Of Catherine's father, the Duke, and of his magnificent journey to Florence.

The latter years of the fifteenth century, up to 1494, were a time of unusual prosperity in Italy. Never since the fall of the Roman empire, one thousand years previously, says Guicciardini,[43] had she enjoyed a period so flourishing and happy. "Reposing in perfect peace and tranquillity," continues the great historian, "cultivated in the more sterile and mountainous regions, as well as in the plains and fertile districts, subject to none save her native rulers, she not only abounded with inhabitants, trade, and wealth, but was especially adorned by the magnificence of a great number of princes, by the splendour of many noble and beautiful cities, by the majesty of the supreme seat of religion, and by the excellence of her great men in every art, pursuit, and science."

Of these noble and wealthy cities, Milan was one of the noblest and wealthiest; and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, its Duke, was one of the princes who most notably "adorned Italy with his magnificence." The Visconti had reigned there from 1277, till the death of Filippo, the last Duke of that race, in 1447, without heirs male. He had, some years before his death, given his daughter Bianca, and the succession to his duchy, to the celebrated soldier of fortune Francesco Sforza. And the magnificent Galeazzo, whose lot fell on the halcyon times described by Guicciardini, was the son of Francesco and Bianca, and succeeded his father in 1466.

Now, in the smiling and happy city of Milan, in these merry days of the good old time, there lived, eating his polenta, paying church-dues and taxes, and so pursuing, as quietly as he might, his way to dusty death among a crowd bound for the same bourne, a citizen named John Peter Landriano. To this John Peter, also, it might have been permitted to sleep in tranquil oblivion together with the others of his probably polenta-eating, and certainly tax-paying, fellow-citizens, instead of being still, after now four hundred years, thus extant, despite his "fallentis semita vitÆ," had not Mnemosyne marked him for her own, by right of one small fact. He was the husband of a remarkably beautiful wife, named somewhat unhappily Lucretia, on whom it pleased his magnificent Highness Galeazzo Maria to look with condescension in the year 1462. In a later part of that same year, the family of John Peter Landriano was increased by the birth of a female child, named Catherine, whom his Highness was so good as to consider and educate as his own.

This splendid prince, who was, as Catherine's priestly biographer,[44] Burriel, informs us, more bookishly inclined than could have been expected from a person of his exalted rank, took care that her education should be sedulously attended to by some of the learned persons who abounded in his court. And he had reason to be so well contented with the promise of her early years, that shortly after she had reached the age of eight, he caused her to be "legitimatised "—a curious process, which would seem to prove that, though not Jove himself has power o'er the past, Holy Mother Church possesses it.

Thenceforward Catherine's education was conducted under the superintendence of the Duchess Bona, a princess of the house of Savoy, whom Duke Galeazzo married in 1468 after the death of his first wife, Dorotea Gonzaga, by whom he had no child. It is to be supposed, probably, that the process of "legitimation," among its other mysterious virtues, had that of inspiring a good church-woman with maternal feelings for the offspring of another; for the Duchess Bona, who seems to have been a kind and gentle rather than a royal-souled lady, appears to have affectionately welcomed the little stranger as a princess of the noble house of Sforza, and to have done her best to prepare her duly for the high fortunes to which her father destined her, as a means of extending the connections and assuring the greatness of his house.

Such schemes, and others directed to the same end, formed the principal serious occupation of the Italian princes of that time, and were the fruitful source of atrocities and abominations innumerable, as the reader of Italian history well knows. To a certain degree such ambition found its excuse in the great law of self-preservation. For in the perpetually shifting scene produced by the alliances, jealousies, leagues, ruptures, friendships and treasons, of a crowd of petty potentates, it was well nigh impossible for any family of princely rank to hold its own, neither encroaching itself, nor encroached on by others. The fortunes of each were ever on the rise, or on the decline. And at the period of our heroine's appearance on the scene, the peace, which Italy was then enjoying, was preserved only by a careful maintenance of the balance of power between some four or five of the leading princes of the peninsula.

How large a portion of the labours and of the abilities of statesmen has been devoted to the perpetual trimming of this troublesome balance, at a later period of the world's history on the great theatre of Europe, we all know. And it is interesting to observe how thoroughly the theory was understood, and how perfectly and sedulously reduced to practice by exceedingly accomplished professors of the art of state-craft, in the miniature world shut off from the rest of Europe by the Alps. Indeed, the smallness of the objects to be weighed against each other rendered the task of keeping the scales even in that microcosm a peculiarly delicate one. Where very small matters were capable of disarranging the adjustment of the balance, only great dexterity and prudence could preserve the equilibrium. And accordingly, the game of checking and counter-checking, far-sighted schemes of attack, and still more cunningly devised means for future defence, was carried on upon that small chess-board with a perfection of duplicity, vigilance, and small vulpine sagacity, which might give a lesson to most modern professors of the same art.

Ferdinand of Aragon at Naples, Popes Paul II., and his successor Sixtus IV. at Rome, Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence, Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan, and the Republic of Venice,[45] were the powers between whom and by whom the balance of power, the peace of Italy, and the possessions of each of them, were to be preserved. The first four of these were, at the time in question, united in a common course of policy by the necessity of watching and keeping in check the ambitious Queen of the Adriatic, far more powerful than any one of the four, though much less so than all of them together. The rest of Italy, not comprised in the above five states, consisted of a crowd of petty principalities, which served singularly to complicate the game played by the great players, and to increase the interest of its vicissitudes. If endowed with any military talent, these small princes of a city and its immediate neighbourhood would take service as generals of the forces, in the pay of one or other of their more powerful neighbours. And in this way several of them became important elements in the calculations of those potentates. Some, again, would die without heirs male, and leave their female successors, daughter or widow, a prize to be scrambled for by the royal crowd always on the look out for such windfalls. Others were perpetually at feud with their own subjects, and thus gave an opportunity to some neighbour to intervene on behalf of one or the other party, with the same ultimate result. Finally, (and this was perhaps the way in which they most seriously compromised the tranquillity and influenced the destinies of Italy)—they formed the material from which each new Pope, who was anxious to be the founder of a princely family sought to carve out a dominion for his "nephews" by any of those arts of fraud or intimidation, of which Rome was so consummate a mistress.

No sooner had Catherine's legitimation given her the value of a piece on the political chess-board, than she became involved in the moves of the game. At a very early age she had been promised in marriage to the Count Onorato Torelli, scion of a noble family, which had in the preceding generation given valuable support to the Sforzas, ere their star was so decidedly in the ascendant. But Catherine became a princess; the young Onorato very conveniently died; and Duke Galeazzo conceived schemes for selling his daughter in a better market. The Manfredi were lords of Imola, a neat little city, situated in the midst of a rich alluvial territory between the foot of the Apennines and the Adriatic, about twenty miles to the south of Bologna; a compact and very desirable little sovereignty in short, with taxes capable of an increased yield in the hands of an enterprising possessor.

Now it so happened, that Tadeo Manfredi, the reigning prince, was involved in a dangerous quarrel with Guidazzo, his son, who complained that his spendthrift father was loading "the property" with an unconscionable amount of debt. And this uncomfortable state of things was talked over at the splendid court of Milan. Whereupon Duke Galeazzo came forward with a proposition, which he hoped would prove acceptable to all parties. He would assign within the limits of his duchy an appanage to Tadeo, would pay that extravagant old gentleman's debts, and would give his daughter Catherine, with the lordship of Imola, which was thenceforth to be his, to Guidazzo. The bargain certainly appeared advantageous enough to the Manfredi. The debts would be paid, and Guidazzo the heir, would after all be lord of his father's state; and whether in his own right, or that of his wife, would not so much signify.

But that little lady was, at the time she was thus disposed of, scarcely more than eight or nine years old. Poor Guidazzo had therefore to content himself with the promise of her hand, when she should have reached a marriageable age. And never was there period in the world's history, or clime on its surface, where slips between cup and lip were more abundant than in those good old times on the sunny side of the Alps.

Meanwhile old Tadeo is shelved on the estate of Castelnuovo, near Alessandria; Imola and its territory has passed into the hands of Duke Galeazzo; and young Guidazzo is dangling about the gay and magnificent court of Milan, and deems his fortune is a ripening, while his promised bride is daily growing in grace, beauty, and princely accomplishments, under the hot-house influences of the same splendid and dazzling environment.[46]

Dazzling indeed was the pomp, and ostentatiously reckless the expenditure of wealth, amid which Catherine passed those years of her life, when the impressions eagerly received from external objects are the most busy in forming the taste, and modifying the character. For the age was one of rapidly increasing luxury and riches. And the parvenu sovereign of Milan was especially bent on eclipsing his peers, and proving his right to his position among them by an unrivalled display of all that tailors, upholsterers, mercers, and jewellers can do towards creating the majesty that should hedge a king.

It was very shortly after he had concluded the arrangements for Catherine's future marriage, that, fired with this right royal ambition, Galeazzo determined on a festal journey to Florence, Lucca, Pisa, and so home by Genoa. Lorenzo, "the Magnificent," was sovereign in all save name at Florence, and now he was to be shown that Milan's Duke could advance a better claim to so proud a title. The Duchess Bona accompanied him. And from the provision of no less than twelve litters, it may be concluded that the other female members of his family, and doubtless Catherine among them, were of the party. These litters are called by a contemporary writer,[47] carts—"caretti"—but he adds that they were carried on mules over the mountains. The carts were covered with awnings of cloth of gold, embroidered with the ducal arms; and the "mattresses and feather beds" which were laid in the bottoms of them, were some of cloth of gold, some of silver, and some of crimson satin.

All the great feudatories who held of the Duke, and all the members of his council, each followed by several splendidly dressed servants, attended him. All the members of the ducal household were clothed in velvet. Forty footmen were decorated with golden collars, and other forty with embroidery. The Duke's grooms were dressed in silk, ornamented with silver. There were fifty led horses, with housings of cloth of gold, and gilt stirrups; an hundred men-at-arms, "each dressed as if he were a captain;" five hundred foot soldiers, all picked men; an hundred mules, covered with cloth of gold; and fifty magnificently caparisoned pages. Two thousand other horses, and two hundred more mules, all covered with rich damask, carried the baggage of the multitudinous host. Five hundred couples of hounds, with huntsmen and falcons and falconers in proportion, together with trumpeters, players, mimes, and musicians, made part of the monstrous cortÈge.[48]

Let the reader picture to himself this gilded and velvet covered army, slowly wending in long slender file, glistening dazzlingly in the southern sun, but grievously tormented under their ponderously magnificent trappings by the same, as they laboured over the steep and sinuous Apennine paths, by which alone they could reach mountain-girt Florence. For only a difficult bridle-path then crossed those mountains, over which the traveller now rolls in his carriage between Modena and Florence. Let him imagine, too, the camp of the brilliant, but wayworn host, pitched for the night amid the shelter of a chestnut? forest, in the midst of those wild hills, where even now, and much less then, there is neither town nor village capable of housing a tithe of such a multitude. And further, while amusing his fancy with such gorgeous and picturesque imaginings, let him not forget, that every yard of this cloth-of-gold, and richly-tinted velvet, represented the value of some horny palm's hard labour, the sweat of some weary brow, wrung from the wronged labourer by the most cruel and lawless severities of extortion.

But while the Duke and his Court were startling the world with the glories of this unprecedented cavalcade, making awe-struck peasants wonder, emulous peers envy, and angels weep, there were three young nobles, who had remained at home at Milan, engaged in reading "certain passages of Roman history" with their schoolmaster, one Cola Montano. Their names were Giovanni Andrea Lampugnano, Girolamo Olgiato, and Carlo Visconti; and, I dare say, descendants of theirs, whether under those names or others, may yet be found in the fair city of Milan; and perhaps they may be equally fond of reading the Roman history,—an occupation, it might be supposed, as innocent, though not so fatiguing, as riding over the Apennines in a suit of cloth of gold. Yet the reverend and right-minded historian,[49] who mentions the circumstance, speaks of their occupation with much disgust and indignation. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps "certain passages of Roman history" are not wholesome reading for the subjects of splendid princes.

For the present, however, we will let Galeazzo ride on in his glory, and the young gentlemen pursue their story-fed meditations in tranquillity at Milan.

The Duke arrived at Florence on the 13th of March, and was magnificently received by the magnificent Lorenzo, who entertained him and his family in his own house, while the enormous body of his retainers and followers were lodged and fed at the cost of the city. The Florentine historian, Ammirato,[50] after having enumerated all the particulars of the pomp detailed above, goes on in the true spirit of the old Italian city-patriotism to maintain, that Galeazzo, "for all that, young and proud, and the minion of Fortune, as he was, found himself obliged to admit that all his splendour was outdone by the magnificence of Lorenzo," inasmuch as the precious treasures of the Medici were far more admirable from the artistic excellence of the workmanship, than from the mere value of the material. "He could not but confess," continues the partisan of the Italian Athens, "that art had a higher value than mere costliness, as being attainable only by more arduous labour, and with greater difficulty; while he declared, that in all Italy he had not seen so great a number of paintings by the first masters, of gems, beautiful vases, statues ancient and modern, bronzes, medals, and rare books, as he now saw collected in the palace of the Medici;—treasures which he should esteem cheaply purchased by any quantity of silver or gold."

Florence did all she could for the amusement of her princely guests. But as it was in time of Lent, she could not, as she did twelve years previously, when Galeazzo had visited the city as a boy, show him a "hunt," as the historian calls it,[51] of wolves, boars, lions, and a giraffe, on the Piazza of Santa Croce! To be "like the time," it was necessary that the dissipations should be of an ecclesiastical character. So the gallant company were treated to a representation of the Annunciation in the church of St. Felice, to the Ascension in the church of the Carmine, and to the descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, at the church of the Santo Spirito.[52] The souls of the Lombards, says Ammirato, were filled with admiration of the wonderful artifices and ingenuity displayed on this occasion. And all passed off with the greatest Éclat, save that the church of Santo Spirito was burned to the ground by the forked tongues of fire.

This little accident was the only circumstance, that tended, says the historian, to mingle some flavour of bitterness with the general rejoicing. But the graver citizens of the republic complained that the brilliant Duke, when he started two days after this disaster on his return to his own states, full of compliments and admiration at his hospitable reception, left behind him among the young Florentine nobles a taste for profusion and display, which was a far greater evil than the enormous expense to which the city had been put, including the cost of rebuilding their burned church.