It reached Sixtus on the 12th of August, 1484, and brought on a sudden attack of his constitutional malady, gout, which struck him speechless. In a few hours he expired of vexation, at finding himself outmanœuvred in his favourite game of intrigue, and at seeing those broils which he had done so much to foment, thus brought to an unexpected close. The Venetians, on learning that their rancorous foe had ceased to live, redoubled the joy with which they heard of the general pacification; and the satirical wits of the day commemorated his death in this biting epigram:—
"No truce could Sixtus bind, though ratified:
A peace at length proclaimed—he heard and died."222
The successor of Sixtus was Cardinal Cibò, who took the title of Innocent VIII. Between him and Duke Federigo had existed an old friendship, which was cordially extended to Guidobaldo, and also to Ottaviano Ubaldini: to these, therefore, it was a pleasure as well as a duty to lay their congratulations at his feet, in return for which a new investiture, already prepared by order of the late Pontiff, was promptly forwarded to the young Duke. The aggressions of the Turk, that standing grievance of Christian Europe, had of late menaced Italy itself, and each pope, on ascending the chair of St. Peter, sought to signalise his zeal by uniting the Peninsular powers against the common foe. Yet, like his predecessors, Innocent was quickly diverted from a project vast, glorious, and attractive, but impracticable, to meaner objects; from the cause of Christianity to ebullitions of personal pique. The rigour with which he exacted from the King of Naples some arrears of cense, or ecclesiastical tribute, due to the Camera under old investitures, but which had been modified by Sixtus IV., occasioned an exchange of harsh words. There occurred at Aquila, about the same time, a most serious insurrection, headed by some Neapolitan nobles belonging to the Angevine party, who, exasperated by a long course of oppressive and injudicious government, appealed to Innocent for assistance. The occasion seemed tempting for gratifying his indignation against Ferdinand I., and for adding to the papal states that important fief. The grand crusade against the Crescent was once more forgotten, and the Pope, entering upon the career of Sixtus, became the perturbator in place of the pacificator of unhappy Italy. Among other small princes whom he retained for this struggle was Guidobaldo, nor did he omit to secure the Venetians. Ferdinand was not idle on his side, having made an alliance with the Florentines. Whilst the ecclesiastical troops, under Roberto da Sanseverino and the Prefect della Rovere, seconding the rebellious barons of Naples, carried an aggressive war into the Abruzzi, the King made a diversion in La Marca, by means of some military adventurers, who, at his instigation, stirred up the people of Città di Castello, Fano, and Osimo, to throw off the papal sway. To quell these movements, the troops of Urbino, led by commanders sent by Innocent, and still more the influence of the Duke, proved highly instrumental. The war, begun without just cause, and leading to no important result, ended, as usual, in a league which left the parties much as before. It included the Pope, the King, Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, and the Venetian Republic, and was hailed with a joy that seemed wilfully oblivious of the hollowness of former pacifications. It was concluded on the 11th of August, 1485, and, unlike these, it secured the quiet of Italy during the remainder of that pontificate.
The first actual service which it was the lot of Guidobaldo to witness was in a cause at once vile and unimportant; but it placed him under a rising soldier, who became one of the most distinguished commanders of the age. Among the adventurers to whom we just now referred as troubling the Marca, was Boccolino Guzzoni or Uguccione, who, having made himself master of Osimo, continued to hold out with obstinacy, embittered by a furious temper, and by the impolitic severity which Innocent had manifested towards him. To reduce this firebrand, Gian Jacopi di Trivulzio was sent from Milan in May, 1487;*223 and, although the mediation of Lorenzo de' Medici saved Uguccione from impending destruction, an incident which made him acquainted with so remarkable a general must be considered important to the youthful Duke, who had only completed his fifteenth year. His advance towards manhood was marked by communications from the Court of Rome being henceforward addressed to himself, instead of to Ottaviano; but he dutifully continued to avail himself of his guardian's counsels in all matters of moment.
Alinari
CATERINA SFORZA
After the picture by Marco Palmezzani in the Pinacoteca of Forlì
We have seen the peculiar circumstances in which, with the aid of Duke Federigo, the sovereignty of Count Girolamo Riario and his wife Caterina Sforza was established in Imola and Forlì.224 They had reigned there during eight years, cited by their flatterers as models of paternal government; abused by those whom they had disappointed and especially by the Florentine writers, as monsters of tyranny. Truth may probably lie between. Girolamo has been accused of no flagrant crime, except a participation in the Pazzi conspiracy, which was instigated by his uncle Sixtus IV., while Caterina is favourably distinguished even above those brilliant spirits who abounded among the contemporary princesses of Italy. The Count is alleged to have, by an overbearing manner, offended several of his courtiers, but particularly Francesco Deddi de' Orsi. Another account accuses Lorenzo de' Medici of intriguing to avenge the old injury which he justly attributed to Riario, a charge which his eulogists have indignantly repelled, and which, resting on no proof, is certainly inconsistent with a character so noble. Francesco, at the head of a band of conspirators, broke in upon Count Girolamo, and murdered him in his palace at Forlì. They then threw his body into the piazza, and the populace, ever ready for change, rose simultaneously, some crying "Liberty," others "Church," and finished their work by plundering his residence.*225 Meanwhile the leaders of the insurrection possessed themselves of the Countess, her mother, sister, and six children; and finding that Giacomo Fea, captain of the citadel, held it against them, they dragged her to the walls, and insisted upon her summoning him to surrender. Upon his refusing, they acceded to a proposal that she should be admitted, in order to induce him to yield. Once within the castle, Caterina thanked its defender, and stimulated the garrison to fresh resistance, directing that all the artillery should be brought to bear upon the town, ready to bombard it should the rebels attempt to execute their cowardly threat of offering violence to her children.226
This bold bearing saved the cause of the young Riarii, without really endangering their persons. Giovanni Bentivoglio, Lord of Bologna, a faithful adherent of the Sforza, on the first news of this insurrection, put himself at the head of a thousand horse and eight hundred foot, and arrived in hot haste at the gates of Forlì. The conspirators, divided in their counsels, and distracted by the decisive course which the Countess had adopted, fled from the town without waiting to resist, and thus the revolution was at an end. Within two short weeks Caterina had been a happy wife, a bereaved widow, an outraged prisoner, a triumphant sovereign. She remembered her sorrows signally to avenge them; she threw aside her weeds to assume a robe of triumph; and issuing from the castle, proclaimed her son Ottaviano, Count of Forlì.
But a deep stain attaches to the punishment which she must have sanctioned, if she did not direct it, and which was inflicted upon Count Orsi, father of the assassin, with an accumulation of horrors rarely exampled among even savage tribes. The old man, then in his eighty-sixth year, after being exposed on the great square to insults of the soldiery in presence of the whole populace, was bound to a board, and drawn twice round the piazza, his snow-white head projecting, and broken against the sharp stones; his quivering limbs were then hacked in pieces by armed ruffians, whose atrocious barbarities, as described by an eye-witness, are too revolting for detail. All this the sufferer endured with a heroism and resignation which produced on the spectators the usual effect of such brutal perversion of justice, and converted their abhorrence of the crime into sympathy with the criminal.
The murder of Count Girolamo took place on the 14th of April, 1488, and the news of it excited great consternation at the court of Urbino, which had always maintained a friendly footing with that of Riario, he being cousin to the Prefect of Sinigaglia, husband of Guidobaldo's sister. In the excited state of public feeling, men's minds caught greedily at any trivial circumstance on which to found a surmise as to the authors of the outrage, seeking for remote influences to account for what seems to have been merely an outbreak of private passion. The cries of "Church," which had mingled in the shouts of the excited populace, were interpreted as an indication