E il mastin vecchio e il nuovo da Verucchio
      Che fecer di Montagna il mal governo,

while the story of Francesca da Polenta, who was wedded to the hunchback Giovanni Malatesta and murdered by him with her lover Paolo, is known not merely to students of Dante, but to readers of Byron and Leigh Hunt, to admirers of Flaxman, Ary Scheffer, Dore—­to all, in fact, who have of art and letters any love.

The history of these Malatesti, from their first establishment under Otho III. as lieutenants for the Empire in the Marches of Ancona, down to their final subjugation by the Papacy in the age of the Renaissance, is made up of all the vicissitudes which could befall a mediaeval Italian despotism.  Acquiring an unlawful right over the towns of Rimini, Cesena, Sogliano, Ghiacciuolo, they ruled their petty principalities like tyrants by the help of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, inclining to the one or the other as it suited their humour or their interest, wrangling among themselves, transmitting the succession of their dynasty through bastards and by deeds of force, quarrelling with their neighbours the Counts of Urbino, alternately defying and submitting to the Papal legates in Romagna, serving as condottieri in the wars of the Visconti and the state of Venice, and by their restlessness and genius for military intrigues contributing in no slight measure to the general disturbance of Italy.  The Malatesti were a race of strongly marked character:  more, perhaps, than any other house of Italian tyrants, they combined for generations those qualities of the fox and the lion, which Machiavelli thought indispensable to a successful despot.  Son after son, brother with brother, they continued to be fierce and valiant soldiers, cruel in peace, hardy in war, but treasonable and suspicious in all transactions that could not be settled by the sword.  Want of union, with them as with the Baglioni and many other of the minor noble families in Italy, prevented their founding a substantial dynasty.  Their power, based on force, was maintained by craft and crime, and transmitted through tortuous channels by intrigue.  While false in their dealings with the world at large, they were diabolical in the perfidy with which they treated one another.  No feudal custom, no standard of hereditary right, ruled the succession in their family.  Therefore the ablest Malatesta for the moment clutched what he could of the domains that owned his house for masters.  Partitions among sons or brothers, mutually hostile and suspicious, weakened the whole stock.  Yet they were great enough to hold their own for centuries among the many tyrants who infested Lombardy.  That the other princely families of Romagna, Emilia, and the March were in the same state of internal discord and dismemberment, was probably one reason why the Malatesti stood their ground so firmly as they did.