Guilty or not guilty again.—Medieval clanship.—A woman's vengeance.—Funeral honours.—Royal-mindedness.—Its costliness; and its mode of raising the wind.—Taxes spent in alms to ruined tax-payers.—Threatening times.—Giovanni de'Medici.—Catherine once more wife, mother, and widow.

Catherine, with two of her sons in the carriage with her, had advanced but a few yards beyond the spot where the murder was committed, when, alarmed by the cries of the conspirators and of her own retinue, she looked back, and became at once aware of the truth. The whole of the attendants, except two, who made a futile attempt to kill or arrest the assassins, immediately dispersed themselves, and fled in different directions. The seven conspirators did likewise; and Catherine and her sons, hastily throwing themselves on horses taken from the grooms, galloped at full speed to the fortress. And the murdered man's body was left alone in a ditch near the spot where he was slain, till late that night it was removed to a neighbouring church by "some decent and compassionate people" who lived hard by. The ballet-master historian[130] Cobelli went to look on it, as it lay in the ditch, and pours forth a flood of voluble lamentations over the beauty of the body thus mutilated and disfigured, and that of his gold brocade jacket and rose-coloured pantaloons besmeared with mud.[131]

Necessity for providing for their own safety may furnish some excuse for Catherine and her sons' precipitate retreat to the citadel. Her husband was beyond all need of assistance, and her sons' security, and that of her dominions, was in imminent danger. For it was probable enough, that the assassination just committed almost under her eyes was the first outbreak of one of those plans for restoring the old dynasty that were so constantly occurring.

Such, however, does not seem to have been the case. The popular indignation against the perpetrators of Feo's murder was at once strongly manifested. They were that night hunted through the town, and most of them dragged prisoners to the piazza before the morning.

There, before the assembled crowd, Gian Antonio Ghetti, the principal of them, declared to the magistrates that Feo had been put to death by the express order of Catherine and Octavian; and the others loudly confirmed his assertion.[132] There does not seem to have been the slightest attempt made to test the truth of these declarations by separately examining and cross-questioning the assassins. But it is remarkable, that the Auditor, Catherine's chief magistrate, does not appear to have considered this explanation at all impossible. On the contrary, he found himself in a position of difficulty, evidently fearing, that if he proceeded at once on the supposition, that these men were to be treated as murderers and traitors, his zeal might possibly turn out to have been expended on the wrong side. In this difficulty "the worthy magistrate" beckoned from the crowd a young man whom he could trust, and with a few whispered words despatched him in all haste to the fortress, dexterously holding law in leash the while.

In a very short time the messenger returned, and our "worthy magistrate" was himself again. It was all right. Murther was murther. Law was to "have its course;" and quartering alive, dragging at horses tails, and other ingenious devices of the sort were to be resorted to, according to the most approved precedents.

But are these orders from the citadel as efficacious in disproving the truth of Gian Antonio's assertion before the tribunal of history, as they were in making the Auditor's course clear before him? The learned Litta, in his great work on the Families of Italy thinks not. He writes,[133] "Feo was killed by conspirators in 1495: if, indeed, it were not Catherine herself who ordered his death." But we know that suspicion of crime becomes morbidly active in those whose duties make them continually conversant with criminals; and in estimating the value of Litta's impressions, great allowance must be made for the mental bias of one who spent his life in chronicling the Fasti of the noble families of Italy.

No contemporary writer gives the slightest indication of any suspicion of the possible truth of this audacious inculpation of the widowed princess having existed at the time. It is true, that if such suspicions had existed, they would probably have been deep buried in the hearts of those who conceived them. But all the probabilities of the case plead in favour of Catherine's innocence upon this occasion. Had she wished to rid herself of her young husband, nothing would have been easier than to have made an end of him, privately, quietly, and safely, in the secresy of the fort or of the palace. It is curious to observe, that when subsequently she condescended to point out the absurdity of the accusation, she made use of this argument; remarking, as the historian records it, that "Thank God, neither she nor any of her family had need to apply to common bravoes, when they saw fit to make away with their enemies!" Had she even chosen to employ bravoes for the purpose, with the intention of leaving to them the responsibility of the deed, it might have been done far more safely in the palace than in the street. The latter necessarily involved a very considerable degree of danger of popular tumult, and ever-menacing, ever-near revolution. In the confusion and excitement following the perpetration of such a deed, it may be said to have been merely a toss up which way the popular mind, so easily moved to violence, so prone to change, might turn.

There is, indeed, no more curiously suggestive and striking proof of the chronic state of discontent, uneasiness, and discomfort, in which men lived in those good old times, than this wonderful readiness to turn any incident of sufficient interest to make a couple of score of tongues shout together, into an occasion for seeking to change for another the rider mounted on their galled shoulders, at whatsoever almost certain cost of ruin and destruction to them and theirs.

Them and theirs;—for another very noticeable trait of Italian social life in those centuries is the great strength of the clannish tie, which made all the members of a family responsible for, and generally partakers in the political crimes of any one among them. The fathers, sons, brothers, uncles of a baffled, detected, or overpowered conspirator, share his fate. Often the females of a family are involved in the condemnation. The whole race is to be rooted out. And such an award seems to have been generally accepted as natural, and to be expected, at least, if not as just, by the suffering party. In most cases the members of a political assassin's family adopted his views, and more or less actively shared his crime.

In the present instance, the vengeance of the bereaved wife took a yet wider sweep. Not only were the families of the guilty men, even women and innocent children and infants at the breast, slaughtered indiscriminately; but the slightest cause of suspicion sufficed to involve others wholly unconnected with them in destruction.[134] This seems to have been the only occasion in the strangely varied life of Catherine, when evil passions, unmixed with political reasons, or calculations of expediency, governed her conduct, and urged her to excesses of cruelty. And it is impossible to avoid comparing the calm, judicial proceedings, and not wholly unreasonable chastisement, consequent upon the death of Riario, with the wild excesses of vindictive fury that followed that of Giacomo Feo. Surely it cannot be supposed that all this was simulated rage, acted out in such terrible earnest, merely to divert suspicion from herself as the murderess! Not even acquaintance with the unnatural atrocities so common in that age and clime, nor the wonderful deadness of the moral sense which prevailed, can justify so shocking a belief.

No! Either we must suppose, that passing years, the habits of despotism, familiarity with bloodshed, and much trouble and adversity had potently changed Catherine's character for the worse. Or we must, with perhaps more probability, seek an explanation of her altered conduct in the difference of the feelings the two bereavements may be supposed to have occasioned. In the first case, we have a princess decorously mourning; and with high stern justice punishing the political fanatics, who had taken from her a husband, the partner indeed of her greatness, and fellow-labourer in the toils of ambition; but one, who had been assigned to her solely for the purposes of that ambition, and whom no preference or personal sympathy had had any share in selecting. In the second instance, we have a woman, raging with tiger-like fury against the murderers of her love. This so faultlessly beautiful form, ruthlessly made a mangled corpse before her eyes, was the first and last love of this vehement and strong-willed woman;—her only taste of real natural heart's joy;—the one pet, private sanctuary of her life, not dedicated to the weary life-long toil of building up the Riario name. Hence the almost indiscriminate slaughter, hanging, quartering, torturing, banishments, and ruin, that scared all ForlÌ with fear who next might be the victim, when Giacomo Feo fell. Above forty persons, counting men, women, and children, were put to death, of whom the greater part were in all probability wholly innocent of any participation in the crime! More than fifty others suffered lesser degrees of persecution.

In the midst of these horrors, while the mutilated bodies of some of the victims were still hanging before the palace of the PodestÀ, exposed to the public view, a most magnificent funeral ceremony was performed in honour of the murdered Feo. Burriel describes the long line of ecclesiastical, military, and civic dignitaries, with pages, musicians, ladies, friars, soldiers, and three squires in cloth of gold, on horses similarly caparisoned, who bore the sword, spurs, helmet, and cuirass of the deceased, moving to the sound of loud-chanted dirges from the fortress to the cathedral. The procession must have passed with its wailing De profundis and Miserere chants, and its glittering heraldic braveries, by the spot where the ghastly remains of the victims, for whom was no "miserere," were polluting the air in the hot summer sunshine. And the entire scene in its setting of picturesque Italian city architecture, with its startling contrasts, and suggestiveness of unbridled passions, and deeds of lawless violence, would seem to be marked characteristically enough by the impress of medieval peculiarities. But Burriel says, that the similitude of the spectacle to that described by Virgil, as having taken place at the funeral of Pallas, son of King Evander, was so great, that it may be supposed that Catherine had modelled the one in imitation of the other!

By the combined soothing of funeral services, and gratified vengeance, the bereaved widow was, it should seem, sufficiently consoled, to engage herself, early in the year 1496, in extensive projects of palace building, and acquisition of parks and pleasure-grounds. The alterations and improvements, which Madama was now bent on, mark characteristically the change in the habits and desires of the powerful and wealthy, which was now beginning to manifest itself. Increasing magnificence and luxury demanded ampler opportunity for its display, and a pleasanter field for its enjoyment. Italian princes began to be no longer content to pass their lives immured in the high dungeon-like walls of ancient feudal mansions, in the heart of walled and gloomy cities.

And Catherine was not likely to be among the slowest to adopt any new mode of increased magnificence and splendour. There were, moreover, dark and sad reminiscences enough attached to the old seignorial residence in the piazza, to make it odious to the lady twice widowed there, under circumstances in themselves, and in their consequences, so painful to look back on.

So all that portion of the ancient building, which had been used for the personal accommodation of the Princess, was thrown down; and its materials contributed towards the erection of a new palace, at the extremity of the city, near to the fortress Ravaldino, and connected with it by one of the gateways of the town. The pleasures and splendour, which the tastes of the new age demanded, were thus admirably made compatible with the old time provision for security, which could by no means yet be dispensed with. For material was advancing more rapidly than moral civilisation.

Outside the wall, in connection with the new palace, a large tract of land was purchased[135] for orchards, gardens, dairy pastures, "a great wood, in which were wild beasts of various kinds for the lord's diversion of hunting," and every kind of device, by which the inmates "might at all hours enjoy the pleasures of the country unobserved." The place was, "from its magnificence and beauty, named the Paradise;"[136] and in all the preparations for making her Paradise perfect, Catherine "left nothing unattempted, which could be a proof of greatness and of a royal mind."

But there is a vile, ignoble difficulty, that ever dogs and hampers this sort of proof of a great and royal mind. Paradises are not produced in iron, brazen, or leaden ages, without abundant supply of cash. Royal minds have, accordingly, been ever exceedingly apt to show their quality by a remarkable fertility of expedient for the procuring of this base means for great aims. And Burriel details for us, with much admiration, the method hit upon by Catherine for paying for her new palace and park.

There were, it seems, and for generations had been, certain taxes, to which lands in the territory of ForlÌ possessed by peasants were liable, and which were not paid by such as were in the hands of citizens. The unjust difference, it is to be remarked, does not appear to have been made between patrician and plebeian as such, but between countryman and townsman. The possessors of these unequally-taxed lands were, as might be supposed, an impoverished class, continually sinking towards utter destitution, and numbers of the peasant proprietors sold their land to prosperous citizens "for a bit of bread," says the historian, thus baulking the tax-gatherer and depopulating the country. As it was necessary to find a remedy for this growing evil, and as the simple one of equalising the tax was an idea far too opposed to the whole fabric of medieval political economy to enter for a moment even into the head of anyone, it was enacted, that no peasant should sell his land under heavy penalties, and forfeiture of the land by the buyer.

Now this wise law, as is usually the case with such, was very frequently evaded by the connivance of parties anxious, the one to sell and the other to buy, and it was found extremely difficult to bring the illegality home to offenders. But it so happened, that just at the time of Catherine's greatest need, the "Bargello" or gaol-governor of Imola was himself committed to prison for the non-payment of a fine of 200 ducats imposed on him for some mal-practices in his office. It seems, however, that besides the delinquencies for which he had been condemned, he had been in the habit of lending some official facilities to the illegal bargains for land between peasants and townsmen. Reflecting, therefore, on his own position and that of his sovereign lady, it struck this shrewd and worthy "Bargello," that he might find the means of making his undetected offences pay the penalty for those which had been discovered. So he caused a communication to be made to Madama to the effect, that if his liberty were granted him, and pardon assured to him for anything in respect to which he might perchance compromise himself, in certain revelations he proposed making to her, he thought he could put her in a way to find the necessary funds for her new palace and park, without doing wrong to anyone.

This latter clause was a sine qu non with Catherine of course; but on the understanding that that condition was to be faithfully observed, she closed with her "Bargello's" offer at once. So that useful and clever officer came up to ForlÌ from his prison in Imola with a long list, all duly prepared, of all the illegal land-sales for a long time past. Twenty-five lire was the fine due from each seller, and total forfeiture of the purchased lands the much heavier penalty to be levied on each buyer. Intense was the consternation throughout ForlÌ and its county! And rich and abundant the harvest reaped by the sovereign.

So our good "Bargello" is liberated and graciously pardoned. No wrong is done to anybody, since, on the contrary, law is enforced, and right therefore done. "Paradise" is won, and duly paid for, and remains, as the historian Bonoli so judiciously remarks, a proof of the royal-mindedness of its noble builder.

It has been mentioned that the unequal pressure of this land-tax had caused a vast amount of pauperism and destitution; and the presence of pestilence in ForlÌ and its territory both this year and the last, following in the wake of an army of foreign troops, as has so often happened, had terribly increased the evil. This and other oppressive taxes were, therefore, more necessary than ever, for Catherine (besides the cost of her improvements, so happily paid for out of nothing at all, as one may say,) was at great expenses for the alleviation of the increasing misery. She bought corn, she organised means of relief, she hired medical men from foreign parts, she founded confraternities for charitable purposes, but she repealed no taxes. How could she with such imperative calls on her for alms?

Can it be that splendid princes find it more congenial to royal-minded tastes, and more convenient to royal-minded habits, to reign over alms-fed mendicants than over prosperous self-fed freemen? Then again, what says Mother Church? Is not almsgiving the broadest of all the roads to heaven? And how are the rich to, buy off their own sins in conformity with orthodox rule, if there are no beggars?

But among all the cares and occupations arising out of the twofold business of advancing her own splendour and alleviating the misery of her subjects, Catherine found time to think of yet another matter of still greater importance than either of these. Madama was now meditating a third marriage, and this time she seems to have returned to the plan of marrying from policy and ambition. Probably the increasing storminess of the political horizon, and the consequent precariousness of the position of all the smaller princes of Italy, made her deem it desirable to seek the support which a connexion with some important and powerful family would afford her. In truth, it was the eve of a period, during which it was hardly to be expected that any unaided female hand, however virile in its energy, would be able to retain its grasp of a sceptre; and considering the matter in this point of view, she could not, probably, have chosen more prudently than she did.

For the last year past, Giovanni de' Medici had been residing in ForlÌ as Ambassador from the Republic of Florence. He was great-grandson of that Giovanni who was the common ancestor of the two great branches of the family. That founder of the Medicean greatness had two sons, the elder of whom was Cosmo, "pater patriÆ," from whom descended the elder branch, including among its scions Lorenzo the Magnificent, the two Popes Leo X. and Clement VII., and Catherine, the wife of Henry II. of France, and becoming extinct in the person of Alexander first Duke of Florence, murdered in 1537. Giovanni's second son, the younger brother of Cosmo, was Lorenzo, the grandfather of that Giovanni who now was the envoy in ForlÌ from the Republic of Florence.

When, therefore, in the early part of the summer of 1497, Catherine gave her hand to Giovanni de' Medici, however much this, her third marriage, may have been a matter of calculated prudence and state policy, she at least had a sufficient knowledge of the man whom she was about to make her husband. Madama was now thirty-five years of age, while Giovanni was only thirty. He had not, and has never occupied any very conspicuous place in history; but what little we hear of him is favourable. He had fought with credit, in France, under Charles VIII., and had brought back with him to Florence, a French patent of nobility, and a pension of two thousand crowns a-year, the gifts of that monarch. He had also the credit of a wise and prudent negociator and statesman.

There is extant among the Florence archives a letter from Savonarola to Catherine, dated from the Convent of St. Mark, the 18th of June, 1477, of which a few copies have recently been printed by the Count Carlo Capponi at Florence. The contents are of little interest, being merely general exhortations to piety, to God-fearing conduct in the government of her states. But it is somewhat remarkable that this letter must have been written just about the time of her marriage with Giovanni de' Medici; which yet was, like the preceding union with Feo, and for the same reasons, kept perfectly secret. Yet, as there is no reason to think, that the reforming friar had any correspondence with Catherine, either previously or subsequently, it can hardly be doubted, that this letter of exhortation was motived by the occasion of the marriage; and that the friar, friar-like, knew all about it, however secret it may have been kept.

This wholly volunteered and unprefaced preachment from the friar to a foreign princess, is a trait worth noting of the social position arrogated to themselves by the spiritual teachers of that day.

Of this union, however, of the great houses of Sforza and Medici, the most, and indeed the only important result was the birth of a son baptised Ludovico, on the 6th of April, in the year 1498. The name Ludovico was, a few months later, changed to Giovanni; and this child became that celebrated Giovanni "Delle Bande Nere," who acquired an European reputation as the greatest captain of his day, and from whom descended the long line of Tuscan Grand-Dukes of the Medicean race. For Cosmo, his son and Catherine's grandson, succeeded to that dignity on the extinction of the elder branch of the family.

Through this Giovanni, moreover, Catherine's eighth child and seventh son, she is the ancestress of that Maria de' Medici who became the wife of Henry IV. of France, and by him the progenitress of all the Bourbons, who have sat on the thrones of France, Spain, Naples, Parma, and Lucca; and who, by her daughter Henrietta, the wife of Charles I., was the mother of an equally royal, and almost equally pernicious race.

It cannot be said, therefore, that this third marriage of Catherine was unimportant or barren of results; though, upon her own fortunes, it had little influence; for Giovanni, whose health appears to have been for some time failing, died six months after the birth of his son, on the 14th of September, 1498.

His physicians had sent him to one of the little bathing-places in the Apennines, called St. Piero, in Bagno. There finding himself becoming rapidly worse, he sent in haste to call Catherine from ForlÌ, who reached his bedside barely in time to receive his last words; and was thus, for the third time, left a widow at a moment when every appearance in the political horizon seemed to indicate that she was on the eve of events that would make the protection of a husband, and a powerful alliance, more necessary to her than it had ever yet been.