CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.THE FERRARESE WAR.ThePazzi conspiracy was only a prelude to the events which caused a Neapolitan army to stand as an enemy before the walls of Rome. The Pope and the Venetians had had no time to give free course to their spite against old enemies or former allies so long as the storm was hanging over the Apulian coast. Sixtus IV. even showed himself friendly to the Florentines, and Guid’Antonio Vespucci, who, towards the end of January 1481, returned to Rome as ambassador, endeavoured to strengthen this good understanding. But no sooner had the imminent danger from the East disappeared than the object of clearing the coast of Albania and Western Greece of the Turks, which might have been more easily attained then than at any previous period, passed out of sight. A dispute between Venice and Ferrara furnished an occasion for fresh strife. Ercole of Este refused to recognise any longer as valid certain old and burdensome obligations which kept him in a sort of dependence on the Republic with respect to the execution of justice in his capital by a Venetian vicegerent, and the procuring of salt from Venetian saltworks. The dispute rose to such a height that Venice threatened to take up arms; she thought the moment favourable on account of her alliance with the Pope. Sixtus IV. had sound reasons for avoiding everything that could favour the interference of Venice in the affairs of Ferrara and Romagna; but the requirements of prudent policy were driven into the background by the selfish ambitionof his nephew, who hoped to strengthen his position in Romagna by Venetian influence. Duke Ercole vainly tried through Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere to make the Pope understand that it would be neither to the honour nor the advantage of the Holy See to leave him to be crushed by the superior power of Venice.[233]Girolamo Riario went to Venice, where he was most honourably received and presented with the patriciate. War was decided on. King Ferrante sided with his son-in-law, as did also Milan and Florence. The alliance of Bologna and several of the lords of Romagna was secure; Siena and Genoa adhered to the Pope and Venice. Most of the captains of the Tuscan war undertook the leadership again, under somewhat altered circumstances. Besides Roberto Malatesta, the Venetians gained Roberto da Sanseverino, who had fallen out with Lodovico Sforza and given him a great deal of trouble in his own territory. The command of the Milanese troops was entrusted to the Duke of Urbino. The Florentines were led by Costanzo Sforza, to whom the general’sbâtonhad been solemnly presented October 2, 1481.[234]In the spring of 1482 the struggle began in several quarters at once.[235]A large Venetian fleet sailed up the Po, while two armies attacked the Ferrarese territory—Sanseverino from the Lombard side and Malatesta from that of Romagna. Rovigo and the whole Polesina fell into the hands of the Venetians, whose commander-in-chief encamped, on May 28, before Ficcarolo—a castle situated on the Po to the north-west of Ferrara—intending to take it, and then to cross the river and attack the capital, Malatesta co-operating with himfrom the south side. But meanwhile the Duke of Urbino, with the Milanese troops, raised his camp at Stellata, on the right bank, to assist the besieged and cover Ferrara; and Malatesta was called away from the Po district to meet a threatened danger in an opposite quarter. Alfonso of Calabria had appeared at the Tronto, demanding a free pass to bring aid to his brother-in-law. The Pope had not yet declared himself; the envoys of Naples, Milan, Florence, and Ferrara were still in Rome. On the refusal of the pass they left the city, and the duke entered the States of the Church as an enemy. He met no serious resistance. Rome resounded with the clang of arms; as an annalist says, ‘The city which had hitherto been wont to produce only bulls and briefs now produced nothing but arms.’[236]Girolamo Riario had the post of captain-general for the Church, but his incapacity soon became apparent. The Neapolitans were at Grottaferrata; their horsemen made excursions to the very gates of the city; vineyards and fields were laid waste. This state of things continued for weeks. At last the Pope saw himself compelled to appeal for help to Venice, and she ordered Roberto Malatesta to go to the assistance of her hard-pressed ally. Meanwhile, the Florentines had made a diversion; Niccolò Vitelli, supported by Costanzo Sforza, had taken Città di Castello on June 19, and the whole country around had fallen into his hands.Thus far matters seemed to be going in favour of the Duke of Ferrara and his allies. The Pope was angry as well as distressed, and in his anger and distress he did not disdain the policy followed by one Italian state after another, to the ruin of Italy, the policy of seeking help from a foreign power. To Louis XI. he addressed the bitterest complaints against Ferrante, seeking to stir up the French king to an expedition against Naples, where the prevailing discontent was in his favour, and he offered the Dauphin an opportunityof becoming a standard-bearer of the Church.[237]Raimond Pérault, afterwards Bishop of Saintes and Cardinal, was sent to the king with positive proposals. Louis XI. was too practical to enter upon such far-reaching and uncertain projects, but, as in all similar proposals, the seed sown did not fall on barren soil. Meanwhile things had changed in Italy. Ficcarolo surrendered after a siege of rather more than a month, and the enemy crossed the Po unimpeded by the troops of the Duke of Urbino, which were no match for the Venetians, especially when their leader, having been seized with fever in the low unhealthy neighbourhood of the river, had to be carried to Bologna. Ferrara was threatened, and a Venetian fleet alarmed the coast of Apulia. But the heaviest blow was yet to come. On August 21, at Campomorto, on the road from Rome to Porto d’Anzo, Alfonso of Calabria was completely defeated by Malatesta, with heavy loss of men and artillery.[238]The victor died at Rome on September 8, of fever which he had caught in the infected Campagna. At the same time the other side lost their best general, Federigo da Montefeltro, who closed his eventful life in Bologna. These two, opposed to each other on the battle-field, but connected by the closest family ties, each ignorant of the other’s mortal danger, commended in their last hour their states and families to each other’s care. Girolamo Riario had tried to profit both by the victory and the death of Malatesta, on the one hand to retake Città di Castello, and on the other to get Rimini into his own power. Both attempts were frustrated by the Florentines, who supported Vitelli and enabled Roberto’s widow, Elisabetta di Montefeltro, to preserve for her little step-son Pandolfo his paternal inheritance. Still the situation was very serious.Roberto Sanseverino established himself on the right bank of the Po, and raised strong fortifications at Pontelagoscuro, close to Ferrara. The duke began seriously to think of abandoning his capital and withdrawing to Modena, but the Florentine plenipotentiary, Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, restrained him. Lodovico Sforza was kept in check by a rising in the Parmesan territory.The way the war was carried on in the Duchy of Ferrara was regarded in Florence as very unsatisfactory. The Duke of Urbino had in nowise answered to the expectations formed of him. Jacopo Guicciardini remarked to the Ferrarese ambassador that the league had no head. Lorenzo de’ Medici was anxious, but said in reference to the Duke of Ferrara, ‘I cannot imagine you will lose, unless you fail for want of spirit.Hereall will be done that can be.’ The expedition against Città di Castello, he observed, had been made with the object of giving the duke breathing time. Ercole was always commending his interests to the Republic. If Ferrara fell into the hands of the Venetians, Florence would be likewise endangered. Military operations were not accounted sufficient; the old threat of a council was renewed. But just at this time the adventurous Archbishop of Carniola, whose character and history have never been thoroughly investigated, made a feeble attempt to revive the Synod of Basel, which had been dissolved for forty years. This man, a Dominican, whose name seems to have been Andrea Zuccalmaglio, was in Rome with commissions from the Emperor Frederic about the time of the Pazzi conspiracy. There he enjoyed high favour for a time, but afterwards he fell into such deep disgrace that he was not only deposed from his ecclesiastical dignity but imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, from whence the Emperor’s intercession liberated him in the summer of 1481. He betook himself,viâFlorence, first to Bern and then to Basel, where, falsely giving himself out as still Frederic’s messenger, and finally assuming the title of cardinal, heproclaimed the opening of the great Assembly of the Church on the feast of the Annunciation, 1482. The moment for this proclamation was not badly chosen, for the Pope was just involving himself in a fresh war; but measures being immediately taken in Rome to put on their guard both foreign powers and the free city in which the fire threatened to kindle once more, the wretched man—whose sanity had begun to be doubted, and who was not joined by one single prelate from France or Germany—rushed into extremities, and in the beginning of the summer launched the wildest invectives against Francesco da Savona, who was no Pope but a son of the devil, against whom he called Christ and the œcumenical council to witness.Not long before, Lorenzo had found out that it is not safe to play with spiritual weapons, however much they might be blunted by misuse in temporal projects. It seems, therefore, hardly intelligible that he could think of letting himself appear to take part in such a senseless enterprise. Possibly he had seen the archbishop when the latter passed through Florence, with his heart full of rancour against the Pope and his nephew. In Lorenzo’s defence it may be urged that affairs in Italy were in a sad plight while the Pope blindly allowed himself to be led by the ambition of his kinsmen. In a letter written about this time to Pier Capponi, ambassador at Naples,[239]Lorenzo says plainly that the authority of religion itself is endangered by a mode of government so unbecoming the supreme pastor. King Ferrante nominated ambassadors to the council, and proposed that the Italian League should be represented, as well as the individual states. He hoped to induce the Kings of Hungary and Spain to favour the cause. But in vain. On September 14, by Lorenzo’s orders, Baccio Ugolini arrived in Basel, in company with a Milanese delegate—Bartolommeo, Archpriest of Piacenza. They at once entered into communicationwith thePronunciatorof the Council, as Andrea called himself, but they soon became convinced of the utter groundlessness and hopelessness of the whole proceeding. The Florentine’s idea of proposing Pisa as a more suitable spot than Basel, where matters were going wrong already, is interesting only as an echo of the Council of 1409, and a foreshadowing of theconciliabulumof 1511. On December 18, the two delegates, with Philip of Savoy, Lord of Bresse, and other princes and nobles, were present at a solemn sitting of the town-council of Basel, at which the case was decided against the archbishop. Having avowed his obedience to the head of the Empire, and his zeal for the good of the church, but declining to retract his accusations against the Pope, he was arrested; he was then prosecuted, but at the same time, the town council of Basel refused to deliver him up to Rome. Legal proceedings were taken against the imperial city, and were the cause of great trouble, until the dispute was ended by a compromise arising out of the suicide of the rash man who had originated this melancholy episode.[240]While Baccio Ugolini and his colleague were taking part in these deliberations, a revolution was preparing in Italy which altered the whole position of affairs and placed Florence and Milan in quite a different attitude towards the Pope. Sixtus was influenced less by distant apprehensions than by the consideration, to which he could not shut his eyes, that he was helping to strengthen the very power which threatened to become most dangerous to him by its constant endeavours to obtain control over the cities on the Adriatic coast. Giuliano della Rovere—who, twenty years after, as his uncle’s successor, opposed in arms the power of this Republic,his uncle’s old ally—seems to have been the means of finally inducing the Pope to break with Venice. Girolamo Riario, the soul of the war party, might be gained over by a prospect of the Malatesta fiefs. First, a truce was made with the Duke of Calabria, who was still in the Campagna; then, on December 23, peace was agreed upon between the Pope, Naples, Florence, and Milan, with a proviso that Venice was to accede to it. The Florentines were not satisfied with the conditions, and seem to have accused the Milanese of lukewarmness both in regard to the war and to the negotiations. Yet, considering the state of affairs and the losses already sustained, the conditions were not unfavourable. The Duke of Ferrara, who was in the utmost need, was to be reinstated in his possessions. The next point, however, was to persuade or compel the Venetians to accede to the treaty, and thus give reality to the peace, in commemoration of which Sixtus built the church of Sta. Maria della Pace. A congress was to be held at Cremona to regulate everything.There was no time to lose, for Ferrara was besieged and could not hold out much longer; and the conduct of Costanzo Sforza, who had strengthened the garrison with his own troops after being repeatedly urged to do so by the Florentines, inspired but little confidence. In spite of the unfavourable time of year, King Ferrante was not behind hand. A thousand men, among whom were the Turks who bad fought bravely at Campomorto, were sent by sea to Piombino, to march through Sienese and Florentine territory; while the Duke of Calabria advanced by way of Orvieto towards the valleys of the Chiana and the Arno. On January 5, 1483, he was in Florence, where he abode in the house of Giovanni Tornabuoni. At the end of three days he set out for Ferrara, from whence he intended proceeding to Cremona. The Cardinal-Legate Gonzaga also passed through Florence on his way to Cremona; and now Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was to represent the Republic atthe congress, also set out on February 12. A week before he received the customary instructions,[241]relating principally to the contingents of troops and money for the prosecution of the war; in fact, he went as master of the city and the State, to decide on war and peace according to his own judgment. His brother-in-law Bernardo Rucellai was to accompany him. Louis XI. warned him of possible danger. ‘As to the meeting about Ferrara,’ he wrote on January 20, ‘at which you tell me you have agreed to be present, I, who know neither the people nor the place, would have advised you not to go, but to take care of your own safety. I would have sent a messenger with excuses. Since, however, you have consented to go, I must leave the rest to you and trust in God that all may go as you wish.’[242]Even in Florence the matter seems to have been thought somewhat serious. When Lorenzo, on January 30, announced to the Duke of Ferrara[243]his intended departure, he added that he had to contend with the general opposition of the citizens, who were unwilling to let him go. At the same time he remarks that his presence cannot be of much consequence at a meeting of so many mighty lords; but it is not necessary to take him at his word. He announced his impending journey to the French king on the same day.The lords who met at Cremona were, besides the Legate, the Duke of Calabria and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lodovico and Ascanio Sforza, Ercole d’Este, Federigo Gonzaga Marquis of Mantua, Giovanni Bentivoglio, Girolamo Riario,[244]and various envoys and plenipotentiaries. On the last day of February, 1483, the treaty was settled, according to which Venice was to be compelled by active prosecution of the war to cease hostilities against Ferrara. At the end of the first week in March,Lorenzo was back in Florence. The Venetians had no idea of yielding. They had already begun negotiations with the Duke of Lorraine, that he might alarm King Ferrante once more by raising the standard of Anjou, while their fleet desolated the Apulian coast and took the important post of Gallipoli. Their ambassador Francesco Diedo had quitted Rome at the end of February. The Pope had refused to give him an audience; Diedo complained that no Turk would be treated so, but he feared a crusade would be preached against the Republic, and declared that in that case they would never obtain peace—they might give themselves up for lost.[245]In March, Ferrara seemed near its fall. All the country within a mile round was in the enemy’s hands. The Venetian Chronicler Marin Sanuto, who was in Sanseverino’s camp, gives a lively description of the doings before the city-gates. ‘We eat with the most illustrious Roberto, and then to horse. We were about five hundred horsemen and many foot; we left the camp and rode to the park of Ferrara, where we proceededmore solitoas far as a small canal, about a mile and a half from the city. Sanseverino was wont to march into the park every morning to escort the plundering bands. I saw the enemy’s troops under the Duke of Calabria and the Count of Pitigliano; we advanced towards them as far as the canal, but,sic volente fato, it did not come to a fight. Only, to mock them, we let fly our falcons. The park comprises a space of seven miles, full of game and fruit of all kinds; now it lies open and deserted.’[246]Costanzo Sforza, who had thoughts of making terms with Venice, evacuated Ferrara in defiance of orders. Giovanni Bentivoglio and Galeotto Manfredi were hastily ordered thither; but the most effectual help was the victory gained over the Venetians at Argenta by Alfonso ofCalabria, captain-general of the allies. From thenceforth matters took a favourable turn for the latter, who were also benefited by the interdict laid on Venice by the Pope. An attempt made by Sanseverino to kindle a revolt in the Milanese roused Sforza to serious proceedings. By autumn the whole country as far as the Adige was in the hands of the Milanese; the Venetian fleet on the Po sustained heavy loss, and René of Lorraine, called by the Republic to its aid, was forced to retreat before the troops of Este.In the beginning of January 1484, at Milan, another congress was held, at which Jacopo Guicciardini was present on behalf of Florence. By actively prosecuting the war by land and sea, it was hoped that Venice would soon be compelled to sue for peace—a consummation for which all longed, as the expenses were becoming burdensome, and each of the allies had its own separate interests. Peace did indeed come to pass in the course of the summer; but it scarcely answered general expectation. To obtain a little relief in their difficult predicament, the Venetians, beside their alliance with the heir of Anjou, now tried to stir up Louis XI. to an expedition against Naples, and the Duke of Orleans to an expedition against Milan, while their enemies were setting the Turks upon them.[247]At last they succeeded in detaching Lodovico il Moro from the league, of which he was but a half-hearted adherent. His own position and projects furnished them with a pretext, and now began the complications which in ten years brought Italy to ruin. In Milan things had drifted into a state that might easily have been foreseen. The duchess-regent, who,par sottise, as Commines unceremoniously expressed it, had put herself into Lodovico’s power, now saw her truest counsellor dying in prison at Pavia, her own son used as a tool, and her unworthy favourite driven out of Milan; and when she triedto leave the country she was herself detained in the castle of Abbiategrasso, a prisoner, though the word itself was not uttered in her presence, and she was allowed to see her children occasionally. There she closed her sorrowful career in 1494, so completely forgotten that the exact date and manner of her death are unknown. Lodovico once rid of his sister-in-law, ruled supreme in Milan. His nephew was duke only in name; at sixteen he was still under a guardianship which became daily more oppressive. Alfonso of Calabria, to whose daughter the young duke was betrothed, was not inclined to let this state of affairs continue; Lodovico, on the other hand, was determined to make every possible effort to maintain his position. The Marquis of Mantua had contrived to prevent the rupture which seemed imminent when both princes were in Northern Italy; but his death put an end to all chances of mediation. The reciprocal distrust of Lodovico and the Medici was constantly increasing, and occasionally sharp words passed between them.Venice profited in this state of affairs by employing Roberto da Sanseverino, an old confidant of Lodovico’s and anxious to be reconciled to him, to make him perceive that he was acting against his own interest in taking part in this war, which, if it ended unfavourably for the Republic, must strengthen the authority of the Aragonese in Central and Northern Italy. Without troubling himself about his allies, Lodovico entered into negotiations, in which Naples and Florence participated, because they could not venture to carry on the war without Milan. Pier Filippo Pandolfini took part in the arrangements for peace, as Florentine plenipotentiary. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had need of Sforza, was full of distrust. ‘We shall conquer,’ said he after the Congress of Cremona, ‘if Lodovico’s words correspond to his thoughts.’[248]But he soon discovered that his doubts werewell founded. He could not help seeing how all the advantages that had been gained were being given up, and that an inadequate result of the long and costly war was all that Este could obtain by the treaty. ‘Antonio,’ said he to the Ferrarese ambassador, ‘thou rememberest that I was once in the same position in which thy lord is now—aye, and even worse. If I had not helped myself, I should have been lost. Then, too, the fault lay with Milan. I do not say that thy lord should do as I did.’ ‘My illustrious lord,’ adds the ambassador in his report to the duke, ‘I think he meant that if he was in your Excellency’s place he would come to an understanding direct with Venice herself, and trust himself to his foes as he did at Naples.’[249]The conditions of the peace signed at Bagnolo on August 8, 1484, were dictated by Venice, who regained by the treaty the territory she had lost in the war. That is to say the peace was highly disadvantageous to Ferrara. Not only was Ercole compelled to admit the old demands of the Republic; the Polesina and Rovigo remained in its hands. ‘When the Venetians were getting the worst of it, and their funds were becoming very much exhausted,’ says Commines,[250]‘the lord Lodovico came to the assistance of their honour and credit, and every man got his own again except the poor Duke of Ferrara, who had gone into the war at the instigation of his father-in-law and Lodovico, and now had to yield to the Venetians the Polesina, which they still possess. It was said that the transaction brought 60,000 ducats to my lord Lodovico; I cannot tell how the truth may be, but I found such was the belief of the Duke of Ferrara, to whose daughter, however, he was not yet married in those days.’ Gallipoli and other places on the coast were restored to Ferrante. Sixtus IV. having thus seen the war continued contrary to his views, and ended without his participation,when he thought he had the decision in his own hands, did not long survive the conclusion of the peace, which made all his exertions useless and strengthened his opponent. He had an attack of gout on August 2; on the 13th he died. It was said that he, the restless one, had been killed by the peace. Scarcely five months before, he had given the red hat to the brother of the man who had since crossed all his plans—to Ascanio Maria Sforza, who thus began under warlike auspices a cardinalate destined to be devoid of peace.The Florentines felt all the shame of the treaty, but they made a show of rejoicing after the war was over. There was indeed every reason to wish for quiet in that quarter, for there was no lack of troubles of all kinds. It was not long since a compromise had with great difficulty been arrived at about Città di Castello. The Pope had tried both arms and negotiations to regain possession of the town, and neither had succeeded. Niccolò Vitelli held out till 1484, by the Florentine assistance. Florence had indeed no intention of offending the Pope for his sake, and thereby damaging the far more important cause of Ferrara, and was inclined to let Sixtus have his will in the matter. But he wanted to give the town and neighbouring places as a fief to his nephew, and at the same time to enlarge the latter’s possessions in the direction of Rimini and Cesena by a treaty with the Malatestas, neither of which things suited the Florentines.[251]Amid this uncertainty Vitelli resolved to imitate Lorenzo’s example. He went to Rome, came to terms with the Pope, recognised the latter’s supremacy, agreed with his rival Lorenzo Giustini, and accepted the office of a governor of the Maritima and Campagna. Peace was restored in the valley of the Upper Tiber, and Città di Castello was preserved to the Church; while the Vitelli, who continued to governthrough various changes of form and destiny, maintained till their extinction their active relations with Florence and the Medici. On June 14, 1483, an agreement was made with Siena for the restoration of the places which Florence had been compelled to yield to her in the treaty of peace of 1480.[252]But another revolution in Siena, where the party raised to power by the Duke of Calabria’s influence had been unable to maintain themselves, had been required to produce this restoration and decide the Sienese to form an alliance with Florence, to secure herself against the exiles supposed to be favoured by Rome and Naples. The Florentine opinion of the neighbouring state was still the same as that expressed nearly two hundred years before by the poet of the ‘Divine Comedy,’[253]as may be seen by a letter from the Signoria to Lorenzo during his stay at Cremona. The treaty with the Sienese, say they, is a long process, and no real confidence can be placed in them and their doings, because of the changeableness of their nature.[254]The long feud about Sarzana had not yet come to an end; the siege had dragged on all through the Ferrarese war. Things were in a bad position. Agostino Fregoso, who held the town, had made it over to the great commercial company of the Banco di San Giorgio, which formed in Genoa a state within the State, and owned many places on the Ligurian coast as well as in the far-off Crimea. Not only had the garrison of Sarzana been strengthened, but also that of its neighbour Pietrasanta, originally a Lucchese town, which cut off all communications while a fleet attacked the coast of the Maremma. As at the peace of Naples so at that of Bagnolo, to the great vexation of the Florentines, the dispute about Sarzana was left unsettled. The honour of the Republic urgently demanded a settlement. But instead of taking the place, a Florentine corps escorting atransport of ammunition was defeated near Pietrasanta. The necessity was now felt for rendering the castle incapable of further harm, but it was not done without heavy losses. The marshy atmosphere of the coast of the Lunigiana seized many victims from the Florentine camp; Bongianni Gianfigliazzi and Antonio Pucci, army commissaries, succumbed to the fever in Pisa. Then Lorenzo resolved to go himself to the camp to spur on the troops. A few days after his arrival, in the beginning of November, 1484, Pietrasanta surrendered. An embassy from Lucca, demanding its restoration, was deferred with a reference to the coming accommodation with Genoa; but Florence was resolved beforehand to keep the place as an excellent check upon Lucca. When the castle was taken, which was to remain a boundary-mark on the Lunigiana side down to the dissolution of the Tuscan autonomy, many things had occurred to claim the whole attention of those who governed the Republic.

THE FERRARESE WAR.

ThePazzi conspiracy was only a prelude to the events which caused a Neapolitan army to stand as an enemy before the walls of Rome. The Pope and the Venetians had had no time to give free course to their spite against old enemies or former allies so long as the storm was hanging over the Apulian coast. Sixtus IV. even showed himself friendly to the Florentines, and Guid’Antonio Vespucci, who, towards the end of January 1481, returned to Rome as ambassador, endeavoured to strengthen this good understanding. But no sooner had the imminent danger from the East disappeared than the object of clearing the coast of Albania and Western Greece of the Turks, which might have been more easily attained then than at any previous period, passed out of sight. A dispute between Venice and Ferrara furnished an occasion for fresh strife. Ercole of Este refused to recognise any longer as valid certain old and burdensome obligations which kept him in a sort of dependence on the Republic with respect to the execution of justice in his capital by a Venetian vicegerent, and the procuring of salt from Venetian saltworks. The dispute rose to such a height that Venice threatened to take up arms; she thought the moment favourable on account of her alliance with the Pope. Sixtus IV. had sound reasons for avoiding everything that could favour the interference of Venice in the affairs of Ferrara and Romagna; but the requirements of prudent policy were driven into the background by the selfish ambitionof his nephew, who hoped to strengthen his position in Romagna by Venetian influence. Duke Ercole vainly tried through Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere to make the Pope understand that it would be neither to the honour nor the advantage of the Holy See to leave him to be crushed by the superior power of Venice.[233]

Girolamo Riario went to Venice, where he was most honourably received and presented with the patriciate. War was decided on. King Ferrante sided with his son-in-law, as did also Milan and Florence. The alliance of Bologna and several of the lords of Romagna was secure; Siena and Genoa adhered to the Pope and Venice. Most of the captains of the Tuscan war undertook the leadership again, under somewhat altered circumstances. Besides Roberto Malatesta, the Venetians gained Roberto da Sanseverino, who had fallen out with Lodovico Sforza and given him a great deal of trouble in his own territory. The command of the Milanese troops was entrusted to the Duke of Urbino. The Florentines were led by Costanzo Sforza, to whom the general’sbâtonhad been solemnly presented October 2, 1481.[234]In the spring of 1482 the struggle began in several quarters at once.[235]

A large Venetian fleet sailed up the Po, while two armies attacked the Ferrarese territory—Sanseverino from the Lombard side and Malatesta from that of Romagna. Rovigo and the whole Polesina fell into the hands of the Venetians, whose commander-in-chief encamped, on May 28, before Ficcarolo—a castle situated on the Po to the north-west of Ferrara—intending to take it, and then to cross the river and attack the capital, Malatesta co-operating with himfrom the south side. But meanwhile the Duke of Urbino, with the Milanese troops, raised his camp at Stellata, on the right bank, to assist the besieged and cover Ferrara; and Malatesta was called away from the Po district to meet a threatened danger in an opposite quarter. Alfonso of Calabria had appeared at the Tronto, demanding a free pass to bring aid to his brother-in-law. The Pope had not yet declared himself; the envoys of Naples, Milan, Florence, and Ferrara were still in Rome. On the refusal of the pass they left the city, and the duke entered the States of the Church as an enemy. He met no serious resistance. Rome resounded with the clang of arms; as an annalist says, ‘The city which had hitherto been wont to produce only bulls and briefs now produced nothing but arms.’[236]Girolamo Riario had the post of captain-general for the Church, but his incapacity soon became apparent. The Neapolitans were at Grottaferrata; their horsemen made excursions to the very gates of the city; vineyards and fields were laid waste. This state of things continued for weeks. At last the Pope saw himself compelled to appeal for help to Venice, and she ordered Roberto Malatesta to go to the assistance of her hard-pressed ally. Meanwhile, the Florentines had made a diversion; Niccolò Vitelli, supported by Costanzo Sforza, had taken Città di Castello on June 19, and the whole country around had fallen into his hands.

Thus far matters seemed to be going in favour of the Duke of Ferrara and his allies. The Pope was angry as well as distressed, and in his anger and distress he did not disdain the policy followed by one Italian state after another, to the ruin of Italy, the policy of seeking help from a foreign power. To Louis XI. he addressed the bitterest complaints against Ferrante, seeking to stir up the French king to an expedition against Naples, where the prevailing discontent was in his favour, and he offered the Dauphin an opportunityof becoming a standard-bearer of the Church.[237]Raimond Pérault, afterwards Bishop of Saintes and Cardinal, was sent to the king with positive proposals. Louis XI. was too practical to enter upon such far-reaching and uncertain projects, but, as in all similar proposals, the seed sown did not fall on barren soil. Meanwhile things had changed in Italy. Ficcarolo surrendered after a siege of rather more than a month, and the enemy crossed the Po unimpeded by the troops of the Duke of Urbino, which were no match for the Venetians, especially when their leader, having been seized with fever in the low unhealthy neighbourhood of the river, had to be carried to Bologna. Ferrara was threatened, and a Venetian fleet alarmed the coast of Apulia. But the heaviest blow was yet to come. On August 21, at Campomorto, on the road from Rome to Porto d’Anzo, Alfonso of Calabria was completely defeated by Malatesta, with heavy loss of men and artillery.[238]The victor died at Rome on September 8, of fever which he had caught in the infected Campagna. At the same time the other side lost their best general, Federigo da Montefeltro, who closed his eventful life in Bologna. These two, opposed to each other on the battle-field, but connected by the closest family ties, each ignorant of the other’s mortal danger, commended in their last hour their states and families to each other’s care. Girolamo Riario had tried to profit both by the victory and the death of Malatesta, on the one hand to retake Città di Castello, and on the other to get Rimini into his own power. Both attempts were frustrated by the Florentines, who supported Vitelli and enabled Roberto’s widow, Elisabetta di Montefeltro, to preserve for her little step-son Pandolfo his paternal inheritance. Still the situation was very serious.Roberto Sanseverino established himself on the right bank of the Po, and raised strong fortifications at Pontelagoscuro, close to Ferrara. The duke began seriously to think of abandoning his capital and withdrawing to Modena, but the Florentine plenipotentiary, Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, restrained him. Lodovico Sforza was kept in check by a rising in the Parmesan territory.

The way the war was carried on in the Duchy of Ferrara was regarded in Florence as very unsatisfactory. The Duke of Urbino had in nowise answered to the expectations formed of him. Jacopo Guicciardini remarked to the Ferrarese ambassador that the league had no head. Lorenzo de’ Medici was anxious, but said in reference to the Duke of Ferrara, ‘I cannot imagine you will lose, unless you fail for want of spirit.Hereall will be done that can be.’ The expedition against Città di Castello, he observed, had been made with the object of giving the duke breathing time. Ercole was always commending his interests to the Republic. If Ferrara fell into the hands of the Venetians, Florence would be likewise endangered. Military operations were not accounted sufficient; the old threat of a council was renewed. But just at this time the adventurous Archbishop of Carniola, whose character and history have never been thoroughly investigated, made a feeble attempt to revive the Synod of Basel, which had been dissolved for forty years. This man, a Dominican, whose name seems to have been Andrea Zuccalmaglio, was in Rome with commissions from the Emperor Frederic about the time of the Pazzi conspiracy. There he enjoyed high favour for a time, but afterwards he fell into such deep disgrace that he was not only deposed from his ecclesiastical dignity but imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, from whence the Emperor’s intercession liberated him in the summer of 1481. He betook himself,viâFlorence, first to Bern and then to Basel, where, falsely giving himself out as still Frederic’s messenger, and finally assuming the title of cardinal, heproclaimed the opening of the great Assembly of the Church on the feast of the Annunciation, 1482. The moment for this proclamation was not badly chosen, for the Pope was just involving himself in a fresh war; but measures being immediately taken in Rome to put on their guard both foreign powers and the free city in which the fire threatened to kindle once more, the wretched man—whose sanity had begun to be doubted, and who was not joined by one single prelate from France or Germany—rushed into extremities, and in the beginning of the summer launched the wildest invectives against Francesco da Savona, who was no Pope but a son of the devil, against whom he called Christ and the œcumenical council to witness.

Not long before, Lorenzo had found out that it is not safe to play with spiritual weapons, however much they might be blunted by misuse in temporal projects. It seems, therefore, hardly intelligible that he could think of letting himself appear to take part in such a senseless enterprise. Possibly he had seen the archbishop when the latter passed through Florence, with his heart full of rancour against the Pope and his nephew. In Lorenzo’s defence it may be urged that affairs in Italy were in a sad plight while the Pope blindly allowed himself to be led by the ambition of his kinsmen. In a letter written about this time to Pier Capponi, ambassador at Naples,[239]Lorenzo says plainly that the authority of religion itself is endangered by a mode of government so unbecoming the supreme pastor. King Ferrante nominated ambassadors to the council, and proposed that the Italian League should be represented, as well as the individual states. He hoped to induce the Kings of Hungary and Spain to favour the cause. But in vain. On September 14, by Lorenzo’s orders, Baccio Ugolini arrived in Basel, in company with a Milanese delegate—Bartolommeo, Archpriest of Piacenza. They at once entered into communicationwith thePronunciatorof the Council, as Andrea called himself, but they soon became convinced of the utter groundlessness and hopelessness of the whole proceeding. The Florentine’s idea of proposing Pisa as a more suitable spot than Basel, where matters were going wrong already, is interesting only as an echo of the Council of 1409, and a foreshadowing of theconciliabulumof 1511. On December 18, the two delegates, with Philip of Savoy, Lord of Bresse, and other princes and nobles, were present at a solemn sitting of the town-council of Basel, at which the case was decided against the archbishop. Having avowed his obedience to the head of the Empire, and his zeal for the good of the church, but declining to retract his accusations against the Pope, he was arrested; he was then prosecuted, but at the same time, the town council of Basel refused to deliver him up to Rome. Legal proceedings were taken against the imperial city, and were the cause of great trouble, until the dispute was ended by a compromise arising out of the suicide of the rash man who had originated this melancholy episode.[240]

While Baccio Ugolini and his colleague were taking part in these deliberations, a revolution was preparing in Italy which altered the whole position of affairs and placed Florence and Milan in quite a different attitude towards the Pope. Sixtus was influenced less by distant apprehensions than by the consideration, to which he could not shut his eyes, that he was helping to strengthen the very power which threatened to become most dangerous to him by its constant endeavours to obtain control over the cities on the Adriatic coast. Giuliano della Rovere—who, twenty years after, as his uncle’s successor, opposed in arms the power of this Republic,his uncle’s old ally—seems to have been the means of finally inducing the Pope to break with Venice. Girolamo Riario, the soul of the war party, might be gained over by a prospect of the Malatesta fiefs. First, a truce was made with the Duke of Calabria, who was still in the Campagna; then, on December 23, peace was agreed upon between the Pope, Naples, Florence, and Milan, with a proviso that Venice was to accede to it. The Florentines were not satisfied with the conditions, and seem to have accused the Milanese of lukewarmness both in regard to the war and to the negotiations. Yet, considering the state of affairs and the losses already sustained, the conditions were not unfavourable. The Duke of Ferrara, who was in the utmost need, was to be reinstated in his possessions. The next point, however, was to persuade or compel the Venetians to accede to the treaty, and thus give reality to the peace, in commemoration of which Sixtus built the church of Sta. Maria della Pace. A congress was to be held at Cremona to regulate everything.

There was no time to lose, for Ferrara was besieged and could not hold out much longer; and the conduct of Costanzo Sforza, who had strengthened the garrison with his own troops after being repeatedly urged to do so by the Florentines, inspired but little confidence. In spite of the unfavourable time of year, King Ferrante was not behind hand. A thousand men, among whom were the Turks who bad fought bravely at Campomorto, were sent by sea to Piombino, to march through Sienese and Florentine territory; while the Duke of Calabria advanced by way of Orvieto towards the valleys of the Chiana and the Arno. On January 5, 1483, he was in Florence, where he abode in the house of Giovanni Tornabuoni. At the end of three days he set out for Ferrara, from whence he intended proceeding to Cremona. The Cardinal-Legate Gonzaga also passed through Florence on his way to Cremona; and now Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was to represent the Republic atthe congress, also set out on February 12. A week before he received the customary instructions,[241]relating principally to the contingents of troops and money for the prosecution of the war; in fact, he went as master of the city and the State, to decide on war and peace according to his own judgment. His brother-in-law Bernardo Rucellai was to accompany him. Louis XI. warned him of possible danger. ‘As to the meeting about Ferrara,’ he wrote on January 20, ‘at which you tell me you have agreed to be present, I, who know neither the people nor the place, would have advised you not to go, but to take care of your own safety. I would have sent a messenger with excuses. Since, however, you have consented to go, I must leave the rest to you and trust in God that all may go as you wish.’[242]Even in Florence the matter seems to have been thought somewhat serious. When Lorenzo, on January 30, announced to the Duke of Ferrara[243]his intended departure, he added that he had to contend with the general opposition of the citizens, who were unwilling to let him go. At the same time he remarks that his presence cannot be of much consequence at a meeting of so many mighty lords; but it is not necessary to take him at his word. He announced his impending journey to the French king on the same day.

The lords who met at Cremona were, besides the Legate, the Duke of Calabria and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lodovico and Ascanio Sforza, Ercole d’Este, Federigo Gonzaga Marquis of Mantua, Giovanni Bentivoglio, Girolamo Riario,[244]and various envoys and plenipotentiaries. On the last day of February, 1483, the treaty was settled, according to which Venice was to be compelled by active prosecution of the war to cease hostilities against Ferrara. At the end of the first week in March,Lorenzo was back in Florence. The Venetians had no idea of yielding. They had already begun negotiations with the Duke of Lorraine, that he might alarm King Ferrante once more by raising the standard of Anjou, while their fleet desolated the Apulian coast and took the important post of Gallipoli. Their ambassador Francesco Diedo had quitted Rome at the end of February. The Pope had refused to give him an audience; Diedo complained that no Turk would be treated so, but he feared a crusade would be preached against the Republic, and declared that in that case they would never obtain peace—they might give themselves up for lost.[245]In March, Ferrara seemed near its fall. All the country within a mile round was in the enemy’s hands. The Venetian Chronicler Marin Sanuto, who was in Sanseverino’s camp, gives a lively description of the doings before the city-gates. ‘We eat with the most illustrious Roberto, and then to horse. We were about five hundred horsemen and many foot; we left the camp and rode to the park of Ferrara, where we proceededmore solitoas far as a small canal, about a mile and a half from the city. Sanseverino was wont to march into the park every morning to escort the plundering bands. I saw the enemy’s troops under the Duke of Calabria and the Count of Pitigliano; we advanced towards them as far as the canal, but,sic volente fato, it did not come to a fight. Only, to mock them, we let fly our falcons. The park comprises a space of seven miles, full of game and fruit of all kinds; now it lies open and deserted.’[246]Costanzo Sforza, who had thoughts of making terms with Venice, evacuated Ferrara in defiance of orders. Giovanni Bentivoglio and Galeotto Manfredi were hastily ordered thither; but the most effectual help was the victory gained over the Venetians at Argenta by Alfonso ofCalabria, captain-general of the allies. From thenceforth matters took a favourable turn for the latter, who were also benefited by the interdict laid on Venice by the Pope. An attempt made by Sanseverino to kindle a revolt in the Milanese roused Sforza to serious proceedings. By autumn the whole country as far as the Adige was in the hands of the Milanese; the Venetian fleet on the Po sustained heavy loss, and René of Lorraine, called by the Republic to its aid, was forced to retreat before the troops of Este.

In the beginning of January 1484, at Milan, another congress was held, at which Jacopo Guicciardini was present on behalf of Florence. By actively prosecuting the war by land and sea, it was hoped that Venice would soon be compelled to sue for peace—a consummation for which all longed, as the expenses were becoming burdensome, and each of the allies had its own separate interests. Peace did indeed come to pass in the course of the summer; but it scarcely answered general expectation. To obtain a little relief in their difficult predicament, the Venetians, beside their alliance with the heir of Anjou, now tried to stir up Louis XI. to an expedition against Naples, and the Duke of Orleans to an expedition against Milan, while their enemies were setting the Turks upon them.[247]At last they succeeded in detaching Lodovico il Moro from the league, of which he was but a half-hearted adherent. His own position and projects furnished them with a pretext, and now began the complications which in ten years brought Italy to ruin. In Milan things had drifted into a state that might easily have been foreseen. The duchess-regent, who,par sottise, as Commines unceremoniously expressed it, had put herself into Lodovico’s power, now saw her truest counsellor dying in prison at Pavia, her own son used as a tool, and her unworthy favourite driven out of Milan; and when she triedto leave the country she was herself detained in the castle of Abbiategrasso, a prisoner, though the word itself was not uttered in her presence, and she was allowed to see her children occasionally. There she closed her sorrowful career in 1494, so completely forgotten that the exact date and manner of her death are unknown. Lodovico once rid of his sister-in-law, ruled supreme in Milan. His nephew was duke only in name; at sixteen he was still under a guardianship which became daily more oppressive. Alfonso of Calabria, to whose daughter the young duke was betrothed, was not inclined to let this state of affairs continue; Lodovico, on the other hand, was determined to make every possible effort to maintain his position. The Marquis of Mantua had contrived to prevent the rupture which seemed imminent when both princes were in Northern Italy; but his death put an end to all chances of mediation. The reciprocal distrust of Lodovico and the Medici was constantly increasing, and occasionally sharp words passed between them.

Venice profited in this state of affairs by employing Roberto da Sanseverino, an old confidant of Lodovico’s and anxious to be reconciled to him, to make him perceive that he was acting against his own interest in taking part in this war, which, if it ended unfavourably for the Republic, must strengthen the authority of the Aragonese in Central and Northern Italy. Without troubling himself about his allies, Lodovico entered into negotiations, in which Naples and Florence participated, because they could not venture to carry on the war without Milan. Pier Filippo Pandolfini took part in the arrangements for peace, as Florentine plenipotentiary. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had need of Sforza, was full of distrust. ‘We shall conquer,’ said he after the Congress of Cremona, ‘if Lodovico’s words correspond to his thoughts.’[248]But he soon discovered that his doubts werewell founded. He could not help seeing how all the advantages that had been gained were being given up, and that an inadequate result of the long and costly war was all that Este could obtain by the treaty. ‘Antonio,’ said he to the Ferrarese ambassador, ‘thou rememberest that I was once in the same position in which thy lord is now—aye, and even worse. If I had not helped myself, I should have been lost. Then, too, the fault lay with Milan. I do not say that thy lord should do as I did.’ ‘My illustrious lord,’ adds the ambassador in his report to the duke, ‘I think he meant that if he was in your Excellency’s place he would come to an understanding direct with Venice herself, and trust himself to his foes as he did at Naples.’[249]

The conditions of the peace signed at Bagnolo on August 8, 1484, were dictated by Venice, who regained by the treaty the territory she had lost in the war. That is to say the peace was highly disadvantageous to Ferrara. Not only was Ercole compelled to admit the old demands of the Republic; the Polesina and Rovigo remained in its hands. ‘When the Venetians were getting the worst of it, and their funds were becoming very much exhausted,’ says Commines,[250]‘the lord Lodovico came to the assistance of their honour and credit, and every man got his own again except the poor Duke of Ferrara, who had gone into the war at the instigation of his father-in-law and Lodovico, and now had to yield to the Venetians the Polesina, which they still possess. It was said that the transaction brought 60,000 ducats to my lord Lodovico; I cannot tell how the truth may be, but I found such was the belief of the Duke of Ferrara, to whose daughter, however, he was not yet married in those days.’ Gallipoli and other places on the coast were restored to Ferrante. Sixtus IV. having thus seen the war continued contrary to his views, and ended without his participation,when he thought he had the decision in his own hands, did not long survive the conclusion of the peace, which made all his exertions useless and strengthened his opponent. He had an attack of gout on August 2; on the 13th he died. It was said that he, the restless one, had been killed by the peace. Scarcely five months before, he had given the red hat to the brother of the man who had since crossed all his plans—to Ascanio Maria Sforza, who thus began under warlike auspices a cardinalate destined to be devoid of peace.

The Florentines felt all the shame of the treaty, but they made a show of rejoicing after the war was over. There was indeed every reason to wish for quiet in that quarter, for there was no lack of troubles of all kinds. It was not long since a compromise had with great difficulty been arrived at about Città di Castello. The Pope had tried both arms and negotiations to regain possession of the town, and neither had succeeded. Niccolò Vitelli held out till 1484, by the Florentine assistance. Florence had indeed no intention of offending the Pope for his sake, and thereby damaging the far more important cause of Ferrara, and was inclined to let Sixtus have his will in the matter. But he wanted to give the town and neighbouring places as a fief to his nephew, and at the same time to enlarge the latter’s possessions in the direction of Rimini and Cesena by a treaty with the Malatestas, neither of which things suited the Florentines.[251]Amid this uncertainty Vitelli resolved to imitate Lorenzo’s example. He went to Rome, came to terms with the Pope, recognised the latter’s supremacy, agreed with his rival Lorenzo Giustini, and accepted the office of a governor of the Maritima and Campagna. Peace was restored in the valley of the Upper Tiber, and Città di Castello was preserved to the Church; while the Vitelli, who continued to governthrough various changes of form and destiny, maintained till their extinction their active relations with Florence and the Medici. On June 14, 1483, an agreement was made with Siena for the restoration of the places which Florence had been compelled to yield to her in the treaty of peace of 1480.[252]But another revolution in Siena, where the party raised to power by the Duke of Calabria’s influence had been unable to maintain themselves, had been required to produce this restoration and decide the Sienese to form an alliance with Florence, to secure herself against the exiles supposed to be favoured by Rome and Naples. The Florentine opinion of the neighbouring state was still the same as that expressed nearly two hundred years before by the poet of the ‘Divine Comedy,’[253]as may be seen by a letter from the Signoria to Lorenzo during his stay at Cremona. The treaty with the Sienese, say they, is a long process, and no real confidence can be placed in them and their doings, because of the changeableness of their nature.[254]

The long feud about Sarzana had not yet come to an end; the siege had dragged on all through the Ferrarese war. Things were in a bad position. Agostino Fregoso, who held the town, had made it over to the great commercial company of the Banco di San Giorgio, which formed in Genoa a state within the State, and owned many places on the Ligurian coast as well as in the far-off Crimea. Not only had the garrison of Sarzana been strengthened, but also that of its neighbour Pietrasanta, originally a Lucchese town, which cut off all communications while a fleet attacked the coast of the Maremma. As at the peace of Naples so at that of Bagnolo, to the great vexation of the Florentines, the dispute about Sarzana was left unsettled. The honour of the Republic urgently demanded a settlement. But instead of taking the place, a Florentine corps escorting atransport of ammunition was defeated near Pietrasanta. The necessity was now felt for rendering the castle incapable of further harm, but it was not done without heavy losses. The marshy atmosphere of the coast of the Lunigiana seized many victims from the Florentine camp; Bongianni Gianfigliazzi and Antonio Pucci, army commissaries, succumbed to the fever in Pisa. Then Lorenzo resolved to go himself to the camp to spur on the troops. A few days after his arrival, in the beginning of November, 1484, Pietrasanta surrendered. An embassy from Lucca, demanding its restoration, was deferred with a reference to the coming accommodation with Genoa; but Florence was resolved beforehand to keep the place as an excellent check upon Lucca. When the castle was taken, which was to remain a boundary-mark on the Lunigiana side down to the dissolution of the Tuscan autonomy, many things had occurred to claim the whole attention of those who governed the Republic.

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