Three hypotheses respecting the deaths of Francesco and Bianca—The official version of the story—The novelist's version of the story—A third possibility—Circumstances that followed the two deaths—Bianca's grave; and epitaphs for it by the Florentines—Ferdinand's final success.

As the record of all that can claim to be undoubted fact in the history of these strange events is startlingly brief, so would an account of all the suppositions, speculations, and conjectures, to which they have given rise, in perpetually succeeding crops from that time to this, be interminably long. Historians, apologists, antiquarians, archive–diggers, dramatists, novelists, have discussed and re–discussed the matter, settled it in different ways, according to their partialities or dispositions, and made up their minds to one or the other theory. But the only real result of their labours is the certainty, that the matter must rest in total uncertainty ever more, and that each reader must estimate for himself the probabilities of the case according to his own views and theories of human character, and its springs of action.

The different opinions that have been held respecting these mysterious deaths, may be reduced to the following three distinct hypotheses.

First. The Grand Duke died of a tertian fever, caught by exposing himself to great fatigue under the autumnal sun, and rendered fatal by his refusal to submit to proper medical treatment, and his adoption in its place of a most preposterous system of ice–cold drinks and other applications, all acting on a constitution already ruined by previous excesses. Bianca died of a similar complaint, rendered fatal in her case also by the permanent mischief her system had suffered from all the tricks she had played upon it.

Second hypothesis. Bianca, who was in the habit of preparing, with her own hands, a certain tart or pastry of which the Grand Duke was fond, introduced poison into this dish, and, at supper, presented it to the Cardinal. The Cardinal declined to eat of it, being warned of the danger, add some, by the changing colour of the stone in a ring he wore for this purpose. But while the attention of Bianca was occupied with the Cardinal, the Grand Duke helped himself to some of his favourite dish, and before his wife could interfere to prevent him, had eaten a sufficient quantity to prove fatal. Bianca, seeing and comprehending at a glance all the consequences of this fatal blunder, proceeded to eat also of the poisoned food, thus at once creating a strong presumption against her own guilt, and avoiding all the evils, which she knew but too well would overwhelm her, if she survived her husband, by sharing his fate.

Third hypothesis. Francesco and Bianca both died by poison. But the poisoner was the Cardinal; who, while his victims were dying, prevented all access to them, and who was the person chiefly and beneficially interested in their death.

The first version is of course that of the accredited and official historians.[215] Galluzzi, in mentioning the second supposition as that which had been popularly believed, says, that it was so only by those who were ignorant of the real facts of the case. But Galluzzi wrote his history by commission of the Grand Duke Peter Leopold, having been selected for the purpose, in consequence of the too great freedom, and too indiscreet disclosures of the history written by Martinetti,[216] and never published: because the Grand Duke being displeased with it on the above account, withdrew his patronage from the author, and transferred it to Galluzzi. And in histories written under these circumstances, sovereign princes commit no murders; or, if that is, as in the case of the Medici, unattainable by the most courtly writer, at all events, as few as possible.

Galluzzi, however, prints the following letter, which, he says, was written on the 16th of October to Rome. He does not tell us who was the writer:

"The Grand Duke has had two tertian fevers, one after the other; in fact, continual fever. He suffers from extreme thirst. Nevertheless, thus far the symptoms are favourable as regards ultimate recovery. The fourth and seventh days have been favourable, with a good perspiration; and we hope to go on improving. But he must not commit any imprudence; and, its being autumn, makes us fear that the recovery may be tedious. Therefore, cause prayers to be put up; and the more, because the Grand Duchess also has nearly the same malady, which increases the Grand Duke's sufferings, because she cannot attend him, and see to nursing him."

If this is a genuine letter, written on the 16th, it would be worth something towards deciding the question in favour of the first hypothesis. But it seems to be contradicted by a passage in that very curious document, previously cited, which Guerrazzi has printed at length in the notes to his "Isabella Orsini." This author himself, assuredly not prejudiced in favour of the Medici, speaking of this very important letter, which he states to be previously inedited, and generally unknown, and which is preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, under the No. 10, O 74, says, "From this letter, evidently written by a person, satirical rather than otherwise, and but little favourable to the Medici, and especially to Francesco and to Bianca Capello, we learn how false is the notion that they were poisoned. The kind of life led by them needed no aid to insure their speedy death, since it is easy to perceive that they were in the habit of poisoning themselves daily."

I cannot, however, admit that the document in question proves any such thing. It proves certainly that its author, Giovanni Vettorio Soderini, writing apparently very shortly after the events, professes to accept, as it should seem, the statement officially put forth. Yet even this is hardly clear from the very strange manner and phraseology of the letter, which in its opening sentences appears intended to convey some meaning to the writer's correspondent, which is hidden from us. It runs thus: "When in these last days Death rode on his thin and ill–conditioned charger to invest himself with the title of Great.[217] Death obtained at Rome the title of Great, and having obtained this most indecent title, he rode in haste towards Poggio–a–Cajano, and there with irresistible force and equal valour, assaulted the Great Tuscan of Florence and Siena, and brought him down on the 19th of October, 1587, four and a half hours after sunset, and at forty–seven years of age deprived him of life, after strange and unusual writhings,[218] and much howling and groaning. He remained speechless from after dinner till the moment when he was seized with a most burning fever. Signor Pandolfo de' Bardi and Signor Troiano Boba have always asserted that he had caught a pleurisy from too great and unwonted fatigue,"[219] rendered fatal, the writer goes on to say, by the strange and pernicious habits of life indulged in by the Grand Duke, which the letter proceeds to describe at great length.

Now here, in any case, the writer only repeats what the two courtiers Pandolfo de' Bardi, and Troiano Boba said, and does not pretend to any original knowledge on the subject. But may it not be possible that those strange opening sentences may be meant to convey a meaning which the writer dared not express clearly. If Ferdinando poisoned his brother, he rode from Rome to Poggio–a–Cajano to invest himself with the title of Great. If poison was prepared, or other arrangements for carrying out the crime were made at Rome, then he may be said to have obtained at Rome the title of Great, and it may be added that the title was "a most indecent one."

But further, this account of the death seems to contradict the statement of the letter published by Galluzzi, and cited above. The expressions seem to be incompatible with the supposition of an illness of several days. Finally, the mention of "strange and unusual contortions and much howling and groaning," seem to indicate that some other cause of death than the natural result of a pleurisy was in the writer's mind.

It is further stated, in support of the supposition, that the death was natural, that the bodies were opened and examined after death; that of Bianca in the presence of her daughter and son–in–law. To this it may be remarked in the first place, that the medical science of the time was wholly incompetent to ascertain the cause of death from a post–mortem examination, as will be remarkably exemplified in the following pages of the life of Elizabetta Sirani. In the next place the examiners were the court physicians, in the pay and in the power of the new sovereign. And as to the presence of Pellegrina and Bentivoglio, the fact that Ferdinando should have sought to draw an evidence of his innocence of any foul practice from a circumstance so utterly useless and inconclusive as the presence of two persons wholly ignorant of anatomy and the action of poisons on the body, is rather a presumption against him than otherwise. He must have known perfectly well that had Bianca died by any poison whatever, Pellegrina and Bentivoglio could have been none the wiser for seeing the body opened.

In favour of either the second or third hypothesis there is no direct evidence whatever. If Ferdinando de' Medici had to be tried for the murder, he must according to all the evidence we have, be most undoubtedly acquitted. But nobody at the time seems to have believed in the two deaths having happened from natural causes. Then the popular hypothesis was the second. Notwithstanding the certificates of court physicians, the statements of the progress of the malady, and the post–mortem examinations, people found it very difficult to believe that two such opportune deaths should occur all but simultaneously by natural causes, the assigned nature of which did not admit of any question of contagion. If anybody was so unlucky as to have conceived the idea, that this death might have "come riding" to Poggio–a–Cajano from Rome, of course he very carefully suppressed all utterance of it. But it was universally believed that Bianca was capable of any amount of treachery, craft, and crime. The story of the poisoned pastry, and the dramatic events it gave rise to, made exactly one of those narratives, rich in varied emotions and in retributive justice, which storytellers like to tell, and their audience like to hear. And it was perfectly safe to cast as much odium as any brain could imagine on the hated Bianca. To do so indeed was to fall in with the court humour, and to share the feelings of the new sovereign, who would never speak of her, or permit her to be spoken of as the late Grand Duchess, and who never himself named her otherwise, than as "the wretch Bianca,"—la pessima Bianca.[220]

The second hypothesis therefore was the popular one among those who could not accept the official account of the matter as credible, and has continued to be the received version with the numerous novelists and dramatists who have made increment of the tragedy.

In favour of the third, it has been already admitted that no tittle of direct evidence can be produced. The value of the guess hazarded at the meaning conveyed in those enigmatical phrases at the commencement of Signor Soderini's letter will be different to different minds. Signor Guerrazzi, the discoverer and first editor of this extraordinary letter, has evidently not been struck by the idea that any such sense could be seen in the words. On the contrary, he considers the letter as conclusive against the poisoning, either by the Cardinal or by Bianca. But it may be stated on the other hand, that the interpretation above suggested has seemed probable to other Italians versed in the history of the time, and practised in extracting their secrets from the wrappages in which writers who lived under the survey of unscrupulous despots were commonly wont to conceal their meaning.

Further, in a subsequent part of this same letter, which is of great length, occupying no less than nineteen closely printed post octavo pages, there are statements which seem hardly compatible with the supposition that Francesco died of an illness, which gradually reached its conclusion at the end of several days.

"He—the Grand Duke—made no will either before, or at this time.[221] Only he signed an order for fifty thousand crowns to be distributed among the court servants. Father Maranto confessed him; and he tells me, that the Grand Duke did not specify the number of crowns to be distributed, but desired in general terms, that the servants should be remunerated, and that it grieved him that he could not live long enough to do it himself. The confessor was not in time to remind him, by asking if he wished to make any further provision for his friends; for he shut his eyes, and could neither move his tongue, nor shake his head."

Surely all these evidences of haste, and deficiency of time for the arrangement of matters, which the dying man professes his wish to have settled, if a few more moments had been allowed him, are scarcely compatible with the supposition of an illness of several days.

At a subsequent page of his letter, Signor Soderini drops a few words respecting the new Grand Duke's manner some hours after the death of Francesco, which are not without their significance. He makes the number of hours which elapsed between the two deaths eleven only. Francesco's death at "four hours and a half after sunset," would have taken place according to our mode of keeping time between nine and ten. And at three in the morning, says the letter, the Cardinal left Bianca still living, "and at half–past seven arrived at the Prato gate." (He was therefore four hours and a half travelling twelve miles);—"where meeting the first Captain of the Lancers, he said doubtingly,[222] with fear, and a trembling voice,—as I suppose by reason of the suddenness of the change,—'Henceforward, Captain, you must be as faithful to me, as you have hitherto been to my brother.'"

Signor Soderini may attribute, since he deemed it safest to do so, the new Duke's trepidation and fear–marked manner to an innocent cause. But it can hardly but be felt, that such a manner is a weight in the scale against a man, when the probabilities of his having come fresh from the perpetration of fratricide are being balanced.

Then the question of motives must be taken into consideration; and it must be seen at once that the reasons Ferdinando had for wishing Bianca removed were of the very strongest nature. For the last ten years and more, she had been a constant thorn in his side, the ever recurring difficulty in all his schemes for aggrandising the family, the wreck of all his strivings for the support of the decorum and respectability of the Medicean name, and the ground of discord and hatred between him and his brother. She had made the Grand Duke the laughing–stock of Italy, and odious as well as contemptible to his own subjects. Her blood–stained practising had succeeded in foisting one base–born plebeian of alien blood into the family. She was continually attempting still worse frauds to wrong him of his birthright; and though by the exertion of extreme vigilance her schemes had been hitherto foiled, what possible security, short of her death, could be had against the success of future attempts of the same sort. A De Medici, and a sixteenth century Cardinal may well have persuaded himself that he was justified under the circumstances, in adopting the only possible means of providing against such treason, pregnant with such results.

But his brother? Can it be shown that Ferdinando had sufficient motive to wish his brother's death, as to favour the probability that he was his murderer? It can only be said, that there was old hate between them, constantly stimulated and embittered by fresh provocations of the most galling sort on the part of the elder brother; hate, made more dangerous by the necessity for carefully suppressing all manifestation of it for long years of self–restraining dissimulation; that from the manner in which Francesco had received the proposals of a second marriage after the death of his first wife, there was very little room to hope that Bianca's death would be followed by any marriage, which might put the prospects of the family on a satisfactory footing; that to have taken off Bianca and left her husband alive would have been an exceedingly dangerous step, for then the inquiries, the suspicions, the post–mortem examinations, and the investigations, would, of course, have been of a very different sort, and, under the circumstances, very difficult to deal with; that, finally, last, though far from least, Ferdinando was a De Medici.

That shrewd and sagacious old man, Pope Sixtus V., saw at once,[223] on hearing of what had happened, that suspicion of the double murder would fall on the Cardinal; and it may perhaps be said, without much chance of inaccuracy, that the balance of opinion among those most qualified to judge, has, in modern times, inclined in that direction.

But to return from the region of conjecture to that of historical certainty, a few words will suffice to tell all that remains of Bianca's story. As soon as the breath had left her body, the Bishop Abbioso, who had been left at Poggio–a–Cajano by Ferdinando, wrote to him:

"This instant, at eight o'clock—'quindici ore'—her Most Serene Highness the Grand Duchess passed to another life. The present messenger is sent in haste to receive the orders of your Highness as to the disposition of her body."

Orders were sent back that the body should "be kept intact till the evening," and then opened, as has been said. The same night it was buried, "so that no memorial of her should remain;" the new sovereign's reply to the application for orders on this head being, "We will have none of her among our dead!"

The hatred of the Florentines for both Francesco and Bianca was intense. If anything, the latter was yet more detested than her husband. In addition to all the grounds of hatred common to both of them, she was a foreigner, and "a witch," a practiser of black art. And this accusation, more than aught else, made the burden of the abuse that was heaped upon her. Of course, it was not safe to say much of the deceased sovereign. But satirists, libellers, pasquinade–writers, and epigraph–mongers, had full licence to exercise their wit at the expense of the "pessima Bianca."

Here are specimens of their expressions of the popular estimate of her, which were current in the city immediately after her death. They are taken from the same letter of Signor Soderini, so often quoted:

"Qui giace in un avel pien di malie
E pien di vizi la Bianca Cappella,
Bagasica, strega, maliarda e fella,
Che sempre favorÌ furfanti e spie."

In English:

"Here in a grave, brimful of vices foul
And evil sorceries, Bianca lies,
A huzzy, witch, and mistress of fell spells;
In life the dearest friend of rogues and spies."

Another runs as follows:

"In questa tomba, in questa oscura buca
Ch'È fossa a quei che non hanno sepoltura,
Opra d'incanti, e di malie fattura
Giace la Bianca, moglie del Granduca."

Which may stand, if the absence of the rhyme be excused, in English thus:

"Within this tomb, this undistinguished hole,
The grave of those who sepulture have none,
That worker of black arts and evil charms,
Bianca lies, the wife of our Grand Duke."

The Cardinal Ferdinando succeeded to his brother's throne without disturbance or difficulty; slipped off his priesthood by dispensation, seeing that it was for the benefit of mankind that he should do so; manifested, as Sismondi says,[224] "as much talent for government as is compatible with the absence of all virtue, and as much pride, as can exist without nobility of mind;" merited the affection of his subjects by taking off, among sundry mint and cumin dues, the tax upon cat's meat;[225] married Cristina, daughter of Charles Duke of Lorraine, and succeeded in accomplishing the great and beneficent task of preserving the Medicean stock to Italy and mankind.