and Sforza was first brought to the test, with results more interesting in a military than an historical view. It is not to be supposed that services performed by so youthful a soldier could much influence the campaign, but they appear to have been approved by his commander.
Guidantonio Manfredi, generally known by the contemptuous abbreviation of Guidaccio, had been brought up at the court of Urbino, during his father's temporary banishment from his hereditary fief of Faenza, and had married a daughter of Count Guidantonio di Montefeltro. In the division of parties which we have just explained, both these feudatories adhered to the Milanese, but as their neighbour, the Lord of Rimini, was at first a partisan of the league, and as Bologna had but recently thrown off the papal authority, Filippo Maria considered it advisable to strengthen his forces in Romagna. Federigo was accordingly ordered to join his brother-in-law Guidaccio, and acquitted himself creditably in various skirmishes with the Tuscan troops, under Gianpaolo Orsini. The only personal incident preserved of this petty war is one to which he was in the habit of alluding, with something of the superstitious dread that pervades the good Sanzi's account of it, although its character was rather grotesque than horrible. Having marched from Faenza in bright moonlight, with a party of 400 horse on a foraging expedition, a noise like the clashing of arms was suddenly heard at a distance, which immediately being repeated close at hand, the troops, with fierce and terrified aspect, rushed on each other, and for about ten minutes fought and struggled pell-mell, while their frightened horses, partaking in the panic, neighed and bolted in all directions. Dawn discovered a scene of strange confusion; the infantry mounted, the cavalry on foot, many lying wounded on the ground, not a few horses killed, others with broken or disordered harness. This senseless alarm was never accounted for, and was consequently ascribed to diabolical influence.
But he was soon recalled by home interests from under the command of Guidaccio. The Malatesta, whose descent will be found in the annexed table, had for some generations held several fiefs in Romagna and the March of Ancona, and although a bold and warlike race, the usage in their family of separating its seigneuries among various sons, legitimate or natural, prevented any of them from acquiring more than a provincial reputation or influence, until Sigismondo Pandolfo made himself famous by his struggle with Count Federigo, and by the memorials of art which embalm his otherwise detested name. The youngest of three bastard brothers,*66 he survived to unite their territories with his own, and although connected with the Montefeltrian princes by the marriages of his aunt and brother, he became a bitter enemy to the Count of Urbino. Indeed the latter of these alliances, which we have noticed at page 48, served to foster the family feud. Violante di Montefeltro had from Eugene IV. in 1431, when a mere infant, some form of grant of her native mountain-land in vicariate, in virtue whereof, and of her assumed rights as heiress of her nephew Duke Oddantonio, in default of his male issue, a pretended title was eventually trumped up, in competition with Federigo's succession,67 at all events as regarded Montefeltro, some townships of which had already passed in various ways to the Malatesta, with whom she intermarried. An incursion upon the territory of Guidantonio, in the autumn of 1439, accordingly commenced a strife which, with occasional brief interludes, endured above twenty years, and which Sanzi thus deplores:—
"For e'en when fortune crowns the first essays
Of reckless hardihood, a reckoning hour
Of rapine, grief, and misery impend.
Such the destruction which these rival powers
Reaped from protracted broils and savage war,
While neighbouring cities, castles, towns, were sacked,
And high-born chiefs the double risk incurred
Of death or exile. There, for twice twelve years,
Italia's flower and might contended, till, in fine,
To right, by prudence, constancy, and force upheld,
Heaven gave success; the Eagle gnawed the heart
Of the great Elephant."68
Had Sigismondo Pandolfo possessed temper and judgment equal to his courage and ambition, he might have obtained and consolidated a powerful sovereignty, which his liberal and cultivated tastes would have rendered glorious in arts as well as arms. But deeply tainted with—
"That poison foule of bubbling pride,"
his lofty daring was sustained by no continuous impulse, his impetuous efforts were crowned by no success; the selfishness of his political aims was equalled by the vainglorious direction he gave to art; his energies were wasted in contests with Federigo, a rival against whom he had neither any just quarrel, nor any chance of success; his patronage was monopolised by poets who flattered, and medalists who portrayed himself and his favourite mistress Isotta.
The first foray of Sigismondo into the wild valleys of Montefeltro was repaid by Federigo, in a successful descent upon the richer possessions of the Malatesta; but he was checked by a serious wound, before the petty fortress of Campi, and on his recovery rejoined Guidaccio. Piccinino, having again changed the seat of war from Lombardy to Romagna, crossed into Tuscany, and during the summer of 1440, carried on an active but unsuccessful campaign in the upper valley of the Tiber, till it was closed by his complete defeat at Anghiari, leaving his baggage and half his army in the hands of the Florentines. This battle has obtained a singular notoriety, and affords a valuable test of condottiere tactics, where combats were interested calculations, not internecine onsets. Machiavelli, the opponent of that system, asserts that only one man lost his life, out of some thirty or forty thousand combatants, and he by a fall from his horse; whilst the largest calculation of slaughter on both sides gives but seventy killed and six hundred wounded. Federigo was little interested in that campaign, but ere long found occupation in the defence of his wife's rights, disputed by Alberigo di Brancaleone. This pretender had seized on Santa Croce and Montelocco, both of which the Count recovered in the autumn of 1442, after a severe action, which first tested his military skill. Sigismondo Pandolfo, having secretly abetted this onset, was punished by an attack upon S. Leo.
That small city was the capital of Montefeltro, although this honour has been claimed for Penna di Billi. Its situation is perhaps the most singular in Europe. In a country whose rugged mountains and precipitous ravines seem monuments of some tremendous primeval convulsion, there stand uptossed two isolated pinnacles, the very obelisks of nature, rising on three sides sheer from the valley. On the remaining side of each, a narrow and rapidly descending ridge connects the summit with the surrounding level, affording toilsome and precarious footing to mules and mountaineers. On either peak, a fortress commands a cluster of dwellings, nestled wherever the rocky crest afforded footing, and inhabited by men of iron hearts and stout sinews. The larger of these is S. Leo, the smaller Maiuolo, and we shall often have occasion to mention them as the chief strongholds of Montefeltro, to which they both originally belonged,*69 though S. Leo had for some time been possessed by the Malatesta. Its loftiest pinnacle was crowned, in classic times, by a temple dedicated to Jupiter Feretrius, affording an easy etymology for Montefeltro: a later era found it sheltering a Christian hermit, whose ascetic virtues obtained canonisation, and who left his name to the township which rose around his cell. During the competition for her crown which ravaged Italy in the tenth century, and rendered that the most dismal as well as confused period of her dark ages, S. Leo became the refuge of King Berengarius, from whence he long defied the arms of his eventually successful rival Otho the Great: of its protracted siege, however, in 962–3, no incidents worthy of credit have come down to us. Its circuit is estimated at two miles, and not the least peculiar of its phenomena is a spring of excellent water near the summit, sufficient perennially to supply the mills. The accompanying engraving, from a sketch taken on the spot, will best convey an idea of this remarkable site, but we may quote Sanzi's description of it, and of its surprise by Federigo.70
"A city yonder stands, San Leo hight,
Whose crest the sky menaces; 'gainst its strength
No force has e'er prevailed, with scathed cliffs
And rocks environed, heavenward uprearing
Its summit, by a single path approached,
Trod singly by the citizens. Earth holds
None other