THE Duke's influence, as head of the della Rovere family, was paramount in the conclave, composed as it was of relations, friends, and creatures of the late Pope in overwhelming majority. The election was therefore to a great degree in his hands, and when it fell upon the Cardinal de' Medici, he rejoiced in the elevation of a personal friend. He and his brother Giuliano, their nephew Lorenzo, and their cousin Giulio, afterwards Clement VII., had been welcome guests at Urbino, during their family's long exile from Florence. Indeed, we have noticed Giuliano as one of the most brilliant ornaments of Guidobaldo's court, where he resided so long that the apartment devoted to his use still bears his name in the palace. The restoration of the Medici to supremacy in their native city had been the doing of Julius; the choice of their cardinal as his successor was the act of his nephew.[*252] Thus was the bond of friendship confirmed by ties of gratitude. But from such fetters princes are often prone to assume an exemption, and Francesco Maria was destined to experience that they are not more binding upon pontiffs.[253]

Leo X. has been one of the most fortunate of men. His all but sovereign birth was still more distinguished by the merit of his family, to which history has done the amplest justice. His natural talents and tastes were not only of a high order, but were perfectly adapted to the golden age in which he lived, and to the high career for which he was destined. His rapid and premature advancement to the first dignities of the Church stimulated instead of relaxing his mental discipline. He obtained the triple tiara at the unprecedented age of thirty-seven, and wore it during the brightest period of the papacy. Though cut short in the flower of manhood, he lived long enough to link his name with the most splendid era of modern history, and although his measures accelerated the crisis of the Reformation, he died ere their seed had borne that dreaded fruit. In fine, his eventful life has been celebrated by at least one biographer worthy of the theme. On the wide field which such a character opens we shall have little opportunity to expatiate. Our narrative has to do with its darker shadows, and to hold up this Pontiff as the implacable foe of a dynasty which had singular claims upon his favour and consideration.

The general estimate of Julius and of his successor has been shrewdly conceived and tersely expressed by Sismondi. "The projects of the former had prospered beyond the ordinary calculations of policy; his impetuosity, by surprising his enemies and throwing all their plans into confusion, had often availed him more than prudence could have done; he had also extended the temporal possessions of the Church beyond what any of his predecessors had effected. Yet he had caused so many mischiefs, he had occasioned such vast bloodshed, he had so swamped Italy with foreign armies, even while he pretended to rid her of the barbarians, that his death was hailed as a public blessing, and the cardinals responded to the feeling of Rome, Italy, and all Christendom in desiring that his successor should in no respect resemble him. As he had been old, restless, impatient, and passionate, they sought to replace him with one less aged, and whose tastes were for literature, pleasure, and epicurean indulgences.... Leo was quite the opposite of his predecessor; his temperament was far less stern, irascible, or unforgiving. Towards intimate associates his manners were singularly cheerful and gracious. The protection he extended to letters and arts, the favours which he lavished upon savants, poets, and artists, drew from all Europe a chorus of commendation. But, on the other hand, his character fell very short of that of Julius in frankness and elevation; all his negotiations were stained by deceit and perfidy. Whilst he talked of peace he fanned the flame of war; no pity for the inhabitants of Italy, crushed by barbarian hosts, ever influenced his conduct. His ambition, nowise inferior to that of his predecessor, was not veiled, even to himself, by motives equally respectable. His object was not the independence of Italy, nor the aggrandisement of the Church, but the advancement of his own family."

The Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was elected Pope on the 11th of March, 1513, and was crowned on the 19th. The Duke of Urbino had repaired to Rome to offer his congratulations in person, and attended the solemn installation at the Lateran, with twenty-four mounted gentlemen and as many footmen; but mingling regard for the dead with respect for the living, he and all his suite appeared in black velvet and satin, as mourning for his uncle. The device worn on the Pontiff's liveries at this pageant, was in harmony with his previous character and present professions: under a golden "yoke" was inscribed the word suave, meaning something more winning than the scriptural phrase "easy," from which it was borrowed. When two more years had gone by, Francesco Maria was an outlaw, crushed under that gentle yoke, and stripped of his all; whilst the Duke of Ferrara, the next great feudatory of the Church who followed in the procession, could scarcely maintain himself by French aid, until the death of his pontifical oppressor enabled him to parody on his medals another and more appropriate text, in memory of his escape, "Out of the LION'S mouth." At this coronation there was witnessed an unwonted spectacle, the fruit of Alexander's aggressions on the Campagna barons. The humbled chiefs of Colonna and Orsini walked side by side, and their reconciliation was commemorated by a rare medal, on which the crowned column of Colonna is fondly hugged by the Orsini bear, with the motto, "For their country's safety." Francesco Maria's reception was as cordial as distinguished, for the promptings of ambition had not yet transformed Leo's naturally bland and gracious nature into unrelenting and bitter hate. He was accordingly confirmed in his dignities, and retained for a year as Captain-General of the Church, with 13,844 ducats of pay, besides 30,000 of allowances for his company of two hundred men-at-arms, and a hundred light cavalry; nor could words exceed the kindness of the letter in which Bembo intimated this to him on behalf of the Pope.[254]

When the coronation fÊtes were over, he returned home to enjoy one of those brief intervals of repose which rarely fell to his lot. His almost continual absence on military service had indeed been greatly felt in his capital, and most of the distinguished men who frequented it under Duke Guidobaldo were now dispersed. Some of them, however, had continued towards his nephew their friendship and services, either under his own banner or in diplomacy. Among these was Baldassare Castiglione, to whose good offices the reconciliation of Francesco Maria with Julius has been partly attributed. In the affair of the Cardinal of Pavia, the Count warmly espoused his part, and invented for him, as a deprecatory device, a lion rampant proper on a field gules, holding a rapier, and a scroll inscribed, Non deest generoso in pectore virtus, "Worth is never wanting in a generous breast"; but this emblem was seldom used, being odious to the college of cardinals, as approving a sacrilegious precedent. Castiglione's elegant endowments were especially qualified to gain him the ear of a prince whose pride it was to emulate his predecessors, as much in the grace of their court as in the fame of their arms; and the preference for so small a state shown by him whom monarchs would have delighted to honour, was fit subject for gratitude, independent of the real services which the Duke derived from the friendship of one so well versed in business. It is stated, although on doubtful authority, that he went upon a mission from Urbino, to urge on Henry VIII. a descent upon Calais,[*255] in the hope of such a diversion recalling Louis from Italy. If so, it was probably in arranging the treaty of Malines on the 5th of April of this year. In the prospect of adding Pesaro to his dominions, Francesco Maria had promised to Castiglione a fief in his dependencies, and in September, 1513, a charter was granted to him of Novillara, erected into a countship. The letter of donation specially mentions the faithful, sincere, and acceptable services of Baldassare; his elegance in the Latin and Italian languages; his skill in military and civil affairs; and confers upon him this favour rather in earnest of future and more ample benefits, than as a reward of the fatigues, perils, and anxieties which he had already undergone for the Duke.[*256] Of this grant he received a willing confirmation from Leo X., to whom, on his elevation, he had borne Francesco Maria's first congratulations. The brief to this effect dwells on the peculiar satisfaction with which the Pope thus testified, from long acquaintance, his high merits, his distinguished birth, his literary acquirements, his military fame, and his exemplary devotion to the Holy See.

The estate thus associated with Castiglione is generally said to owe its name to its "noble air"; and certainly upon the Italian principle that a healthful atmosphere must be sought in high places, that of Novillara ought to possess unusual virtues. But the learned Olivieri has corrected this vulgar error, and has derived its denomination from the Latin nubilare, which he renders as an open shed for the housing of grain,—a grange, as it might be called. He has traced it back to the twelfth century, and to the fourteenth ascribes an imposing tower of three commodious stories built here by the Malatesta. Hither was conducted, on her first arrival, Camilla of Aragon, bride of Costanzo Sforza Lord of Pesaro; and its inaccessible situation did not prevent a splendid manifestation of the general joy, in fÊtes and pageants, commemorated in a volume of excessive rarity, which seem more proportioned to the affectionate gallantry of her husband and subjects, than to the resources of their state, or to the conveniences of this palace. Representations of the community of Pesaro induced Francesco Maria to obtain from Castiglione a restitution to them of this Castle, in 1522, under promise of replacing it by an equivalent, which was never redeemed. Years passed away, notwithstanding repeated remonstrances on the part of Camillo, son of the Count, in which he even induced the Emperor to join. At length, in 1573, Guidobaldo II. conferred a tardy compensation, by granting to Count Camillo the Castel del Isola del Piano. This Duke had previously built an addition to the palace of Novillara, with elaborate decorations never completed. At his son's marriage with Lucretia d'Este, this fief, then worth 500 scudi a year, was settled upon her, but rarely occupied. It subsequently caught the young prince Federigo's fancy, who had planned for its beautiful gardens and frescoes, when untimely death cut short his schemes, and brought the nationality of Urbino and Pesaro to a close.

In the present day Novillara consists of about a hundred houses, huddled together, threaded by narrow alleys, and walled in by terraces. It overlooks Pesaro and Fano, the valleys of the Isauro and Metauro, with the hilly land which separates them. Northward the eye rests on Monte Bartolo, but southward it roams as far as Loreto, and in clear weather the Dalmatian coast may be discerned. The tower of the Malatesta, which formed a landmark to the whole surrounding country, fell in 1723, and the dilapidated fabric of the della Rovere now harbours a few squalid families, adding another to the melancholy wrecks of departed grandeur too frequent in this fair land. Yet Novillara will pass down the stream of Italian literary history as the title of its courtly lord, and its magnificent panorama may well repay the traveller who has leisure and strength to scramble to its summit.

The early policy of Leo was entirely pacific. The leading aim of his diplomacy was to soothe those irritations which his predecessors had fomented throughout Europe, and to heal the wounds thence resulting to Italy. His only aggressive measures during 1513 had been directed against the French, with the patriotic view of thwarting renewed attempts upon the Peninsula, in which they were seconded by Spain and Venice. In this object he was successful, but as the various and complicated transactions by which it was effected are foreign to our immediate purpose, we refer the reader for details to the tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth chapters of Roscoe's delightful work, although naturally representing them in the lights more favourable to the Pontiff's motives than we are prepared fully to approve. Power is, however, a dangerous draught, often exciting the thirst it seeks to slake. Before the Keys had been many months in Leo's possession, the establishment of his own family in the two fairest sovereignties of Italy became the object for which he was to

"Cry havock, and let slip the dogs of war."

Anticipating changes which might occur upon the death of Ferdinand II. of Spain, he conceived hopes of throwing off foreign domination in Naples, and providing for it a king of Italian birth, in his own brother Giuliano the Magnificent. With this ulterior advancement in fancied perspective, he removed him from the management of affairs at Florence, and substituted his nephew Lorenzo, intending ere long to assert for the latter a titular as well as a virtual sovereignty, and to extend his sway over all Tuscany, Urbino, and Ferrara. These ambitious and revolutionary projects required powerful aid, which could be most readily secured by finding a sharer in the adventure. Such a one readily occurred in Louis XII., whose consent to copartnery could scarcely be doubted, when his long-cherished acquisition of the Milanese was offered as his share of its gains. It was no serious objection to this scheme that it inferred a total subversion of Leo's anti-gallican policy; and, intent only upon his new views, he secretly negotiated with the French King to bring once more into Lombardy those troops which, but the year before, he had been the chief means of ignominiously chasing beyond the Alps. Should this move place the great powers in general collision, there was all the fairer chance for papal ambition in the scramble; and it mattered little that Italy should again be laid in ashes, and saturated with blood, so that the Medici became arbiters of her destiny.

With a view to these arrangements, Giuliano was betrothed in the following year to Filiberta of Savoy, maternal aunt of Francis, heir to the French crown. But a fatality seems to have attended most papal diplomacy: based upon nepotism or personal ambition, it was generally thwarted by its own fickleness or imbecility. Doubtful of the success of his scheme upon the crown of Naples (which Louis was little disposed to gratify, although prepared to concede to Giuliano the principality of Tarento), or impatient perhaps of waiting for its becoming vacant, the Pontiff turned his views upon Parma and Piacenza, as a convenient interim state for his brother, to be aggrandised by the purchase of Modena from the Emperor for 40,000 golden ducats. But here he was met by a difficulty of his own recent creation, for the establishment of Louis at Milan must have proved dangerous to the proposed principality of Giuliano; so, once more shuffling the cards, he prepared some new combinations for preventing the French expedition into Italy. One of these was an intrigue to detach the Venetian republic from the party of Louis, for which purpose he sent thither his adroit secretary Bembo, whose memorial to the senate has been printed by Roscoe. This attempt, however, entirely failed, and the King's death, on the 1st of January, alone prevented the detection of his faithless ally.[257]

In returning from Venice, Bembo paid one more visit to the Feltrian court, now at Pesaro, rejoicing in the recent birth of an heir to the Dukedom. There he found many changes. The gay and accomplished circle, in whose lighter or more pedantic pastimes he had borne a willing part, was scattered, many of its members like himself to hold appointments of trust and dignity. But it was a sincere satisfaction to him again to meet the Duchess Elisabetta, now recovered from the deep despondency he has so touchingly described, and enjoying the society of her accomplished niece and successor, as well as of her former mistress of the revels, the merry Emilia Pia. In company of these ladies, the diplomatist forgot during a brief interval the cares of state, and lingered for two days on the excuse of indisposition, until he thought it necessary to explain his delay in a letter to Cardinal Bibbiena of the 1st of January, 1515.[258] The fatigues of riding post a hundred and forty miles from Chioggia in two days and a half required this repose, and induced him to continue his journey in less hot haste. Yet Bembo, with all his accomplishments, was but a sunshine courtier, as we shall see some fifteen months later.

It would seem that, at the time of Giuliano's marriage, the idea of providing for him large additions in Romagna to his Lombard principality was the leading motive of his brother's policy, and that the Dukes of Urbino and Ferrara were already viewed as stepping-stones to his exaltation. The command of the pontifical troops was accordingly bestowed upon him as Gonfaloniere, on the 24th of June, 1515, at once an injustice and an insult to Francesco Maria, in whose hands its baton remained unsullied.[*259] The fair professions with which the Duke was superseded were vague and unsatisfactory, and he received warning from various quarters of the sinister designs whereof he was the destined victim. These, however, being as yet immature, the Pontiff maintained professions of unwavering favour, and, in a brief dated on the 16th of August, he assures the Duke that he will readily regard certain services as entitled to the largest and most liberal remuneration in his power.

Yet Giuliano must be acquitted of the ingratitude and perfidy shown to his former friend by the Pope and his nephew Lorenzo. The hospitalities of Duke Guidobaldo had in his case fallen upon no arid soil. His fondest recollections of lettered intercourse and of youthful love were centred in Urbino. He remembered that it was Francesco Maria who, six years before, had interposed to screen him from the jealousies of the late Pontiff, and who had warmly urged the restoration of his family in Florence. He therefore firmly refused to acquiesce in any projects which would aggrandise himself at the Duke's cost; and, in token of good will, while on his way to France, made a detour to visit him at Gubbio, where he thus addressed him: "I have heard, my Lord, that it has been represented to you how the Pope has a mind to take your state from you, in order to give it me; but this is not true, for, on account of the kindness, favour, and benefits I ever have received from your Excellency and your house, I should never consent to it, however much desired by his Holiness, lest other princes of your rank should resolve, in consequence, never again to give such refuge at their courts as was granted to me and mine. Be assured, therefore, that, whilst I live, you not only will receive no molestation on my account, but will be ever regarded by me as an elder brother."[260] Upon these assurances, Francesco Maria not only suspended the defences of his duchy, which he had begun to put in order, but accepted an engagement for himself, with two hundred men-at-arms and a hundred light horse, under Giuliano, the pontifical captain-general. To secure himself, however, against all contingencies, he applied to the Pontiff for leave to bring into the field a thousand infantry, in addition to his usual following. The scruples of Giuliano did not in any way soften his brother, whose intrigues against Urbino are prominent in the curious despatch of his secretary Bibbiena, which Roscoe has printed under date the 16th of February.

Louis XII. died on the 1st of January, 1515, and was succeeded by his second and third cousin, Francis I. This event changed not the projects of Leo in behalf of his brother, whose marriage to the Princess of Savoy was solemnised in February, and who was received by the French monarch with kindness and distinction. To render his position fully worthy of the match, the Pope invested him with Parma, Piacenza, and Modena, yielding a revenue approaching to 48,000 ducats. He likewise settled a large pension upon the princess, and provided for the pair a magnificent palace in Rome, to which they were welcomed with a pomp unusual even in these days of pageantry.

Leo's position with reference to Francis I. was in many respects embarrassing, and the defence of his policy, elaborately undertaken by Roscoe, has established the writer's bias rather than the Pontiff's rectitude. That monarch was steadily pursuing those schemes upon the Milanese which Leo had the year before suggested to his predecessor; and the amicable relations established with the Medici by Giuliano's marriage gave him additional reason to rely upon the Pontiff's support in the struggle which must follow his descent upon Italy. But to restrain the French beyond their Alpine barrier was the favourite, as well as the natural policy of his Holiness, and it was that which tended most to the security of his brother's newly-acquired Lombard sovereignty. He therefore, in July, after some months of anxious vacillation, avowed his adherence to the league of the Emperor with the Kings of England and of Spain, to which Florence, Milan, and the Swiss were parties. Yet he was far from hearty in the cause, and, during the brief campaign which succeeded the arrival of a French army in Lombardy, the ecclesiastical contingent limited their efforts to watching the safety of Parma and Piacenza. Nor did the other allies show much more zeal, excepting the Swiss, whose impetuous valour brought on the pitched battle of Marignano on the 13th of September, and lost them the prestige which had stamped their infantry as invincible. The costly victory there gained by the French was speedily followed by a surrender of his claims upon Milan by Duke Maximiliano Sforza, who was content to enjoy for the remainder of his life a home and pension provided by his conqueror.[*261]

The principal object of Francis being thus effected, he was not indisposed to reconciliation with the Holy See, for which Leo had sedulously retained an opening by keeping Ludovico Canossa throughout the contest as an accredited agent at the French head-quarters. But the Pontiff met the usual reward of trimmers. The tardy accommodation offered by his envoy came too late to save Parma and Piacenza, for which alone he had become a party to the war. The French monarch would not hear of renouncing what he insisted were intrinsic portions of the Milanese, but offered to meet with the Pontiff and arrange in person a lasting amity, Bologna being named for the interview. Upon the diplomatic arrangements which there occupied these potentates in the end of the year we need not touch, further than to notice that the intercession of Francis in favour of the Duke of Urbino, which the latter had hastened, after the battle of Marignano, to bespeak by means of a special envoy, proved quite ineffectual. It obviously was dictated less by any interest in the Duke's welfare than by the wish to thwart a favourite project of his fickle ally, and it at once was met by reference to an article which the Pope had adroitly inserted in the treaty, that Francis should in no way interfere for the protection of any undutiful vassal of the Holy See. From Bologna Leo proceeded to Florence, where he remained most of the winter, maturing his schemes for the ruin of Francesco Maria.

The death of Ferdinand of Spain in January, 1516, soon reawoke the ambitious hopes of Francis, by reminding him of his predecessor's dormant claims upon the Neapolitan crown. But a new combination of circumstances gave another turn to his thoughts. The efforts of the Venetians to recover Verona and Brescia from Maximilian brought the latter into Lombardy at the head of fifteen thousand Swiss troops, by whom Lautrec, the French general, was for a time hard pressed, and Leo, ever anxious to conciliate a conqueror, hastily sent Cardinal Bibbiena with reinforcements to the Emperor's camp. Yet the storm, passing off suddenly and harmlessly, left few traces besides jealousy, which the prudence of that wily legate scarcely prevented from arising in the mind of Francis towards his slippery ally.

These vacillations on the part of Leo have been slightly touched upon, in order to clear the ground for displaying his ambitious nepotism in its proper field,—the duchy of Urbino. This, his prevailing weakness, had met with many disappointments. No opening occurred for its exercise in the direction of Naples. Parma and Piacenza had passed from his grasp, by reluctant surrender to a professing ally. But, worst of all, his favourite brother Giuliano, the object in whom centred most of his schemes, had been removed by death on the 17th of March, not without surmise of poison from the jealousy of his nephew Lorenzo.[*262] Although his great popularity favoured the ambitious views which were thrust upon him by the Pontiff, his mind lay rather towards elegant pursuits and splendid tastes, than to such high aspirations. Indeed, the Venetian ambassador, Capello, represents his dying request to Leo as in favour of Urbino[*263]; but the Pope waived the discussion of a point upon which his resolution was taken. Lorenzo, his successor in the papal favour, was a much more willing, though less conciliatory, instrument of his Holiness's designs.

Lorenzo de' Medici was eldest son of Pietro, the first-born of Lorenzo the Magnificent.[*264] He was born on the 13th of September, 1492, and his youth was passed amid many trials. His father, after ten years of exile from Florence, had been drowned in the Garigliano, in 1504, and, four years thereafter, his sister Clarissa's marriage with Filippo Strozzi involved him in a second banishment. He was of good person and gallant presence, endowed with a stirring spirit, but destitute of generous or heroic qualities. Giorgi, another Venetian envoy, even considered him scarcely inferior in cunning and capacity to the redoubted Valentino. The government of Florence was committed to him by Leo, on his uncle Giuliano being called to a higher destiny, and feeling his advancement restrained by the prior claims, as well as by the moderation of the latter, he is believed to have removed him by poison; at all events he was immediately named to succeed him as gonfaloniere of the Church.

This renewed outrage upon Francesco Maria's military rank,[*265] and the death of the only individual of the Medici upon whom he had any reliance, warned him of the approaching crisis in his fate. The influence of Alfonsina degli Orsini in favour of her son Lorenzo stimulated the Pontiff's projects, unwarned by a prediction of Giuliano that, by following the courses of the Borgia, he would probably suffer their fate. The immediate pretext, adopted for outpouring the accumulated vials of papal wrath, was the Duke's declining to march his troops into Lombardy under Lorenzo as gonfaloniere, in consequence, as Giraldi informs us, of information that his death was resolved upon should he trust his person within his rival's power. Accordingly, Leo was no sooner returned to Rome, than, affecting to consider this refusal, as the act of overt rebellion by a subject against his sovereign, he issued a severe monitory against his feudatory, summoning him thither to answer various vague or irrelevant charges, one of these being the Cardinal of Pavia's slaughter, of which he had already received no

"Ragged and forestalled remission,"

on a report subscribed by Leo himself. Various diplomatic functionaries at the papal court vainly interceded that he should appear by attorney, instead of surrendering in person; and he meanwhile garrisoned Urbino, Pesaro, and S. Leo. The Duchess Dowager, whose arms had frequently received and fondled the infant Lorenzo, while her husband's court sheltered the elder members of his house, hastened to Rome as a mediatrix; but it was with difficulty she made her way to the Pope's presence, and she obtained no mercy for her nephew, nor protection for her own alimentary provisions out of the duchy, his Holiness refusing to listen to any propositions until the Duke had obeyed the monitory by appearing at Rome before the 2nd of April. In consequence of his failure to do so, a bull of excommunication went forth on the 27th, depriving him of his state, and all dignities held of the Holy See, and absolving his subjects from allegiance, on pain of ecclesiastical censures. By a gratuitous exercise of malevolence, the papal influence was employed with the King of Spain for confiscation of Sora, and his other patrimonial holdings in Naples, thus visiting him with instant beggary. On the 18th of August, his dukedom and ecclesiastical baton were conferred upon the unworthy Lorenzo, who, in the following month, was also invested with the prefecture of Rome.

The value of political gratitude is strikingly illustrated in the fact, that these outrageous measures were adopted, in a consistory composed for the most part of creatures of the della Rovere family, with the single dissentient voice of Cardinal Grimani, of Venice, Bishop of Urbino, whose independence earned him an exile from Rome. Nor was this the only painful lesson of the worth of courtier fidelity now taught to that illustrious house. Even the civilities of Bembo to the Duchess Dowager sank to a low grade, as he thus acknowledges in a letter to Bibbiena of the 19th of April:—"The Lady Duchess of Urbino, whom I visited yesterday (a duty which I, however, very rarely perform), commends herself to you, as does also the Lady Emilia. On these dames the Signor Unico [Accolti] dances attendance. He is more than ever in the heat of his old passion, which he declares now numbers five lustres and a half; and he has better hopes than heretofore of at length obtaining the consummation of his desires, having been asked by the Lady Duchess to improvisare, by which means he trusts to move that stony heart to tears—at the least. He is to rehearse in two or three days, and as soon as he does so, I shall report to you: would that you could be here, as he is sure to do it right well." It can scarcely be doubted that this innuendo was meant to apply to the more exalted of these ladies. Whether as a caustic sneer, or a current scandal, it comes ill from such a quarter, and only adds a new proof of the poet's inordinate conceit. Nor did it go unpunished, for we find such vain effrontery thus lashed by Gandolfo Porrino, a contemporary satirist:—

The now inevitable war was opened by a simultaneous movement upon the duchy from three several quarters. Renzo, that is, Lorenzo da Ceri, accompanied by Lorenzo de' Medici and a powerful army, advanced from Romagna; Vitello Vitelli marched upon Massa Trabaria; and, on the 12th of May, Gianpaolo Baglioni seized on Gubbio.[*266] The force thus poured upon the state amounted to seventeen thousand foot, above a thousand men-at-arms, and near two thousand light horse. That which Francesco Maria could bring into the field numbered about nine thousand men, and being averse to entail upon his subjects the miseries of an unavailing struggle, he authorised their surrender, excepting the citadels of Pesaro, Urbino, S. Leo, and Maiuolo, which he garrisoned for resistance. His attempts to obtain the mediation or support of foreign powers entirely failed. Their sympathy and condolence were freely doled out to him, but none gave hope of efficient aid, except Maximilian, whose promises, on this as on all other occasions, proved quite worthless. It only remained to bow, as his uncle Guidobaldo had done, before the storm, and await happier times. On the 31st he sent off from Pesaro his consort, in an ailing state, his infant son, and the dowager Duchess to their relations at Mantua, with such valuables as they could transport in six or eight vessels, and, speedily following them, he embarked at midnight and reached that city in disguise.

Pesaro, after an eight days' siege, capitulated on honourable terms, in breach of which Tranquillo Giraldi, the commandant, was hanged upon a vague accusation of bad faith. Urbino having, by order of its sovereign, been surrendered without a blow on the 30th of May,[*267] the community, on the 16th of June, sent deputies to kiss the Pope's feet on taking possession of the state, in hopes of obtaining relaxation of the interdict; but his Holiness raised it only for such as adhered to the existing order of things. He committed the government of the town to its new bishop, Giulio Vitelli, who intrigued at all hands to induce the magistracy to follow the example set them in other places, of petitioning his Holiness to give them an independent sovereign, in order that the exaltation of his nephew to the dukedom might seem a popular measure. On the 16th of June the interdict was removed from all the duchy except S. Leo, which alone held out; but, faithful to the proverb of hating him whom he had injured, the Pontiff was deaf to all entreaties for restoration to church privileges of his victim, who consequently remained in hiding at Goito near Mantua, apart from his family, that he might not involve them in excommunication, and giving out that he had fled across the Alps, in order to baffle those who sought his life.

The example of Guidobaldo kept alive his hopes of regaining his sovereignty, as that Duke had done, by means of S. Leo. But ere he could organise measures for a descent, he had the grief of learning its fall. As there is always something of romantic adventure in the surprise of a place impregnable by ordinary expedients, we may dwell for a moment on the third and last successful leaguer of this fortress. The garrison consisted of a hundred and twenty men, one tenth of whom had fallen in its defence. After three months spent in hopeless assaults, a Florentine carpenter, named Antonio, observing from the opposite heights the absence of sentinels over one of the most precipitous parts of the rock, attempted to make his way up the face of it, sometimes aided by plants and bushes in the clefts, but generally driving iron spikes into their crevices, and fastening ropes, ladders, or beams, as he advanced. After four nights of this perilous toil he reached the wall, which he found, as expected, without defenders. Having reported the way accessible, a number of light infantry were entrusted to his guidance, whom he ordered to strip their headgear and shoes, and to strap upon their backs their shields, swords, and hatchets. On the 30th of September, under cover of a wet and foggy night, he conducted these safely to the summit, accompanied by a drummer and four pair of colours. At daybreak, an alarm was given from the watch-tower of an assault upon the gate, towards which the besiegers had sent a party; and, whilst the defenders hurried in that direction, Antonio, with some fifty men, cleared the walls, displayed their colours, and beat to arms. Ere the garrison had recovered their presence of mind, the gate was opened by the escalading party to their comrades, and the place was carried. The citadel was held for twenty-five days longer by a handful of desperate men, but they at length surrendered to one Antonio Riccasoli of Florence, who placed upon the castle a vainglorious inscription, claiming for himself the genius of another Dedalus. The fortress had been commanded by Sigismondo Varana, Count of Camerino, the Duke's young nephew, assisted by an experienced captain of the Ubaldini; and the good treatment experienced by the garrison gave rise to a suspicion of treachery on their part, Sigismondo alone being sent to Volterra as prisoner of war. Much of the Duke's treasure was taken, and the loss of S. Leo proved a serious blow to his interests.[268]