Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino (Vol. 1-3). Dennistoun James

hear that the mischief and misery are chiefly the act of man. The calm serenity of these forlorn downs becomes deeply touching from remembering that the soil was for centuries sodden with blood, and covered with smouldering ruins; that European civilisation there was nurtured, there waned, and there struggled into a second life, amid the din of battles, the devastation of armies, the rapine of banditti; that its long grass springs from the grave of ancient refinement, of classic memorials, of mediæval strife.

      In the middle ages much of the Campagna was fertile, and peopled by an industrious peasantry. Its undulating slopes waved with abundant crops, varied and sheltered by venerable woods, which the Goths and Vandals of former centuries had spared. But incessant civil feuds proved more fatal than barbarian hordes. The Ghibelline Colonna, from their fortresses of Marino and Palestrina, watched the fitting moment to pour their armed retainers on the plain, and, crossing the Tiber, carried fire and sword, through the estates of their rivals, to the very gates of Bracciano. The Guelphic Orsini waited for revenge only till the ripened harvest had prepared for them a golden spoil in their foemen's fields. Year after year did this miserable partizan-warfare ravage those devoted lands till the peasantry by degrees were exterminated, or driven to seek a livelihood in some more tranquil spot; till of their smiling homes no stone remained upon another, except where, at long intervals, the farm buildings were turned by these men of blood into fortresses, or the tombs of the dead were desecrated into defences for the living. A soil teeming with fertility under a burning sun, and abandoned by man, ran to rank vegetation, which, gradually choking the water-courses, generated miasma. The evil, thus commenced, was augmented by cutting down the trees which shadowed the burning earth, and, not unfrequently, covered a hostile ambush. But the crowning mischief was the rash destruction of a vast forest which, extending between the Campagna and the sea, excluded the malaria that brooded over the Mediterranean coast from Leghorn to Mola di Gaeta. Once admitted, that fearful scourge took possession of the depopulated territory, which has ever since remained a puzzle to the physiologist, a mystery to the moralist, a terror to all. At no period had the feuds of the Colonna and Orsini been more virulent than during the feeble reign of Innocent, when their armed bands had more than once scoured the streets of Rome, and overawed the papal government. The Savelli, the Frangipani, and the Gaetani, those great families who, a century or two before, had been their rivals, were no longer able to cope with them, and the lesser barons of the Comarca sought protection and employment by ranging themselves as their respective partizans. To humble these rampant houses was thus the natural policy of the successors of St. Peter, and especially of Alexander VI., who soon devoted his ambition and his authority to provide temporal sovereignties for his illegitimate progeny. His ruthless proceedings, and the changes which ensued over the whole country, at length effectually quelled the lawless turbulence of these chiefs; but it was too late to remedy the ruinous havoc which their insatiate strife had occasioned.

      “DIVA JULIA”

       From a bronze medal by L’Antico in the British Museum

      CESARE BORGIA

       From a medal ca. 1500 in the British Museum

      JULIUS II. AS CARDINAL

       From a medal in the British Museum

      The late Pope, following the practice of the times, had endowed his natural son Francesco Cibò (ancestor of the princes of Massa) with Anguillara, Cervetri, and other holdings to the north-west of Rome, and had married him to Madalena, sister of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Desirous of exchanging this precarious sovereignty for some more peaceful home, Francesco, by the influence of his brother-in-law, Pietro de' Medici, induced the King of Naples to advance 40,000 ducats to Gentile Virginio Orsini, for the purchase of these castles, which adjoined his fief of Bracciano. This slight circumstance served to kindle that train which the long series of events now alluded to had gradually prepared for combustion, and to ripen those jealousies already sown among the Peninsular powers. The Pope saw in it an accession of territory to one of those great barons of the Campagna whom he had resolved to humble; Ludovico il Moro, with the coward suspicions of guilt, watched every motion of Ferdinand, whose just indignation at his treatment of the Duke of Milan he had too good reason to dread. As soon, therefore, as he had ascertained that Pietro de' Medici, abandoning the cautious neutrality which his father had ever maintained between the Milanese and Neapolitan interests, had united with Ferdinand in the affair of Orsini, as well as in the less serious intrigue which had prevented the cementing of a general confederation he plotted to provide for the King full occupation at home.

      Suddenly, however, the tangled policy of the Peninsular states assumed an aspect more favourable to Ludovico. The ambitious overtures of Alexander to obtain for his natural son Giuffredo the hand of Sancia of Aragon having been spurned by her father Alfonso, the impetuous Pontiff, in April, 1493, hastily concluded a defensive treaty with Milan and Venice, for the avowed purpose of expelling Orsini, the ally of Naples, from his recent acquisitions. These having been obtained by that feudatory, with the aid of his tried friend Ferdinand, and his relation Pietro de' Medici, he naturally looked to these two powers for support; and thus was Italy on the point of relapsing into her normal condition of feud. But the King of Naples, considering such a price extravagant for the mere gratification of family pride, had within a few weeks adjusted his differences with the Pope, by betrothing his granddaughter to Giuffredo Borgia. As if by repulsion of the magnetic poles, the accession of Ferdinand caused Il Moro to secede from the alliance he had just before joined, but from which he could no longer look for support in his lawless authority, and, judging his only security to consist in the depression of that monarch, he resolved to effect it at any price.

      Upon these most inadequate grounds of personal pique, or personal apprehension, did Ludovico madly run upon the very danger against which he had been the first to prepare

      "All the swords

       In Italy, and her confederate arms."

      In his eagerness to disable Ferdinand's anticipated vengeance upon his own crimes, he renewed the calamities of a succession-war in the south, and thereby laid open the Peninsula to a scourge whose chastisement fell most heavily upon himself. Instead of heading a league against foreign aggression, as he had just before proposed, he made overtures to Charles VIII., tempting him with the diadem of Naples as the reward of an invasion of Italy, and offering him free passage through the Milanese. His private quarrel with the usurper did not blind Ferdinand to the insanity of this step, and, forgetting his feelings as a parent, he united with the other powers in representing the peril of his policy. Gladly would Ludovico have withdrawn the false step he had hastily made; but it was too late. The demon of ambition was roused in the French king; the hour for retraction was passed; that of bitter repentance was at hand. Behind her Alpine barrier there was gathered an army, ready to burst upon fated Italy, and to pour upon her plains calamities unknown since the fall of the Western Empire.

      * * * * *

      With Federigo of Montefeltro and Roberto Malatesta, the old generation of Italian condottieri may be said to have passed away. Political changes and progressive civilisation, developed during forty years of comparative tranquillity, already tended to limit both the supply of veteran adventurers and the demand for their services. Under such genial influences, the great companies of adventure had melted down to petty followings, more proportioned to the exigencies of the age, and to the resources and experience of their new leaders. Peaceful times offered no rich prizes to call forth sustained daring, and to reward vast enterprises. Captains of minor reputation, heading small bands raised for some passing broil or petty foray, succeeded to the Hawkwoods, Montoni, and Malatesta, without rivalling their deeds, or maintaining their fame. The limited brigandage of the broken lances differed from the sweeping desolation of their marshalled thousands only in the narrower field on which it found scope; but the mercenary system became more manageable when deprived of its cumbrous machinery, and its leaders were henceforth the tools of their employers instead of their virtual masters.

      In bidding adieu