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The Visconti and the Torriani were already deadly foes. The House of the Snake, which in Archbishop Otto, was now about to begin its great ascent, to the overthrow and destruction of the Tower of its rivals, probably derived its origin and name from one of the Viscounts of the Carlovingian rule, who had succeeded in converting the territory entrusted to his administration into an hereditary appanage. It was, in any case, of great antiquity in the city. The famous cognizance which its later career invested with a peculiar terror, is said to have been won by a noble crusader of the House, also an Otto, in single combat with a Saracen, who carried a shield emblazoned with the device of a seven-coiled serpent devouring a child. Otto slew the Saracen and adopted the device, which he transmitted to his descendants, and with it who knows what mysterious and persistent curse of guile and cruelty?

It is with Archbishop Otto, however, that the real fortunes of the House begin. Strong, crafty and determined, with a power of biding his time observable in a singular degree in all the notable members of his race, Otto was the right man to foster and direct the gradually reviving power of the nobles in Milan and lead them to victory over the Della Torre and the people. But for fifteen years he fought and intrigued in vain, leading his fellow-exiles and the forlorn hope of the Ghibelline party in Lombardy against the swelling tide of Guelf success, which the death of Ezzelino da Romano, the overthrow of the House of Suabia in Manfred and Corradino, and the ascendency of Anjou in the South, had brought to the full. The domination of the Torriani seemed to become every day more assured. Heads of the Lombard League, Martino and his family were all-powerful in North Italy. They drove the Ghibellines out of the surrounding cities, and established their own sympathisers in power everywhere. Many of the Communes accepted the actual sway of the great House. Martino died in 1263, and was buried in the Monastery of Chiaravalle. He was succeeded by his brother Filippo, on whose death, two years later, Napo, a son of the good Pagano, assumed the chieftainship.

Meanwhile the capital itself, spared, under the protection of these great lords, the bloody succession of sieges and captures which laid waste its neighbours, where the more evenly balanced parties caused revolutions with bewildering frequency, increased rapidly in wealth and luxury. The narrow, tortuous streets overflowed with the full, rich-coloured, sharply chequered life of the thirteenth century. Some terrible scene of Ghibelline prisoners slaughtered in the market-place, and dragged, mangled and bleeding, at the tails of horses through the streets, with yelling crowds of children after them, is succeeded by a May-Day holiday, when the most illustrious youths and maidens of the city, splendidly adorned, 'weave joyful dances' beneath pavilions spread in all the open spaces. And the blue sky roofing the sunny squares is suddenly darkened by the smoke ascending from the death-pyre of a heretic, while lean mendicant Brothers look on with triumph, certain that the cry which comes from that breaking chrysalis is the voice of the Devil discomfited. Now troops, knights and men-at-arms in clanking armour, with tattered banners held high, trample in over the drawbridge, returning from some exploit against the Ghibellines. Or it is a multitude of moaning Flagellants, in white shrouds stained with blood, whose self-inflicted lashes can scarcely fall fast enough to keep time with the pangs of their guilty consciences, as they hurl themselves against the gates, which the stout captains of the city keep shut, judging that fifteen different sects within their walls are enough, without admitting these crazy penitents to upset the unsteady minds of the people.

Napo was a wise and prudent man, but in this step he went too far. The Della Torre fortune was even then on the wane. The Milanese might rejoice in the peace which despotism bestowed, but they loudly resented being called upon to pay for it by new and heavy taxation, and all the lovers of liberty feared the novel and arrogant title of Imperial Vicar. Among the supporters of the ruling House themselves, the long course of power enjoyed by the Torriani had bred envy and enmity. Dissensions arose, and the discontented were punished by spoliation and banishment. Numbers abandoned the party and joined Otto Visconte. Tumults shook the city once more, and sedition secretly gathered head. Napo, feeling his power slipping from him, used the cruel and tyrannous measures of despair to save himself and his House. Otto and the exiles, on the other hand, braced by adversity and clinging together in a determined band, were daily gaining strength. They were aided by the other Ghibellines of Lombardy, especially by the Pavesi, and with continual attacks and raids upon the Milanese territory they strove to vex and weaken the party in power. Nevertheless, for some years still their cause seemed hopeless. The Della Torre, who had cast off Oberto da Pellavicino when they were strong enough to do without him, had reconciled themselves with the Papacy in 1274, and their great prestige was apparently strong enough to defy defections and subdue discontent.

Thus, by the hazard of a moment's battle, the long supremacy of the Torriani was overthrown. Napo was imprisoned in the terrible Tower of Baradello, whose ruins still crest a hill a mile or two on the Milanese side of Como. Here, within the bars of a cage, the once mighty chief languished for a year and a half till he died.

Meanwhile, the change of ruler had brought the city none of the relief from war and its burdensome cost, which the people had fondly expected. The kinsmen and adherents of the exiled family in the city were very numerous and strong, and the whole Guelf party in Lombardy was anxious to bring about the restoration of the Torriani. The new Lord of Milan was attacked with fury, and could only maintain himself by the energetic use of the sword, and by those same methods of proscription and banishment with which his predecessors had made themselves odious.

Footnote 1:

Canto viii., vv. 73-81.

The Guelf supporters of the Della Torre now entered Milan, and were received with a great outburst of popular joy. A short period of anarchy followed, caused by the nobles, who had helped to drive out the Visconti, but had no desire to see the Della Torre in their place. After a few months, however, the sons of Napo succeeded by the favour of the lower classes, to whom their name was still dear, in restoring themselves to power, while in all the surrounding cities, whose fortunes were always bound up with Milan's, their partisans drove out the Ghibellines and reinstated the Guelfs.

Mosca, Guido, and Enrico della Torre now ruled the city, at first with a show of deference to the will of the Republic, but after a few years with a sovereignty fuller than that which the Visconti had enjoyed. The people were, in fact, accustoming themselves to a single rule. In 1307 Mosca died, and Guido assumed sole authority. Meanwhile the Visconti were dispersed in various directions. Galeazzo and his wife Beatrice had taken refuge with her kindred at Ferrara, and the other sons of Matteo had found places of safety where the powerful alliances of the family secured them from pursuit by the Della Torre. The shrewd chief himself, after vainly attempting to reverse the fortune of war, had withdrawn to a remote country villa on the Lake of Garda, and having apparently renounced all public activity, was passing his time in the innocent pastimes of fishing and thinking. But his keen eye watched every movement on the field of politics. He had spies and agents everywhere, and was but waiting the moment for a spring upon his foes. With cynical satisfaction he noted the inevitable course of the new tyranny in Milan; the jealousy and suspicion awaking within the city itself, and in the subjects and allied communities around at the growth of Guido's despotism, the disloyalty of his near kindred and dependants, greedy for a share of power, and all the embarrassments of a chief in whom a noble and generous temper was not seconded by the sagacity and self-control which distinguished the observer himself. An oft-told story relates that Guido, at the height of his prosperity, sent a messenger to his fallen rival to ask him derisively how he fared, and when he hoped to see Milan again. Matteo was wandering beside the lake, discoursing with a companion. 'You see how I live,' he said to the envoy, 'suiting myself to my fortunes. Tell your Lord that I am waiting till the sins of the Torriani have reached the measure of mine to return to my country.' The expectation of the philosopher was justified as time went on, and Guido began to resort to cruel and oppressive means of preserving his power. In 1309 he imprisoned his cousin Cassone, Archbishop of Milan, and his nephews, the sons of Mosca, on suspicion of plotting against him, and was only withheld from further revenge by the protests of his own friends. The subsequent banishment of these kinsmen, who thenceforth sought his ruin, helped to prepare the disasters which were soon to fall upon his House.

The Guelf party was indeed fast losing its hold once more on Lombardy, owing to the hostile feeling in the cities towards King Robert of Naples, who, as champion of the Church and head of the Guelfs, was seeking to establish his sovereignty over North Italy. At the same time a new turn of the wheel was preparing in Germany, where, in 1310, Henry of Luxemburg was elected Emperor, and immediately manifested his intention of descending into Italy to exercise the imperial authority for the purpose of restoring order and peace in the factious Communes.

Matteo Visconte in his hut of exile saw that his moment was come. With characteristic insight he gauged the noble soul of the new Emperor, with its lofty ideals and conviction of a divine mission as peacemaker. His agent, Francesco Garbagnate, made his way to the imperial Court, where he insinuated himself into Henry's favour, and ever at his ear whispered of the woes of Lombardy, and of Milan, the splendid city, groaning under a despotic oppressor; of thousands of exiles languishing in poverty; of their chief, patiently enduring his evil fortunes without attempting retaliation or revenge.

The anticipation of the Emperor's coming was by no means so pleasing to Guido della Torre and his friends. The mere thought of this spectre of imperialism, which, when men believed it was well laid at last, ever rose to disturb the settlement of the turbid elements of Italian life, seems to have stirred the Republican chief to uncontrollable indignation. 'What have I to do with Henry of Luxemburg?' he cried, stamping furiously, in a great assembly of his party convoked to deal with the situation. To his experienced and unillusioned mind the Emperor's purpose was simply the exaltation of the Ghibellines and the destruction of the Guelfs. With passionate entreaties and prophecies of impending peril, he sought to raise a league against Henry, but nearly all his former supporters and allies, tired of his ascendency and afraid of the King of Naples, had pledged themselves to welcome the new-comer.

In November 1310 the Emperor arrived at Asti, whither almost all the magnates of North Italy, both Guelf and Ghibelline, hastened to do him homage. One day there entered the Court a man who, by the simplicity of his attire and following, appeared a person of little consequence. Throwing off his hood and cloak, he ran and knelt before the Emperor, and kissing his feet, saluted him as the longed-for peacemaker and consolation of the exiles, and implored his compassion. The suppliant was Matteo Visconte, who, for fear of his enemies, had come thus disguised and secretly. Henry welcomed him with the greatest kindness, and having listened earnestly to his recital of the wrongs which he and his had suffered, promised to give them speedy relief. Matteo then turned to some of the Guelf nobles present, his fiercest enemies, and with the most admirable display of a meek and forgiving spirit, offered to embrace them. But they, knowing well the perfidy of his fair seeming, repulsed him with scorn and heaped revilements upon him. To all of which the Visconte replied with perfect mildness and goodwill, pointing to the Emperor--'Here is our king, who is come to give us peace; the end of all our woes is at hand.' His foes, perceiving how completely he had put them in the wrong and won the Emperor's confidence by his show of magnanimity, began to misdoubt them of the future and wish that they had heeded Guido della Torre's warnings. The game was now, in fact, despite Henry's good intentions, in the hands of the wily Ghibelline chief. Besides all the barons and magnates of his own faction, the exiled Archbishop Cassone della Torre and a number of other Milanese Guelfs, whom Guido had offended by his tyranny, ranged themselves under Matteo's leadership, and by the advice of this greatly preponderating section of his Italian vassals, Henry was persuaded to turn his steps early towards Milan.

He sent officers before him to prepare for his reception in the ruler's palace, which as sovereign he expected to occupy. But he had forgotten Milan's traditional privilege of keeping the Emperor outside her gates. Relying upon this, Guido della Torre refused to give up the palace. Nevertheless Henry proceeded on his way, and as he neared the city, the Milanese, who had heard the rumour of his great goodness, came forth in multitudes to meet him. At his right hand rode Matteo Visconte. The obsequious bearing of the Ghibelline chief contrasted strangely with the grudging welcome offered by the Lord of the city, who appeared last of all to greet the monarch, and forgot to lower his standard before the Imperial Eagles. This omission was roughly remedied by some of the German soldiers, who seized the defiant banner and flung it in the mud. His pride met only a mild rebuke from the Emperor, who, having entered in state with his queen, took up his abode in the archiepiscopal palace. At first all went well. The Archbishop and all the other exiles were restored to their homes and possessions, and Henry made the Visconti and Torriani swear perpetual peace. The reconciliation was celebrated in the eyes of all the people by a ceremony in the Piazza of St. Ambrogio, where the Emperor appeared seated on a great throne, with the members of the two rival Houses placed side by side at his feet. An Imperial Vicar was appointed to keep peace in the city, and the factions in the neighbouring Communes having been pacified in like manner, Henry was crowned in Milan by Archbishop Cassone, amid extraordinary joy and festivity.

Not for long, however, did the lion and the lamb thus couch together. Even while the Emperor still lingered in Milan, suspicion and discontent began to seethe among the citizens. The old fear and hatred of the Empire, which still lived in the descendants of Barbarossa's victims, was fanned by the heavy exactions of the imperial officers, who demanded an enormous sum as a coronation gift from the already exhausted citizens. The German troops were also a continual vexation to the people. The Torriani did all they could to foster the growing spirit of revolt. Guido and his cousin the Archbishop forgot their feud in their common desire to get rid of the Emperor, and the Visconti themselves were found ready to sympathise with the general discontent. It was rumoured in the imperial palace that Galeazzo Visconte and Francesco della Torre had been seen joining hands in sign of amity at a meeting outside the gates. But whatever the other members of his House might be doing, the Head of the Visconti sat aloof, peacefully unconscious, apparently, of what was going forward.

Thus was the power of the Della Torre in Milan for ever overthrown. The Visconti, having cleverly disposed of their rivals, had now to rid themselves of the Emperor, in order to regain their old sovereignty. Henry, vexed at the bloodshed which had already stained his fair white banner of peace, and beginning to realise the secret strength of the spirit of faction, sent Matteo and Galeazzo into exile, lest he should appear to have favoured the Ghibellines in the late affair. But the fall of the Torriani had filled the Guelfs with distrust and fear of him. He passed on his way, to find the cities of Lombardy arming against him and his task of peace-making growing more and more difficult of accomplishment. Hardly was he gone from Milan before the Visconti returned, and in a very short time Matteo succeeded in making himself once more all-powerful. A year later the wisdom of the Milanese Serpent appeared to have completely charmed the Imperial Eagle, when in return for a timely supply of gold to support the Emperor's enterprise, Matteo won the legal confirmation of his authority over the city, with the title of Imperial Vicar of Milan.

"Maudire la puissance, c'est blasph?mer l'humanit?."

The Visconti had now firmly established their dominion in Milan, a dominion destined, in the story of the unstable mediaeval governments of Italy, to be equalled by few in duration, and by none in extent. For good or for evil the great city, with her command of the chief passes of the Alps for war and commerce, her wealth as the capital of the vast alluvial plain of Lombardy, was delivered into the hands of a race singularly fitted to use these natural advantages for the creation of a mighty State. The Visconti, as a family, were characterised by exceptional ability and tenacity, and above all, by a subtlety of brain and suppleness of conscience which, under the stress of ambition or necessity, induced a perfidy so quiet and so effectual that the Snake upon their shields became for all Italy a symbol of their political methods, and an object of horror and fear. The vices and weaknesses which ruined other Italian dynasties seemed to have little power over these Milanese princes. Hot and rash of blood in the earlier generations, they rarely allowed passion to override prudence; those of them who did were quickly rooted out. Even that most fruitful disorder in a reigning House, the jealous rivalry of its own members, could not avail to overcome their political coolness or sagacity, or sunder their union against a common enemy. With time this self-control became a habit of cold and passionless judgment, all-powerful in the management of men and States. Even the fatal weakness of remorse and superstitious fear, to which they were all prone, could not undermine them; they were able to parry their consciences, and delay repentance until their successors were old enough to carry on their unscrupulous policy. Nor did the arrogance and cruelty which tyranny bred in this sovereign race prove their overthrow. In spite of its record of crime, no retributive catastrophe ended the dynasty. It died out of itself, and we shall see the last of the Visconti sink into the grave under the burden of an empire greater almost than any other in Italy.

The old Ghibelline chief, weakened by age and bodily infirmity, quailed before this onslaught. Many of his own adherents and kinsmen were deserting him. Milan, trembling under the ban of the Church and excited by the papal agents, was verging on revolt. Matteo summoned the offending Galeazzo, forgave him, and resigned to him the chieftainship. Retiring to a village at a little distance from the city, he died shortly after, full of years and sorrow.

Galeazzo and his brother Marco, bitter rivals, forgot for the time their mutual wrongs, and with the other sons of Matteo stood up in manful union against their foes. For fourteen days they concealed their father's death from the Milanese, while Galeazzo calmed the city by conciliatory measures, and assumed the supreme power. The storm broke heavily upon them now. Immense numbers from all North Italy joined the standard of the Legate, which, impiously displaying the Cross in a worldly quarrel was carried towards Milan, with the avowed purpose of overthrowing the Visconti and restoring the Torriani. Monza and Piacenza fell , and the capital itself was attacked, the suburbs sacked, and the walls closely blockaded. The straits of the Visconti appeared desperate. But the brothers fought with invincible spirit, and they were supported by the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, who sent succour from Germany. The papal army itself began to dissolve through rivalries and dissensions, and sickness. The siege was soon raised, and early in the following year the Visconti took the offensive and inflicted a signal defeat upon the allies at Vaprio. Their fortunes now revived. Within the next few years they recovered many of the lost cities of their father's State, and the Pope, realising the impossibility of overthrowing them, began to listen to emissaries from Galeazzo with suggestions for peace and reconciliation.

Thus did the Visconti once more lose Milan. A governor, appointed by Louis, reigned in their stead. Marco, if he owed his escape to disloyalty, soon rued his mistake. The ruin of his house involved him too, and he wandered in poverty and exile. Louis' high-handed act was, however, displeasing to many of his Ghibelline supporters, and he found it prudent to release Galeazzo at the end of a year, at the request of Castruccio, Lord of Lucca, the most powerful member of the Ghibelline party at that time. The Visconte, broken by his sufferings in prison, and unable to recover his State, joined his friend Castruccio, and died a few months later. His son and brothers succeeded soon after, through the intervention of Castruccio, in making their peace with the Emperor. For the promise of sixty thousand golden florins, Louis granted to Azzo, the dead prince's heir, the title of Imperial Vicar of Milan, and the Visconti once more took possession of the city with the full approval of the people .

Once restored to power, they were at little pains to pay the stipulated sum to the Emperor, who by this time was fast losing prestige in Italy. They reconciled themselves with the Church instead, and when the enraged Louis presented himself with an army beneath the walls of Milan, he was received with derision and jeers. The Emperor, enfeebled by the contempt and desertion of nearly all his partisans, was helpless against the renewed strength of the great Milanese House. He was glad to compound with Azzo and to reconfirm him in the position of Imperial Vicar.

From this moment began the unbroken prosperity of Matteo Visconte's sons and of the great city which they ruled. Secure in the weakness of both Empire and Church from further interference, Azzo was able to devote himself to the expansion and development of his State. The short reign of this prince, who had won great fame for his prowess in the Tuscan wars with Castruccio, was wholly fortunate. The menace offered to its prosperity by the rebellious attempts of his uncle Marco was overcome by the death of that turbulent warrior, who was killed in 1329 apparently by a fall from a window in his nephew's palace, though it was generally believed that he had been first strangled and then flung out by order of his kinsmen. The other enemy within the House, Lodrisio Visconte, was not so easily disposed of. Abandoning Milan, he allied himself with the Scaligeri of Verona, with whom the Visconti had come into inevitable collision, now that the weakness of their common Guelf foe had left the field of North Italy open to the rival ambition of these two great Ghibelline powers. In 1339 Lodrisio, with forces supplied by Martino della Scala, invaded the Milanese territory, and approaching the capital, spread terror and desolation everywhere. At Parabiago they encountered the Milanese, under Luchino Visconte, who, after a tremendous struggle, won a complete victory. Lodrisio was captured with his two sons, and imprisoned in a strong castle. A few months later Azzo died of gout, at the age of thirty-seven. In the brief years of his reign he had completely restored the power and prestige of his House. He left Milan fortified by new walls, beautified by new palaces, churches and towers, a city fairer and greater than that ruined by Barbarossa, and full of a rich, industrious and joyous life.

Azzo had no heir. He was succeeded by his uncles, Luchino, and the ecclesiastic Giovanni, who was now Archbishop of Milan. The two brothers thus held the whole dominion, spiritual as well as temporal. They worked together with rare unanimity for the aggrandisement of their House and State. Luchino pressed with his arms energetically against the Scaligeri, whose empire was fast receding before the attacks of the rest of the Ghibelline powers of North Italy, who in uniting with the Visconti to crush this predominant member of the party, were but smoothing the way for the rise of a State destined to be far greater than Verona ever was. The Milanese prince added many cities to the dominion of his House, and was the first to carry the fear of the Visconti across the Apennines into Tuscany, where he had almost acquired Pisa when recalled to Lombardy by the outbreak of war there.

Luchino was a careful ruler, thoughtful for the welfare and progress of his subjects, and just towards the lower classes. He promulgated new laws for the protection of the poor and weak, and for the encouragement of industry, and refrained from excessive taxation. Nevertheless, he had the same violent temper as his elder brothers, Galeazzo and Marco, and soon developed the characteristic vices of tyranny--lust, cruelty and suspicion. In Giovanni, on the contrary, all the rarer qualities of the Visconti appeared, the subtle brain, the self-control and power of biding their time, combined with a benignity which was never disturbed except to good purpose, so that while steadily pursuing ends as vast and ambitious as his brothers', he still kept the respect and love of the people. He well knew how to influence the course of events without falling foul of his suspicious brother.

The younger princes of the House, however, the three sons of the dead Stefano, were less cautious, and soon incurred the wrath of their despotic uncle. He discovered, or perhaps invented, a conspiracy on their part to oust him from power, and drove them mercilessly into exile and poverty. The eldest, Matteo, took refuge with his wife's family, the powerful Gonzaga of Mantua, but Bernab? and Galeazzo had to fly to France to escape from the tyrant's snares. A confederate in their plot, Francesco della Pusterla, head of one of the great Milanese Houses, whose wealth and influence were necessarily a menace to the power of the Visconti, was betrayed into Luchino's hands and beheaded, with his sons and his beautiful wife Margherita, who, according to the chroniclers, had rejected the unlawful love of the tyrant.

Luchino is said to have come himself to an unnatural death in his old age, through poison administered to him by his third wife, the young and lively Elisabetta della Fiesca, in whose hearing the suspicious husband, enraged by a report of light conduct on her part, had declared that he would light a fine fire and do the greatest act of justice which he had ever done in Milan. The accusations against this lady may, however, have been trumped up to justify the persecution which she and her son, Luchino Novello, and all the dead tyrant's children, who had grown too arrogant for the peace of the State, had to suffer from the Archbishop after their father's death. Giovanni imprisoned or banished them all. Towards his other nephews, the banished sons of Stefano, whom misfortune had chastened, Giovanni used a different policy. He won their loyalty and obedience by recalling them from exile, granting them lands and honours and making them his heirs, and about this time he obtained a solemn act from the General Council of the people, still nominally the ultimate authority in the community, recognising him and his nephews after him as the true, legitimate and natural Lords of the city, district, diocese and jurisdiction of Milan. Thus was the hereditary dominion of the Visconti--already an established fact--formally legalised by the will of the Commune.

Giovanni's method was to inflame by unseen agencies the party spirit in the cities which he coveted, and when both factions were exhausted, to step in with his money-bags and quietly establish his own dominion. Thus by a skilful manipulation of the vast wealth with which Milan supplied him he succeeded with little expenditure of blood in embracing more and more territory within his coil. In 1353 Genoa was yielded to him, and Milan for a short time became a naval power, defying the fleets of Venice. The importance of securing maritime outlets for a commercial community turned the Archbishop's attention on the seaport of Pisa also. But here Florence interposed a barrier against both fraud and force, and though he plagued the Tuscan Republic grievously by invading her territories, raising the Barons of the Apennines against her and intriguing with her foes in Pisa and Lucca, she successfully prevented him from gaining a footing in Tuscany.

While the Visconti were thus extending their dominion far and wide and creating a sovereignty more powerful than any in Italy, the capital itself was making corresponding strides in wealth and civilisation. The strong and single government, though involving so much cruel sacrifice of rival interests and pride, and carried on by crafty and often iniquitous means, was for the general advantage of the people. The citizens lacked only freedom, and this very lack saved them from the awful faction struggles which hindered the progress of the neighbouring Communes. Under Azzo, Luchino and Giovanni Visconte, the city enjoyed an unexampled length of peace. No hostile banner was seen from the walls, no blood was spilt in fratricidal strife within. The Visconti employed foreign and professional troops in their wars, thus weaning their subjects from the habit of arms, dangerous to a tyrannic supremacy, and sparing them for more profitable work. All classes, noble and plebeian, engaged in commerce and industrial arts, and produced an ever increasing flow of wealth, wherewith these princes were able to pay handsomely for the hired support of their tyranny. Finding no opportunities of sedition or turbulence, the more restless spirits abandoned the city, and, joining the bands of military adventurers which roamed the country, they fought for any prince or community that chose to hire them. The general security of life and property in the Milanese State was assured by the severe and, on the whole, impartial justice of Luchino and his brother, and the wise statutes which they formed aided the development of trade and industry. Safe from depredating troops and robber bands, the fertile territory was brought to high cultivation, and wildernesses, untilled before, now submitted to the husbandman. The engineering art was actively practised in draining and irrigating the country and connecting the city by canals with the great river waterways.

One of the chief sources of Milanese wealth was the breeding of war-horses in the rich and well-watered pastures round the city. At the same time the Milanese merchants were travelling all over England, France and Flanders, buying fine wool, 'with which in this city,' says the fourteenth century chronicler Fiamma, 'very fine and beautiful clothes are woven in great quantities and dyed with every different colour and sent to all parts of Italy.' Silk was also manufactured here after 1314, when the silk-weavers of Lucca, disturbed by the invasions of Uguccione da Faggiuola and of Castruccio, abandoned their city for Milan. The constant wars abroad encouraged the armourer's craft, of which Milan became one of the greatest centres in Europe. With wealth, a love of luxury and the soft pleasures of life grew in the people. Fiamma notes with disapproval the changes in the antique costume, the superfluous embroideries, the gold and silver and pearls, and the broad fringes used in dress, the richness of the meats, and the esteem in which masters of the culinary art were held, things conducive, according to him, of the soul's damnation.

The eldest brother, Matteo, had died in 1355. Weak, injudicious and a glutton, he was only a hindrance to the progress of his House. General report laid his death to his brothers' charge. Bernab? and Galeazzo made a fresh division of the State, and Milan itself was split up between them. They worked together, however, with a single aim, in spite of mutual hatred and jealousy, to repair the losses of their State. Pavia had set up a free government, headed by the friar, Giacomo de' Bussolari, who, an earlier Savonarola, sought to purge his city from tyranny and sin at once. Steadfastly beset by Galeazzo's army, it had to yield at last to famine and sickness. Further afield Bernab? spent years in a desperate struggle to recover Bologna, under a tempest of papal anathemas, and though baffled himself, he prepared the way for his successor. He was constantly in fierce conflict with the Marquises of Este, whose rebel kinsmen he sheltered while they employed Luchino's disinherited sons against him. Galeazzo on his side had to sustain the assaults of Savoy and Montferrat, which came near to ruining him.

This last marriage was celebrated in 1368, with unexampled magnificence. The bridegroom arrived in Milan accompanied by the Sire le Despencer and a train of two thousand Englishmen. A splendid cavalcade went forth to meet him. First came Galeazzo himself, who was said to be more beautiful in person than any other man in Italy, wearing, as his custom was, a wreath of roses on his flowing golden hair, and attended by his greatest vassals. With him was his wife, Bianca of Savoy, and his daughter-in-law, the young French Isabella, and other noble ladies, followed by eighty damsels apparelled in scarlet, with sleeves of white cloth embroidered with trefoils, and girdles so richly worked that their worth was eighty florins each. Gian Galeazzo, a boy of fifteen, came next, leading a company of knights on steeds caparisoned as if for a joust, and after these followed the officers of State and of the household with their pages, all gorgeously arrayed. At the marriage feast the very meats were gilded, and with each of the sixteen courses splendid gifts were offered to the guests--highly-bred hounds with velvet and silken collars and leashes of silk; falcons with chains of gold and hoods of velvet, and silver buttons enamelled with the Snake; richly ornamented saddles and other horse furniture; suits of armour fashioned by the famous Milanese smiths; brocades of gold and richest silk, silver flagons worked with enamel, silver-gilt basins, mantles and doublets thickly sewn with pearls for the prince, and seventy-six splendid coursers and war-horses, each more generous, beautiful, and gorgeously caparisoned than the one before; and last of all twelve fat oxen. Galeazzo and the bridegroom sat at one table with the noblest of the guests, among whom was Messer Francesco Petrarca the poet, in the most honourable place. At another were placed Regina della Scala and a number of ladies. Such scenes as these are dimly pictured for us in primitive frescoes here and there, in which we see assemblages of ladies in jewelled robes and lofty peaked head-dresses, and gentlemen correspondingly fine stiffly seated at narrow boards, or pacing with slow and stately step through the dance within some spacious pillared hall.

Though extravagantly lavish for State purposes, the Visconti did not keep open Court like their predecessors. No tables were set out in the streets for the common people on holidays, no oxen roasted whole or wine-vats broached for all who liked to drink. The chroniclers complain of the avarice of their Lords. The taxes were continually increased. Pressed by the huge cost of their wars and their alliances, the Visconti were in fact always in need of money, and so assured was their supremacy in Milan, that they no longer feared the discontent of the citizens. With the development of their despotism the social gulf between the Visconti and the rest of the community had grown wide. Both brothers were proud, suspicious and cruel. But the severity of the silent Bernab?, and his terrible fits of rage and strange capricious temper, made him the most feared. He was laudably resolved to maintain justice and order, so that a man might go unarmed through any part of his dominions, and to suppress the old faction hatreds, but his methods were intolerably harsh. No one was allowed to call himself Guelf or Ghibelline on pain of having his tongue cut out. To be found abroad in the city at night, for any reason whatever, was to lose a foot, and so forth. Moreover, on mere suspicion people were put to cruel death or torment. This arbitrary severity was, however, of little avail, and crime was far more rife in the city than before Bernab?'s time. The tyrant's passion for dogs was as extravagant as his disregard for human suffering. He had five thousand hounds, which his subjects were compelled to keep and tend for him, and if one were found to be either too fat or too lean for the chase, or to have come to any harm, woe to its guardian. Every sort of game was sacred to the prince's sport, and the peasants who slew wild boars or other forest creatures for food during a severe famine, were hanged or blinded. Two Franciscan brothers, who dared to expostulate with the prince for his harshness, were burnt as heretics, an act something ironical on the part of one who himself spent nearly all his life under the ban of the Church. There was a certain grim humour in some of Bernab?'s fierce deeds, as in his treatment of two dignified Benedictine abbots, who were sent to treat with him by the Pope. The prince met them on a bridge over the Lambro, where, with due reverence, they presented to him the pontifical Bulls. Bernab? read them, and looking up, eyed the legates grimly, and asked them whether they would prefer food or drink. Perceiving a sinister meaning in the question, the trembling clerics glanced at the deep river flowing beneath, and said that they would rather eat. Whereupon the papal missives, parchment, seals, silk cord and all, were crammed down their throats.

Galeazzo was not so capriciously cruel as his brother, but his rule was equally oppressive. To add to the afflictions of the people, the country was devastated by the foreign Companies, who robbed friends and foes alike; and years of famine and pestilence came, which their Lords took no more thoughtful measure to relieve than hanging some of the chief ministers. To both brothers clings the horrible reproach of a decree, condemning prisoners of State to the so-called Quaresima, a series of tortures lasting forty days. Yet Galeazzo was conspicuous for domestic virtues, and both princes were very devout, and founded many churches and convents, and gave largely in alms. One has to remember in judging these sovereigns that the Florentine chroniclers, who have always held the ear of the world, hated them as the enemies of their city. They depict them as barbarous and ignorant tyrants, sunk in gross vice. Yet Petrarca, the recognised sovereign of thought and letters in fourteenth century Italy, spent several years at Milan, in the service first of Archbishop Giovanni, and afterwards of Galeazzo, and speaks of the city and its Lords with great affection and respect. The high honour which the Visconti paid to the poet shows their regard for the things of the spirit. Their capture of Petrarca was felt to be as great a triumph as the conquest of a province. Boccaccio and other Tuscan writers inveigh fiercely against their countryman for his adherence to the Visconti, pretending that he who loved freedom had been deluded by the vulgar worship of riches and luxury, and had become a slave. But Petrarca, whose close acquaintance could judge better of his hosts, probably appreciated the large and far-reaching political ideas which were the heritage of the Visconti, and perhaps saw in Milan a hope for Italy, outside the conception of the Florentines, the possibility of a larger freedom in national union, which should restore the successors of the Romans to their lost glory.

The Visconti, moreover, took great pains to advance learning and culture in their dominions. They founded the University of Pavia, the once celebrated school of jurisprudence there having long decayed, and richly endowed its chairs, and it was Galeazzo who started the famous library at Pavia, to which all students were allowed access. Bernab? was something of a scholar himself, and had studied the Decretals in his youth; but the anxiety of constant wars and the cares of State hindered him from doing all that he would willingly have done for the intellectual welfare of the capital.

The bitter jealousy which prevailed between the two brothers divided them much in later years, though it could not disunite them in the face of their foes, and Galeazzo had left Milan and removed his Court to Pavia, though still keeping his share of the government of the capital. He died in 1378. His son, Gian Galeazzo, was delicate of constitution, of retiring habits, and much given to study. The gentleness with which he began to rule, remitting taxes and seeking to propitiate his subjects, excited the scorn of the grim Bernab?, who readily accepted the proposal of the young widower--Isabella de Valois having died--for the hand of his daughter Caterina, thinking thus to get an extra hold upon him. Little did the veteran prince suspect that this mild recluse, who was hardly ever seen out of his palace at Pavia, was the very quintessence of that subtlety, tenacity and ambition which had made the House of the Visconti the most dreaded in Italy. Gian Galeazzo's genius for statecraft had been carefully trained by his father. While Bernab? regarded him as of little account, he was strengthening his position both at home and abroad by quiet diplomacy, and evolving mighty schemes in his mind, while he patiently waited the ripe moment for their accomplishment.

There is nothing more dramatic in all the sensational story of mediaeval Italy than Gian Galeazzo Visconte's sudden spring to power. Seven years had passed since his father's death, and Bernab?'s tyranny had grown ever more oppressive, in sharp contrast to his fellow-ruler's. One day in 1385 Gian Galeazzo set forth from Pavia for Milan, escorted by four hundred men-at-arms, having announced his intention of visiting a holy shrine near Varese and his desire of embracing his honoured uncle on his way. He had arranged not to enter the capital, but to skirt the walls till he reached the castle beside Porta Giovia, recently built by his father. Laughing at the young man's caution and his pusillanimity in bringing so large an escort, the elder Visconte sent two of his sons on ahead, and swinging himself into the saddle, galloped off, with two or three servants only, to meet his nephew. The two Sovereigns had but exchanged greetings when, Gian Galeazzo signed to the captain of his escort, Jacopo dal Verme, who laid his hand upon Bernab?'s shoulder, and in a moment the tyrant found himself a prisoner. With his sons he was hurried into the Castle of Porta Giovia. Gian Galeazzo entered the city and was received with immense joy. Not vainly had he counted upon the terror and hatred which his uncle had excited. The people, rushing to the houses of the fallen tyrant and his sons, sacked them from end to end, fired and tore them down, and razed them to the ground. In a General Council of the citizens the sole and absolute dominion of Milan was unanimously conferred upon Gian Galeazzo and upon his male heirs.

Bernab? was removed soon after to the Castle of Trezzo, and died seven months later, of poison, it was said. His sons, except the two captured, had fled in all directions, and were doing their utmost to raise help against the usurper. But so perfectly had Gian Galeazzo conceived and accomplished his great stroke, and with the exercise of such consummate diplomacy and such victorious arms did he secure himself afterwards, that not one of Bernab?'s children, in spite of their princely alliances, were able, with all their constant efforts, to overthrow him or recover any part of their heritage.

In these favourable conditions Milan flourished exceedingly, and could contribute without overwhelming distress her share of the duke's annual revenue of twelve hundred thousand florins, and of the extra levies for special purposes, amounting sometimes to eight hundred thousand florins in one year--sums far exceeding those commanded by any other Italian prince.

Gian Galeazzo's rule, though sometimes oppressive, was not carried on by the harsh methods of his predecessors. Violence and wanton cruelty were probably repugnant to his sensitive physical temperament and despicable to his unimpassioned mind. He was never bloody, except for a purpose, as in the awful sack of Verona after her revolt and recapture in 1390. But for a refined and ingenious cruelty which exercised itself in long worming plots ending far off in some unexpected catastrophe, Gian Galeazzo seems to have had an artistic predilection. It was he, men said, who by Iago-like suggestions drove Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua to slay his wife Agnese, one of Bernab? Visconte's daughters, in a frenzy of jealousy, that he himself might be first and loudest afterwards in proclaiming the innocence of the lady and exciting general execration of the murderer. The beheading of young Obizzo d'Este at Ferrara has been also attributed to evil suspicions which the Milanese prince instilled into the Marquis Alberto for political ends. The Visconte's influence is plainer still in the hideous treachery and ingratitude of Jacopo d'Appiano, who, with a kiss of peace, slew his protector and friend, the noble Pietro Gambacorti, and made himself Lord of Pisa for Gian Galeazzo's benefit, as very shortly appeared.

The Duke's piety was as marked as his less estimable characteristics. He did not doubt his own righteousness or hesitate to invoke the aid of Heaven for all his enterprises. He was assiduous in his devotion to the Saints and observance of the Church's rites and ceremonies. The Cathedral of Milan, the vast Certosa of Pavia, and many other great buildings, were planned and founded by this prince. These works were not done solely for a spiritual reward, but also to proclaim his own glory to the world and to encourage art and industry. All Gian Galeazzo's greatness of spirit showed in his buildings. His engineering schemes were as mighty and daring in conception as undaunted and patient in accomplishment. To subdue Padua and Mantua he undertook the gigantic task of diverting the Brenta and Mincio. But here he measured himself too audaciously against natural forces. One night the Mincio, 'in piena,' hurled its waters at the huge dam and swept away the work which had cost untold labour and gold.

With all his occupations of war and statesmanship, Gian Galeazzo found time to continue his father's patronage of Letters. He had as a youth studied deeply himself in the University of Pavia. An early fresco at Pavia, now long lost, represented him as a child standing in a crowd of nobles and distinguished men in his father's palace, and in answer to the question, who was the greatest man present, pointing to the poet Petrarca. This allegory recorded the honour which he paid all his life to intellect and learning. He called the greatest scholars to the Chairs of the University, including Emanuel Chrysoloras, who thus brought to Milan the newly reviving knowledge of Greek. He made these men his councillors and familiar associates. They read poetry to him and discussed the new discoveries of antiquity, so that his castle has been called a temple of wisdom. Architecture, sculpture, painting were equally fostered by him. There was no sort of human activity which he did not seek to stimulate for the advantage and glory of his State.

Though its operations meant destruction to lesser powers, Gian Galeazzo's brain was essentially kingly and creative. This was the moment in Italy of the formation of great States. The old faction struggles of the era of freedom had come to an end with the establishment of tyrannies, and of these the lesser were now being swallowed up by the greater. In this process Milan under the Visconti was the leader. Its natural outcome seemed to be the foundation of a great settled kingdom in the peninsula, like France and England in the North. The patriotic spirits of the time dreamed of such a kingdom as the redemption of Italy from her woes of constant dissension and warfare. The idea took practical shape in the mind of the great Matteo's descendant and heir, in whom character and circumstance united to carry the large political thought and ambition of the Visconti nearest to its supreme fulfilment. And it was to Gian Galeazzo that the dreamers looked for the realisation of their desire, as perhaps Petrarca had looked to the earlier generation. Fazio degli Uberti, the fourteenth century Florentine poet and exile, who lived long at the Viscontean Court, in one of his canzoni makes Rome cry--

'O figliuol mio, da quanta crudel guerra Tutti insieme verremo a dolcie pace Se Italia soggiace A un solo re....'

Footnote 2:

'Oh my son, from what cruel warfare Should we come all together to sweet peace Could Italy be subject To one sole king....'

To such a single crown Gian Galeazzo undoubtedly aspired. And though he was defeated in the end, it was by no mortal means. All the efforts of the hostile league of Florence, Venice, the Pope, and the lesser Italian Princes, could not hinder his advance. His dominions at the beginning of the fifteenth century embraced nearly the whole of Lombardy and the Romagna. The Umbrian cities Perugia and Assisi were his. Lucca, Pisa and Siena obeyed him. The tide of his success crept on. He foresaw and discomfited every move of his opponents. In 1401 Bologna, long an obstacle in his path, was surrendered to him by the Bentivogli. His bravest and most obstinate foe, Florence, lay virtually at his mercy. On every side of her he was supreme. Cut off from all help she waited his deadly attack. The moment of his triumph was at hand.

In July 1402 the Duke instructed his armies to close round the city of the Arno. Retiring from Milan, where the plague had appeared, to his villa at Melegnano, he had the mantle, sceptre and diadem prepared for his coronation as King of Italy. He had nothing to fear now from mortal enemies. There was one power only which his arms and calculations could not defy. On the 10th of August he was seized with the deadly contagion, and a few days later he died, at the age of 49.

'questo emisfero de quel che col pensiero Sanar volia l'italico payese.'

Their lament was justified. The direct result of the tyrant's death was the release of all the elements of disorder and reaction in Italy, the revival of angry faction, the break-up of a great organised State among a host of greedy and warring pretenders, and the terrorism of military adventurers over the whole country, ending in the establishment of a dynasty in Milan destined to sell Italy to her final shame and ruin. What if Gian Galeazzo had lived a few years longer? Florence would probably have fallen before him, Florence whose incurable spirit of individualism had been the one barrier between him and his ambition. But was that single little torch of liberty, which itself was soon to waver and be spent, worth the sacrifice of a united and peaceful Italy, strong enough to resist all outside foes, forward enough to lead all Europe in the path of progress?

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