for supplying a fixed contingent of fighting-men.  The Condottiere was in other words a contractor or impresario, undertaking to do a certain piece of work for a certain price, and to furnish the requisite forces for the business in good working order.  It will be readily seen upon this system how important were the personal qualities of the captain, and what great advantages those Condottieri had, who, like the petty princes of Romagna and the March, the Montefeltri, Ordelaffi, Malatesti, Manfredi, Orsini, and Vitelli, could rely upon a race of hardy vassals for their recruits.

It is not necessary to follow Colleoni’s fortunes in the Regno, at Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna.  He continued in the service of Caldora, who was now General of the Church, and had his Condotta gradually increased.  Meanwhile his cousins, the murderers of his father, began to dread his rising power, and determined, if possible, to ruin him.  He was not a man to be easily assassinated; so they sent a hired ruffian to Caldora’s camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken his name by fraud, and that he was himself the real son of Puho Colleoni.  Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel; and this would have taken place before the army, had not two witnesses appeared, who knew the fathers of both Colleoni and the bravo, and who gave such evidence that the captains of the army were enabled to ascertain the truth.  The impostor was stripped and drummed out of the camp.

At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese, Bartolommeo found himself without occupation.  He now offered himself to the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola against Filippo Visconti.  His engagement allowed him forty men, which, after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were increased to eighty.  Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was now his general-in-chief—­a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy.  Colleoni spent the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service, until his Condotta reached the number of 800 men.  Upon Gattamelata’s death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the generals who had fought with Caldora in the March.  The lordships of Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and Antegnate in the Cremonese had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make independent engagements with princes.  What distinguished him as a general, was a combination of caution with audacity.  He united the brilliant system of his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of the Sforzeschi; and thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring stratagems and vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check.  He was a captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an advantage, no less than for using a success with discretion.  Moreover he had acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with his masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.  His company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops into the field.