The Sorrow of Milan
“Il povero Milano cridava, pensando di poter cridare, ma fu
una mala cosa per Milano.”—Burigozzo.

At Novara, Milan lost her independence for ever. The restoration of the Sforza, witnessed twice over in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, was a mere puppet-show, barely concealing the hand of greater Powers behind. The Gascon archers, who from the Castello walls amused themselves by shooting to fragments the great clay model of ‘the Horse,’ had ruined as effectively the fair social fabric, as unique, as fragile, and as incomplete, which Leonardo’s work symbolised in the person of its founder, Francesco Sforza.

With the captivity of Lodovico began in fact that long foreign subjugation of Milan which was to endure into modern times. Her vicissitudes during the short period that still comes within the scope of our medi?val story are too sad to linger over. Reoccupied by the French after Novara, the city was mulcted in an enormous sum as the penalty of rebellion, and instead of the comparatively mild régime under a native governor, first instituted by Louis, she had to suffer the iron rule of a foreign viceroy, whose aim was to stamp out every spark of free and patriotic aspiration in the people.

But for several years Milan enjoyed at least outward peace, under the triumphant Lilies, governed in succession by the Cardinal de Rohan, the Sieur du Benin, and 190Charles d’Amboise, Sieur de Chaumont, the last of whom ruled from 1505 to his death in 1511. In 1509 domination of the French was shaken by a sudden reversal of policy on the part of Pope Julius, who, having used their aid to humble Venice, suddenly made friends with that Republic, and loudly roared to all Europe his intention of driving the French out of Italy. The immediate result for Milan was a great inroad of Swiss allies of the Pope, under that terrible peasant priest, the Cardinal de Sion, and the devastation of the fair Lombard provinces. The French, whose forces were weakened by dispersion in various directions and could ill resist this furious onslaught, endeavoured to dismay their adversary by raising a so-called General Council for the reform of the Church, in the shape of a few partisan cardinals, who sat solemnly in the Duomo at Milan and pronounced futile sentences of excommunication and deposition against the bellicose Pontiff.

But Julius, strong in alliance with the Emperor and the King of Spain, laughed at the feeble thunders of his rebellious sons. The French found better aid in the military genius of Gaston de Foix, the King’s nephew, who succeeded Chaumont as Governor of Milan and commander of the army in 1511. With a stern and silent rapidity which amazed all Italy, the young general of twenty-two swept through Lombardy, retaking lost cities, relieving those beleaguered, and carrying his arms against the Papalists and Imperialists right up to Ravenna, where he routed them utterly in the famous battle of Easter Day, 1512. The victory, however, issued fatally for the winners. The hero of it was borne dead from the field in slow and mournful procession back to Milan, followed soon after by his paralysed army in retreat before the renewed hosts which the inactivity of the new French commander, Palissy, had allowed the dauntless Pope to collect. 191Pressed on all sides in the Duchy by the Swiss, Palissy was unable to maintain his position there either, and continuing their retreat the French passed away over the Alps, abandoning all their conquests in Lombardy, except the fortresses of Milan and Cremona.

And now once more a Sforza was proclaimed Lord of Milan, amid the thunderous rejoicings of the people. But the son of Lodovico and Beatrice, Massimiliano, whom the Pope and the Cardinal de Sion, for their own political purposes, lifted to the throne of his ancestors at this juncture, was nothing but the feeble tool of those two potentates, a helpless and rotten bark tossed amid the storms of those contentious times. For the little authority which he wielded, he was utterly unfit. Bred up in exile at the Emperor’s Court, he had no affection for his country, and regarded his new sovereignty merely as an opportunity for extravagant pleasure and dissipation. The maintenance of his luxurious Court, and of the huge army necessary to defend the State, demanded enormous sums, to raise which he recklessly alienated the ducal revenues, and continually imposed unexpected taxes on his subjects. To satisfy rapacious allies and favourites, he flung away his fiefs, seeming, as a chronicler says, to follow the proverb—The fewer possessions, the fewer cares. While the light-minded youth forgot all duties and cares of State, in feasting, jousting and the dance, the resentment of the people was rising against him, his ministers and captains were intriguing with his foes, and the roar of the great guns at intervals from the Castello might have reminded him that the key of Milan was still held by the enemy, and that Louis in France was quickly preparing an expedition to reconquer Lombardy.

The first attempt of the French in 1513, under Louis de la Tremouille and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, met, however, with an unexpected and signal defeat 192from the Swiss at Novara, which drove them back over the Alps. This was followed by the capitulation of the French garrison in the Castello of Milan, and Massimiliano seemed now firmly established in his seat. But Julius II. was dead, and the whole political scene had shifted once again. The Venetians were now ranged with France against the Papal League, and the accession of Francis I. to the French throne, early in 1515, raised up against the Sforza a young and enthusiastic foe, who was undaunted by the sad experiences of his two predecessors in their Italian ventures. The King hastened to raise an enormous army, with which he crossed the mountains in person, and, skilfully guided by Trivulzio, surprised and made captive Prospero Colonna, general of the ducal forces, who was awaiting him in a strong position. Advancing unopposed, almost up to Milan, Francis seemed about to complete a bloodless conquest, when a sudden rising of the Milanese themselves, and the arrival of a great force of Swiss to the aid of the Duke, checked his progress. And now at Marignano (Melegnano) outside Milan was fought that mighty battle (14th September 1515), not of men, but of giants—as the veteran Trivulzio affirmed—in which the fierce and stubborn Swiss and the gallant French contended all one evening and again the next day, till seven thousand of the mountaineers lay dead upon the field, and their brave comrades, utterly exhausted, were forced to give way and fly into Milan.

At news of the defeat Massimiliano retired into the Castello, abandoning the city to the enemy. Here he might have held out awhile, but his spirit was too small, and by the advice of Girolamo Morone, one of the most astute statesmen of that day, and the chief stay of this generation of the House of Sforza—who counted on the existence of a more promising younger brother, Francesco—the incompetent prince renounced 193his Duchy to the French King for a large pension. Retiring to France, this elder son of the Moro disappears ingloriously out of the story of Milan.

The Duchy remained for the next six years in French possession, and was ruled with comparative justice and beneficence by the Constable de Bourbon, till the just, generous, and propitiatory impulses of the new sovereign yielded to indifference and forgetfulness, and it was abandoned to the cruel and arbitrary government of the Sieur de Lautrec, brother of the King’s mistress, the Comtesse de Chateaubriant. His tyranny helped to provoke another revolution in 1521, when the young Emperor Charles V. united with Pope Leo X. in a new Holy League, and proclaiming his right to Milan as an imperial fief, sent an army to invade the Duchy. Lautrec, having executed some of the noblest citizens on suspicion of intriguing with the Imperialists, abandoned the city, leaving the Castello garrisoned, and took up his stand four miles from the city, at the Bicocca, where he suffered a tremendous defeat, which lost Milan again to France. This turn of the tide carried Francesco, Lodovico’s second son, to the ducal throne. The wild joy with which the oppressed and suffering Milanese greeted this new Sforza, in whose name they trusted with touching hopefulness for a return of the old glory of their city, was not wholly misplaced. Duke Francesco II. has left a memory of good repute. The misfortunes of his reign were not due to his faults or weaknesses, but to the political circumstances of the time, which deprived him of all real power, and made him a mere pawn in the great game played between Charles V. and Francis I. with Italy for stake. Milan was, in fact, dominated by the Spaniard, and the presence of a great army of these foreigners was a crushing burden upon prince and people. Though there to defend the city, they 194wrought little less destruction and cruelty than the French, when the latter returned as enemies in 1523, and advancing close to the capital, spread havoc and desolation all around. Though unable to take Milan, they established themselves in some of the neighbouring towns, and the approach of Francis himself with a large army in the following year (1524) drove the Duke into flight. The city, bereft of half its population and garrison by a terrible pestilence, was utterly unable to make any defence against the French monarch. Francis, having entered Milan in triumph, passed on to besiege Pavia, which kept him heroically at bay through many months.

Meanwhile the Emperor was rapidly gathering force for the relief of his vassal State. From Naples came Lanoy with the garrison of that province; from Germany the ferocious giant Fründsberg, leading twelve thousand lanzknechts; while mercenaries from every part swarmed to the camps of Charles’ other commanders, the Constable de Bourbon and the Marquis of Pescara. This horde of hungry and rapacious villains, whom the Emperor left to gather supplies and pay out of the unfortunate country which it passed through, swooped down upon the gallant army of the King, which, falsely secure in its vainglory and sense of personal valour, allowed itself to be entrapped in the Park of Pavia, and on 24th February 1525, that vast and exquisite pleasaunce, created for the summer dalliance and the gay winter sports of the Dukes of Milan, became an awful red-mown field of all the chivalry of France. Never, perhaps, was such an oblation of knightly grace and virtue poured out to Death as on that day. One after another the gentlemen of France fell around their King. The famous veterans of the Italian wars died together with the youngest scions of their Houses, new come to this fatal Italy. Among many Milanese nobles who 195also fought in the King’s ranks and fell was Galeazzo di San Severino, who, after mourning for his friend and lord, the Moro, through several years of exile, had taken service with the conqueror and risen to the position of Grand Ecuyer of France.

Madame, tout est perdu sauf l’honneur, wrote Francis to his mother. Among other things the Duchy of Milan, but just retaken, was lost again, and this time for ever. Monseigneur le Roy being a prisoner at Pizzighettone, his army destroyed and the survivors of his gentlemen confined in different fortresses, Duke Francesco returned again under the imperial protection to his capital. But though he was beloved by his people, his restoration meant a renewal of the intolerable Spanish tyranny, and fresh exactions for the benefit of the Emperor’s treasury, worse than any the city had ever suffered before. The Duke himself groaned under a slavery for which the empty title and insignia of sovereignty little compensated him.

And now at the very height of Charles’ success, there seemed to come a hope of freedom for his oppressed vassal. Italy and the whole European world had been startled by the overwhelming victory of Pavia, and began to fear the further advance of a conqueror whose triumph was a menace to all. Pope Clement VII., whose projects for the aggrandisement of the Medici were hampered by Charles’ predominance in the peninsula, seized the opportunity to draw the Queen-Mother of France, Henry VIII. of England, Venice and the smaller Italian States into a vast alliance against the Emperor. This seemed the moment for Milan to throw off the yoke of Spain, and Francesco, or rather his chancellor, the able and faithful Morone, entered into secret relations with the League. He was, however, betrayed by the Marquis of Pescara, whom he had endeavoured to seduce from allegiance to Charles. 196Morone came near to losing his head, and the Duke himself was denounced for high treason to his feudal Lord, and was forced to take refuge in the Castello, where he was closely blockaded by Pescara and De Leyva; while the miserable citizens, who had found the Spanish troops intolerable enough as their allies and defenders, had now to suffer unspeakable things from them in the character of conquerors.

For many months the Duke held out in the hope of the relief promised by the League, till provisions grew short and famine appeared at hand. Meanwhile the city, driven to frenzy by its oppressors, rose again and again in desperate tumults, which were quelled each time by the Spanish generals with treacherous promises to relieve the general misery, and followed by severities and outrages more dreadful than ever, till the fair city became a very hell of slaughter, lust and rapine. In vain the forces of the League, under the brilliant young Giovanni de’ Medici, approached to the Duke’s succour. They were driven back by the Imperialists, and Francesco was at last forced by extremity of want to surrender the castle and abandon the city altogether (1526).

But the League was daily growing in strength and soon returned to the attack. The Imperialists were closely besieged in their turn in Milan, till the descent of Fründsberg with fresh hordes of mercenaries compelled the assailants to retire and concentrate themselves on the defensive against the once again overwhelming Imperialists. Lombardy was now become the complete prey of the occupying armies. The ferocious and undisciplined hosts that nominally served the Emperor no longer heeded the commands of a master who gave them no pay, and was himself far away in Spain. They were practically an independent robber horde, following whom, and going where, they pleased, supporting and enriching themselves 197on plunder, torturing and murdering peasants and citizens without distinction, to squeeze from them their last possession. It meant nothing to the soldiers that Charles was entering into negotiations for peace with the League. Nor could their captains control them. The Constable de Bourbon, who became Governor of Milan for the Emperor in 1526, promised the afflicted people to move the army from their midst, but even if he had been sincere, he could not have kept his word. Yet the army loved him above all their other leaders, this rebel and exiled prince of France, who was an adventurer like themselves.

Before long Milan and the country round was changed into a bare desert, out of which even Spanish cruelty could no longer extract a subsistence. The thought of the unvisited regions farther on began to spread and agitate among the famished hordes; the names of Florence and Rome, cities of untold riches, were breathed from one to another, and as one man they rose at the offer of the Constable de Bourbon to lead them southwards. As a swarm of locusts lifts from a devastated plain, they swept suddenly away on the awful, irresistible course which ended in that final catastrophe of the Middle Ages, the Sack of Rome.

This tragic event, though hardly a part of the pious Emperor’s plans, made the last link in the chain which Spain was forging round Italy. Neither the Pope, nor Francis I., who had regained his liberty early in 1526, were able to offer any further serious resistance to the conqueror, though for some years yet the French continued to make desperate efforts to regain Milan, and the city had to endure both the tyranny of the Spanish governor, De Leyva, and the horrors of blockade. The Treaty of Barcelona between the Pope and the Emperor, and the peace signed by Charles and Francis at Cambrai—that Paix des Dames, arranged by the 198most famous ladies of France and Italy—followed by the Congress and Coronation of the Emperor at Bologna in 1530, secured peace at last for the tormented country by laying the destinies of Italy finally in the conqueror’s hands. Francesco Sforza, who threw himself on the Emperor’s mercy, was graciously pardoned and reinstated in his Dukedom. The return of this amiable prince inspired a faint joy in the exhausted people, and gradually, in spite of the enormous subsidies exacted by the Emperor, and the burdens imposed to drive off the attacks of the independent condottieri and pirates who ranged the disordered country, a certain amount of life and activity crept back into the cruelly-wronged city.

Such consolation and remedy for her wounds as his fettered powers and grave embarrassments allowed, Francesco administered, introducing order into the wild confusion of the government, and reviving trade and industry by careful regulations. But ............