of Ludovico il Moro. The overtures of Alfonso were, however, unavailing, being met in no generous spirit by his ecclesiastical overlord. On proceeding to Rome to plead his own cause, he was called upon to surrender his fief to the Holy See, and was treated as a prisoner. By the energetic aid of the Colonna chiefs, he escaped to his impenetrable swamps, and hastened to accredit Ariosto as his minister to appease the Pontiff, a mission which totally failed, the poet's silver tongue having barely obtained grace for himself as envoy of a rebel. Francesco Maria marched, by order of Julius, towards the Polesine, but malaria prevailing there after recent inundations, fever ravaged his army, and their leader averted the fate of his grandfather in these fens, by a timely retreat to his mountain air. We are gravely told by Giraldi that "the house of Ferrara mysteriously bears the name of the Deity" [Est], an idea which their repeated escapes by similar apparently special interpositions of Providence may have suggested.

It was during the Ferrarese expedition, and avowedly at the Pope's urgent desire, that the Medici were re-established at Florence by the league. The Duke of Urbino's absence from that enterprise has been accounted for by Guicciardini and Giovio, as the result of personal feeling against the Cardinal Giovanni, and as contrary to his uncle's instructions. This innuendo becomes important from being the first symptom of misunderstanding between the dynasties of Urbino and Florence, and as apparently the origin of Guicciardini's prepossessions against Francesco Maria, which, adopted by subsequent writers, especially by Roscoe and Sismondi, have led to very general misrepresentations of his after policy and motives. The whole intercourse of that Duke with the Medici, down to 1515, affords a virtual contradiction of latent enmity at this juncture, and the special charge in question is inconsistent with the facts stated by Leoni, who avers that, had Francesco Maria not been then engaged in operations against Ferrara, he would gladly have accompanied the combined forces to Florence, and that he actually connived at their carrying with them a portion of his artillery, contrary to private instructions from his Holiness, who, when the moment for action arrived, is alleged to have favoured the independence of Florence, perhaps under some vague apprehension of eventual dangers from Medicean ambition.

Italy, now freed from ultramontane oppressors, saw Milan restored to its native princes, and Florence again in the hands of her most influential family. Thus far had the favourite aims of Julius been attained; but, instead of hailing these events as the basis of a general pacification befitting his advanced years, he fretted in the recollection that Naples yet owned a foreign yoke, and that Louis was still intent upon vindicating his title to a Cisalpine dominion. The convulsive throes of a stranded leviathan were no unfit parallel to the versatile efforts wherein the old man consumed his waning powers. But, in the multifarious projects which agitated his yet elastic mind, the interests of his again favourite nephew were not forgotten. A brief of the 10th of January, 1513, granted to the latter plenary remission for all his undutiful errors against the Church, as a prelude to new favours, which must now be detailed.[250]

His uncle had entertained a scheme of purchasing for him the vague rights over Siena which the Emperors had long, though ineffectually, asserted; but a more hopeful expedient for his aggrandisement opportunely presented itself. We have, in a former chapter, narrated the circumstances under which Alessandro Sforza became invested with Pesaro in 1445. His grandson Giovanni, the outraged husband of Lucrezia Borgia, died in 1510, leaving, by his second marriage, an only son Costanzo, about a year old. Galeazzo, natural brother of Giovanni, who was himself of illegitimate birth, governed the state, as tutor of this nephew, until the child's death, in August, 1512, and so entirely acquired the good will of the people, that they proclaimed him their seigneur. The odious tyranny exercised by all petty princes of Italy is a fertile theme for dreamy poets and philosophising liberals; but, whilst the relative oppression was much the same under all forms of government in the Peninsula, personal safety was perhaps best maintained in those least exposed to internal convulsion. From such shocks the minor sovereignties were more exempt than the republics, and the residence of a court was beneficial as well as flattering to the community; hence the fall of an hereditary dynasty was, in almost every instance, lamented by its subjects. These are not, indeed, necessarily the best judges of their own welfare; yet their deliberate and repeated convictions, when free from the influence of demagogues, and tested by impartial history, can hardly be remote from truth.

The investiture of Pesaro had legally lapsed by the young Costanzo's death, and although, in many instances, the assumption of similar rights by illegitimate claimants had been passively permitted by the Church, Galeazzo would have gladly shrunk from a contest which the avowed policy of the reigning Pope rendered inevitable and hopeless. Tempted, however, by the unanimous support of the people, he assumed on his own account the authority he till now had held in behalf of his nephew. Julius instantly recalled the Duke of Urbino from Lugo, to commence operations for the reduction of Pesaro, with Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga as legate. After a brief resistance, Galeazzo surrendered the citadel, on the 30th of October, by a capitulation which insured him an annuity of 1000 scudi of gold, and the allodial holdings of his family. These he conveyed to the Duke for 20,000 ducats, including the Villa Imperiale, and on the 9th of November he quitted Pesaro, attended by nearly the whole population, who bewailed with bitter tears the extinction of a dynasty to whom they were fondly attached. The melancholy procession accompanied their lord as far as La Cattolica, from whence he retired to Milan, and there met a violent death in the following year.

The Cardinal Legate remained at Pesaro to administer the government in behalf of the Holy See, and the Duke returned home. Julius had already made one exception to his policy of bringing the minor fiefs under direct sway of the Church, by renewing the investiture of Urbino in favour of his nephew, and the opportunity was too tempting for repeating a measure recommended by the ties of natural affection. The unmerited suspicions and hasty severity which he had manifested towards Francesco Maria seemed to warrant some consideration; there was also an arrear of about 10,000 scudi of pay and advances, by the late and present Dukes, in the wars of the Church, which her exhausted treasury was unable to discharge, but for which it was desirable to secure compensation ere the tiara should encircle a less friendly brow.[251] Accordingly, one of the Pontiff's latest acts was to gain the consent of the consistory of his nephew's investiture in Pesaro, to be held in vicariat for the annual payment of a silver vase, a pound in weight. The bull to this effect is dated the 16th of February, 1513, and on the 21st his busy spirit was at rest. Three weeks later, the Duke and Duchess of Urbino took possession of Pesaro, and were flatteringly welcomed. Indeed, the people, finding the fate of the Sforza sealed, appeared to have looked about for any means of emancipation from ecclesiastical rule; and, ere Galeazzo had quitted the capital, the council entertained a proposal to petition the Sacred College in favour of Francesco Maria as his successor. This step, whether suggested by Julius or not, greatly strengthened his hands in carrying through the arrangement which he had at heart, and it enabled the citizens to receive their new lord with peculiarly good grace.