in retaining-fees and salaries for active service.  There was always the further possibility of placing a coronet upon their brows before they died, if haply they should wrest a town from their employers, or obtain the cession of a province from a needy Pope.  The neighbours of the Montefeltri in Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona were all of them Condottieri.  Malatestas of Rimini and Pesaro, Vitelli of Citta di Castello, Varani of Camerino, Baglioni of Perugia, to mention only a few of the most eminent nobles, enrolled themselves under the banners of plebeian adventurers like Piccinino and Sforza Attendolo.  Though their family connections gave them a certain advantage, the system was essentially democratic.  Gattamelata and Carmagnola sprang from obscurity by personal address and courage to the command of armies.  Colleoni fought his way up from the grooms to princely station and the baton of S. Mark.  Francesco Sforza, whose father had begun life as a tiller of the soil, seized the ducal crown of Milan, and founded a house which ranked among the first in Europe.

It is not needful to follow Duke Frederick in his military career.  We may briefly remark that when he succeeded to Urbino by his brother’s death in 1444, he undertook generalship on a grand scale.  His own dominions supplied him with some of the best troops in Italy.  He was careful to secure the goodwill of his subjects by attending personally to their interests, relieving them of imposts, and executing equal justice.  He gained the then unique reputation of an honest prince, paternally disposed toward his dependents.  Men flocked to his standards willingly, and he was able to bring an important contingent into any army.  These advantages secured for him alliances with Francesco Sforza, and brought him successively into connection with Milan, Venice, Florence, the Church of Naples.  As a tactician in the field he held high rank among the generals of the age, and so considerable were his engagements that he acquired great wealth in the exercise of his profession.  We find him at one time receiving 8000 ducats a month as war-pay from Naples, with a peace pension of 6000.  While Captain-General of the League, he drew for his own use in war 45,000 ducats of annual pay.  Retaining-fees and pensions in the name of past services swelled his income, the exact extent of which has not, so far as I am aware, been estimated, but which must have made him one of the richest of Italian princes.  All this wealth he spent upon his duchy, fortifying and beautifying its cities, drawing youths of promise to his court, maintaining a great train of life, and keeping his vassals in good-humour by the lightness of a rule which contrasted favourably with the exactions of needier despots.