What is Francesco to do now?—The Cardinal and Bianca try another fall.—Cardinal down again.—Francesco's vengeance.—What does the Church say?—Bianca at Bologna.—The marriage privately performed.—The Cardinal learns the secret.—The daughtership of St. Mark.—Venetian doings versus Venetian sayings.—Embassy to Florence.—Suppose we could have her crowned.—The marriage publicly solemnised.

What were Francesco's feelings on the death of his unloved wife? His conduct towards her had more than once got him into serious trouble with the Imperial Court. Little as he had heeded outraging her feelings, and parading his neglect of her before the world of Florence, still his intercourse with Bianca had been hampered by the necessity of making some little show of decency in the eyes of foreign courts. He had been obliged to have "riguardi," as the Italian phrase goes. Then Giovanna had been an expensive wife; far more so than Francesco liked. And now the cost of the magnificent obsequies, which were to lay her dust under the gorgeous dome of San Lorenzo, would be the closing article in that account.

Francesco was now free. Yet despite all these considerations, it may be very much doubted whether the death of his wife was matter of such unmixed contentment to him as it might at first sight seem to be. Now became due that bill drawn on futurity, that fatal promise to Bianca,—uttered "before an image," too, to make the matter worse,—that, should the time ever come, when they were both free, she should become his wife. It seems likely enough, that a feeling, which he may have mistaken for repentance, came over him in these days, when he thought on the slaughter of Bonaventuri.

It was not that the Grand Duke felt any repugnance in his own heart to perform his promise. His liking for his mistress seems to have been as strong or stronger than ever, and he wished sincerely to be married to her. But he hesitated to face the storm of disapprobation, which would follow the perpetration of such a mesalliance throughout Europe—the dismay of friends, the exultation of enemies, the discontent of his subjects, the ridicule of all. As for his promise, image and all, Francesco was not the man to be much troubled with any such bonds, if it suited his convenience to break them. He would have been bold enough to brave the resentment of any dead Saint in the calendar. But there was a living sinner, of whom he stood in considerably greater awe. How could he refuse to Bianca to keep the promise she had extorted, and the performance of which she would assuredly not now be weaker in exacting.

When the personal wishes of such a man as Francesco, strong only in wilfulness, and the determined will of such a woman as Bianca were on one side, and on the other only the fear of consequences, which could so far be kept at a distance, as never to be allowed to meet him face to face, it was little doubtful what the upshot would be. The contumely of Europe, and the reproaches of his family, might be effectually prevented from reaching his ears. But how avoid the nearer annoyances inseparable equally from living without Bianca, and from living with her, yet not acceding to her just demands.

Still, for some time the disturbance of Francesco's mind seems to have been extreme. Still, he let "I dare not wait upon I would;" and lived the while in a condition of miserable uncertainty and agitation.[180] His first step after the death of Giovanna was to leave Florence, where the universal lamentation for his ill–fated wife disgusted him. Perhaps, also, during this time of doubt and conflicting resolutions he was glad to escape from the presence of Bianca. It seems probable, indeed, from his conduct, that this was really his wish for the moment. For instead of going to any one of the numerous residences belonging to him in different parts of Tuscany, he kept continually moving from place to place, wandering through the least frequented parts of his dominions.

The Cardinal, to whom the death of the Grand Duchess had been a cause of serious grief and disquietude, was much reassured by this apparent desire on the part of Francesco to avoid the seductress at this conjuncture. He went to Porto Ferraio in the island of Elba in the hope of finding the Grand Duke there, and thus getting the opportunity of conferring with him at a distance from the influences with which Bianca in general contrived to surround him. Francesco, however, avoided any such interview with his brother; and the Cardinal had to content himself with sending a secretary, in whom he could confide, to urge those considerations on the Grand Duke, which he would fain have set before him in person. The messenger caught the Duke in Serravezza, a little hill village high up among the Apennines, and then one of the most remote spots in the Duchy, though now well–known as giving its name to the neighbouring marble quarries, which rival those of Carrara in the quality of their produce.

The instructions of Ferdinand's envoy were to move Francesco by every possible consideration to marry again, choosing his wife from among the princesses of those sovereign houses whose friendship might be useful for the sustaining of the family greatness.[181] It is clear, therefore, that whatever may have been the case at a later period, Ferdinand had not yet conceived the desire that his brother's inheritance might fall on him. Up to this time he was evidently labouring sincerely in the cause of Francesco's credit and honour, and all his schemes for the aggrandisement of the family were centred in the Grand Duke, and in the hope of his leaving legitimately born heirs male of sovereign lineage to succeed him.

But his messenger brought him back an account of his interview with the Grand Duke, which seems to have very much changed the course of his policy and conduct for the future. Francesco would not hear of contracting any such new marriage as was proposed to him. He professed indeed his determination not to marry again at all. But the secretary was able to detail to his master, certain little indications gleaned from the phrases or the actions of the Duke, which led the acute Cardinal to the conviction that Francesco had already made up his mind to marry Bianca. And from thenceforth the Cardinal very manifestly changed his conduct. He no longer made any attempt to preserve even that outward appearance of family union, which he had hitherto, despite all difficulties and provocations, succeeding in maintaining. He quarrelled with his brother openly and publicly; and in all the political manoeuvrings for the petty objects arising out of the jealousies of the Italian princely houses, which made up the life occupation of the cardinals living in the Roman court, he thenceforth took a line of his own, wholly distinct from, and in some respects opposed to that of his brother, and the general Medicean family interest. He, for instance, began to cultivate a friendship with the court of France, between which and Francis, who had always inclined to that of Spain, there had ever been enmity.

Just about this time especially, he was on ill terms with France, which had been guilty of injuring him in one of the tenderest points in which the feelings of a despotic prince such as Francesco can be touched. She had accorded protection to fugitives from his vengeance. Several of those who had been implicated in the Pucci conspiracy, such as Antonio and Piero Capponi, and Bernardo Girolami, as well as Troilo Orsini, with whose guilt we have had occasion to become acquainted, had escaped thither, and lived unmolested under the protection of France. This was intolerable to Francesco. It was not so much the feeling of pique and jealousy which might exist between two governments on the subject of harbouring each other's outlaws, and which may well be a ground of legitimate remonstrance and discontent between neighbouring nations; for such a grievance can be remedied only by inducing the offending government to give up the refugees to the legal tribunals of their own country. What rankled in Francesco's heart was simply the frustration of his personal vengeance. And the measures which he adopted were accordingly directed wholly to the gratification of that feeling.

One Curzio Picchena was at that time secretary to the Florentine embassy at Paris, and to him was entrusted the execution of the Grand Duke's hitherto baulked revenge. He was directed to hire assassins to murder the above–named fugitives and others, at the price of four thousand ducats per murder. And he was furnished from Florence with poisons, the choice produce of the poison–laboratory established by Cosmo in the Uffizi, as one of the necessary institutions of statecraft, both for drugging the victims in case that should be found the preferable mode of proceeding, and for poisoning the weapons of the hired assassins if that course appeared more practicable![182] So carefully provident was this Medicean proficient in the arcana of kingcraft!

Girolami was accordingly assassinated. But his fate warned the others of their danger; and some fled into the provinces, and some to England. It was then judged, says the Italian historian, that Italian cut–throats would be found more capable in their calling. Of these masters in their art then, some were sent into France, and some to England; and these, unlike the French bunglers, soon gave their sovereign all the satisfaction he craved.

Such were the cares of State, which contributed to burthen the Grand Ducal mind, already sorely oppressed by the necessity of deciding what was to be done in the matter of Bianca and her claims. The agitation of his mind manifested itself in bodily restlessness; and he continued to ramble about his dominions, while Bianca, thus prevented from seeing him, kept up an unceasing battery of letters. At length he hit upon the common refuge of imbecility, and determined to throw upon other shoulders the task of decision, which he found too arduous for his own. So he summoned an able theologian, reputed—undeservedly, as the result clearly indicates—to be a thorough master of his business; and, confiding to him his difficulties, the promise he had made, and his own private desire to fulfil it, demanded to be told what it was his duty to do.

Now it would surely seem clear enough to any one conversant with the duties of court chaplains, what was the course to take after such an exposition of the case as this. And to a plain man, ignorant of canonical statute law, and incapacitated by his low estate from comprehending the difference between princely honour and vulgar individuals' honour, it would surely seem that Francesco's moral and religious duty was to keep his promise and marry his mistress. But not so judged the able theologian. He pointed out, with all the eloquence of perfect climax, that such a marriage would be uncanonical, void, disreputable, and inexpedient. And, forgetting the broad hint given him by the gracious sovereign as to his own wishes in the matter, he pushed his zeal for canon law and blood–royal propriety so far as to convince the Duke against his will, with the ordinary result of such convictions.

But Bianca, as usual, showed herself in this crisis also, perfectly equal to the occasion. As soon as ever she learned that Francesco had taken it into his head to look at the matter in a theological point of view, she took immediate means of insuring a supply of theological support from the most influential and effectual source. Francesco's own confessor was a Franciscan friar, he at least being the right man in the right place. To him Bianca found means of pointing out that the bishopric of Chiusi happened to be just then vacant. And the result of that communication was, that the Duke was very easily led to see all the professional mistakes committed by his previous adviser, and to arrive at the desired conclusion, that the Church and his duty required him to do exactly that which his own wishes prompted.

While theology was thus at work in her favour, Bianca was not idle on her own behalf. She was continually writing to the Grand Duke, and sometimes contrived to have news to tell him, tending to show how entirely their connection was recognised publicly, and respected. Thus we find from a MS.[183] record of the time, that she was at Bologna in the course of this spring with her daughter Pellegrina, and her son–in–law Ulisse Bentivoglio; and that she was received there with public honours, having been escorted into the city by a large company of the principal nobility, both cavaliers and ladies, "out of respect for the Grand Duke of Florence, seeing that the said Bianca was property of his—sua cosa." Surely it would be difficult to conceive a more striking mark of the degradation of a people, of their fitness to be slaves and unfitness to be anything else, than this going forth of the patricians of a great city to do honour to a prince's "cosa!" This, however, was of course not Bianca's reading of the incident, and its significance. Surely a "cosa" so received was worthy to become a wife! In short, writing sometimes in one tone and sometimes in another, she ceased not to pour in a well–sustained fire of letters,[184] till at last, just when her ally the friar was convincing his penitent that it was his duty to marry her, she threw in a final missive, full of pathetic resignation to his will, and intimations of her own intention not to survive her disappointment.

The game so well played was won. Francesco finally agreed to the marriage. But as Bianca was very strongly of opinion that, "if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly," and as it was impossible to celebrate the marriage openly within a month or two of the death of the Grand Duchess, it was determined that it should take place privately, and be kept profoundly secret till the following year.

Accordingly, the marriage was duly performed on the 5th of June, 1578, in the Palazzo Vecchio, by the same convenient Franciscan friar who had worked so well to bring it about. The date of this event has been erroneously stated by various writers; but it is ascertained with certainty from a copy of the original certificate signed by "Frater Masseus Antonii de Bardis," which is preserved in a MS. of the Marciana library, cited by Cigogna.[185] The witnesses were a brother Franciscan monk, and Don Pandolfo de' Bardi, a relative of the Duke's confessor. The same document states that the ceremony was performed "in majori palatio," in the Palazzo Vecchio, as it is now called. And if it should chance that the reader has seen the chapel of that venerable pile, it will recur to his recollection as a most fitting spot for the celebration of any rite intended to be concealed from all eyes. It is inaccessible, except through other apartments of the palace; so small, as barely to admit the parties whose presence was necessary to the ceremony; and, though most richly decorated, so dark, that the features of those standing within it can barely be recognised by each other.

In this secret spot the Franciscan friar performed the rite which, in homely English phrase, made an honest woman of Bianca; a feat which—to recur to the words already quoted—"if it were done when 'tis done"—surely deserved the reward of the bishopric of Chiusi, or any other whatsoever.

So secret was the marriage kept, that even the lynx–eyed spies of the Cardinal had no suspicion of it. And he still continued,[186] despite his open quarrel with his brother, to make overtures in various Courts, in the hope of arranging some suitable marriage for him, for months after Bianca had made good her hold on him,—labours of her capable and crafty enemy which must, it may be supposed, have amused that lady not a little to witness.

In the early part of 1579 the Duke fell ill, and was at one time supposed to be in some danger; which furnished a pretext and opportunity to the Cardinal to visit his brother, with a view of getting at the truth respecting his position. For Francesco's steady refusal of the proposals made to him, and some other circumstances, had led him to conceive suspicions on the subject.

He found his brother ill in bed, exclusively attended by Bianca, to his great annoyance and disgust. And seized the first opportunity of reading the sick man a strong lecture on the impropriety, and even risk, of allowing that infamous woman to have the charge of his sick room. Whereupon Francesco felt himself obliged to let the secret out, and acknowledge that "the infamous woman" was Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

Ferdinand dissembled the excess of his sorrow and indignation at this confession, and remained with his brother till he was out of danger. But it is recorded, that when he repeated the fact to his confidential secretary, he could not refrain from tears of mortification; and he returned to Rome with a fresh accumulation of anger against his brother, and of the bitterest hatred for the woman, to whom he attributed the disgrace of his family, and the ruin of his well–plotted and laboriously prosecuted schemes for its aggrandisement.

The Grand Duke meanwhile, having recovered his health, continued to keep his marriage secret till the middle of April, when the year of mourning for his former wife was completed. Then his first care was to communicate the fact to his friend and patron, Philip of Spain, intimating that he awaited only his approval to publish it to all the courts. Philip, thinking probably that it mattered little whom a trading, plebeian–descended Medici married, gave his gracious approbation. But still one more step remained to be taken before making the public announcement to all Europe. Anxious to find some means of gilding a little, if possible, the ignoble object of his choice, he sent an embassy to Venice, informing the senate of his intention, in a highly flattering letter, to the effect that he considered the lady a daughter of the Republic, and that it is his hope in uniting himself to her, to become a son of Venice, and ever to show himself such to the republic.

This embassy entrusted by Francesco to the Count Mario Strozzi of Santafiora, was received with every possible demonstration of respect and satisfaction by the Venetians. Santafiora was escorted into the city with public honours. Forty senators were deputed to wait on him in the name of the Republic. The Cappello palace was assigned to him as a residence, and he was received at the door of it by the Patriarch of Aquileia, the greatest man of the family connection. Bianca's father and brother were made cavalieri, dubbed "illustrissimi," and entitled to precedence over all other members of the order. In the gala doings which accompanied these events the Queen of the Adriatic outdid herself, we are told, in feasts and magnificence.[187] By a unanimous vote of the Senate on the 16th of June, in consideration of "the Grand Duke of Tuscany having chosen for his wife Bianca Cappello, of a most noble family in this city, a lady adorned with all those most excellent and singular qualities, which make her most worthy of any the highest fortune, it is ordered that she be created a true and particular daughter of the Republic."[188] The same decree orders a golden chain of the value of a thousand dollars to be given to Francesco's ambassador. Moreover, all unpleasant memorials of the time before the lady's most excellent and signal qualities had been discovered, were ordered, as we have seen, to be erased from the public registers.

It is difficult to understand all this excessive avidity of toad–eating servility and flunkeyism in such a body as the Venetian senate. But a few months previously they had manifested a very different tone of feeling on the subject of Bianca's connection with the Grand Duke, superior alike to any sentiments to be found among the Florentine nobles, and to these their own subsequent acts. For we read in a MS. chronicle of the time by Francesco Molino, cited by Cigogna,[189] that Bartolommeo Cappello, her father, having purchased the magnificent palace De' Trivigiani with money received from his daughter, was so ill–looked on in Venice in consequence, that he was solely on this account excluded from the senate; "inasmuch as it was thought that the connection of that family with the Prince Francesco arose from a base and disgraceful cause; and that though it might be profitable, and might, perhaps, be deemed honourable for others, it was not so for a Venetian gentleman."

That last touch of republican pride is magnificent; and it is a pity that any reasons of policy, or other motive of any kind, should have induced the senate to exhibit itself so lamentably false to all such generous feeling so shortly afterwards.

Francesco was exceedingly delighted at the abundant success of his embassy to Venice. Bianca now was—no, not was exactly—but might be supposed to seem to be, no longer a private individual, but a princess, as being the daughter of a sovereign state. By metaphor, fiction, parchment, and herald's trumpeting, Bianca was now a princess, of due rank to mate with a sovereign duke; and Francesco accordingly announced to the various courts on the 20th of June his forthcoming marriage with a daughter of the republic of Venice. The ceremony was fixed for the 12th of October, 1579; and immense preparations were made to celebrate it with unusual pomp and splendour.

Meanwhile the Grand Duke sent his natural brother, Don Giovanni, a boy of twelve years old, with a numerous train, to bear his thanks to the Republic for the honours conferred on his bride. He was received by eight–and–twenty Venetian gentlemen at the frontier, and by forty senators outside the city, by whom he was processionally conducted to the Casa Cappello, where Vittorio, Bianca's brother, was charged by the senate to entertain him at the expense of the state, which granted an unlimited credit for that purpose. Under these circumstances it may be safely conjectured that the boy ambassador was received with such holiday keeping, as left on his mind no mean impressions of Venetian hospitality and magnificence.

On the 28th of September arrived in Florence the ambassadors sent by Venice "to put," says Galluzzi,[190] "Bianca in possession of the prerogatives which the daughtership of St. Mark produced to her." It is rather difficult to understand what these prerogatives might have been; but it is probable that if the baggage of the ambassadors had been searched for them, they would have been found to consist in a certain quantity of engrossed parchment and sealing–wax, cased in some more or less splendidly adorned wrappage of velvet or cloth of gold.

The ambassadors, however, Antonio Tiepolo and Giovanni Michiel, were assisted in bringing these "prerogatives" by a train of ninety gentlemen of the noblest houses in Venice. It was apparently thought necessary that the extrinsic pomp of this embassy should be in exact proportion to the intrinsic meanness of the business it was engaged on. For we are told that it outshone in taste and magnificence all former doings of the kind, even in the most palmy days of Venice. And all the ninety noble gentlemen who came to make kotoo to Francesco's cosa, vied with each other in efforts of ostentation for the manifestation of their, own greatness.

Beside these ninety, there came also the bride's father and brother, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, by no means behindhand, the holy man, in availing himself of his scrap of relationship to the "cosa," for the purpose of bringing his grey hairs into the sunshine of a princely countenance. And with these came other eighty, all calling themselves relations of the bride; and all were lodged in the Pitti palace, and treated with all sorts of junkettings and diversions, banquets, balls, tourneys, hunting–parties (with nets), bull–baiting, chariot races, comedies, &c.

The task of thus entertaining his wife's relatives on this occasion is computed to have cost Francesco three hundred thousand ducats,[191] a sum which, allowing for the difference in the value of money, seems almost incredible. It happened to be a year of great scarcity in Tuscany. There was wide–spread and severe distress among the people, who looked on at this lavish and useless expenditure; and the sight did not contribute to conciliate the love of the Florentines to their new liege lady.

Meanwhile, in the interval between the arrival of the ambassadors in Florence, and the day appointed for the ceremony, it occurred to Francesco,[192] that the daughtership of St. Mark might be turned to better account yet. There had been two other daughters of St. Mark, one the wife of a king of Hungary, and the other Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus. Now, why should not Bianca also be crowned, as a daughter of the Republic. It would have a very good effect as part of the ceremony at all events, and might very likely pass with many persons for more than it really was. Crowning is crowning; and whether the crown to be placed on Bianca's head was that of St. Mark's daughter, or that of a Grand Duchess of Tuscany, might very easily be little observed or questioned.

The Venetian Senate on their part consented willingly to permit the ambassadors at Francesco's request to perform this ceremony in their name, but were quite awake to the same probability of error, and were anxious that their crowning of their daughter should be known to be their deed, and the dignity one of their bestowing. So the letter, by which they authorise Tiepolo and Michiel to comply with Francesco's wish enjoins, that in placing the crown on her head, "it shall be proclaimed in a loud voice, that it is in sign of her being a true and particular daughter of our Republic." And a second letter charges them to take care, that those words are so said "as to be distinctly heard by all around, and in such a manner that they be not drowned by any noise of trumpets or otherwise."[193]

But there was also another person in Florence, who pricked up his ears, and had a word to say in the matter, when he heard a talk of crowning going on. This was the Pope's nuncio, who protested that all crowning appertained to his master. And it was necessary to quiet him by pointing out and declaring explicitly, that what was proposed was no crowning of a Grand Duchess, but merely a token of the daughtership of St. Mark. And he also was anxious that this fact should be clearly avowed and understood.

Notwithstanding all this, however, many chroniclers contemporary and other, have written that Bianca was crowned Grand Duchess of Tuscany.[194] Perhaps the Florentine trumpets and shoutings contrived to make the words of the Venetian functionary inaudible despite his efforts to obey the senate and make himself heard.

The ceremony began on the appointed day in the great hall of the Palazzio Vecchio—the same hall in which Capponi had persuaded the Florentines to elect Jesus Christ for their king, and Savonarola had instructed the great council of the nation to abstain from debating, in order the more swiftly to act on his suggestion. In that famous old hall, once the very cradle of Italian freedom, and the heart of the popular life, a throne was built for the prince by right divine;—right truly and absolutely divine of those eternal laws, which make such princes the natural result of the lack of wisdom and worth, and excess of evil and unruly passions which had been exhibited in the councils of that council–chamber. The ungainly irregularity in the form of the enormous hall may have in some measure marred the symmetry of the upholstery magnificences. But Francesco and Bianca should have been well content to pardon any such eyesore. For the fashion all awry of that home of the old Republic, in which no wall makes a right angle with its neighbour, commemorates literally, as well as typically, the implacable internecine party hatreds of the Florentines.[195] And had that stone embodiment of the spirit of the old Italian commonwealths been able to be built straight, Florence would not have had that day to stand abject, vicious, and degraded to bow before a despot and his ... cosa.

When the prince was seated, and all his military, legal and clerical flunkeys in their proper liveries, duly ranged around him, Bianca was led in by the ambassadors of Venice; and floods of speechifying, easy to be imagined, but intolerable to read, were uttered by the various functionaries of either nation. Probably if might be difficult for the strictest analysis to detect one particle of truth in all that was said. To Grimani, the old patriarch of Aquileia, it fell to make an oration "on the utility of this marriage and the value of the daughtership of St. Mark." The two ambassadors did their crowning; but in some way or other failed to do it to the satisfaction of the Senate. For when they, in accordance with Venetian law, asked permission to keep the present of a ring worth fifteen hundred dollars, given to each of them by Francesco, it was refused.[196]

When the business had been got through thus far, Bianca was carried,—chaired, it should seem like a newly elected M.P.,—with the crown on her head to the cathedral; and there were done "sacred sacrifices," "divine services," and other such unbounded lying of an intensified, infinite, and yet more pernicious sort than that previously perpetrated in the lay part of the business.

And so Bianca was made a Duchess—nay Grand Duchess; and stepped triumphantly on her excelsior path, rewarded by success for her long efforts, patient endurance, sleepless astute vigilance, courageous battling with danger and difficulty, and unscrupulous daring.

Honesty the best policy! Policy, for what object? Not for scaling the throne of a Grand Duchess apparently!