tragedy offers an epitome of all that is most, brilliant and terrible in the domestic feuds of the Italian tyrants.[3] The vicissitudes of the Bentivogli at Bologna present another series of catastrophes, due less to their personal crimes than to the fury of the civil strife that raged around them.  Giovanni Bentivoglio began the dynasty in 1400.  The next year he was stabbed to death and pounded in a wine-vat by the infuriated populace, who thought he had betrayed their interests in battle.  His son, Antonio, was beheaded by a Papal Legate, and numerous members of the family on their return from exile suffered the same fate.  In course of time the Bentivogli made themselves adored by the people; and when Piccinino imprisoned the heir of their house, Annibale, in the castle of Varano, four youths of the Marescotti family undertook his rescue at the peril of their lives, and raised him to the Signory of Bologna.  In 1445 the Canetoli, powerful nobles, who hated the popular dynasty, invited Annibale and all his clan to a christening feast, where they exterminated every member of the reigning house.  Not one Bentivoglio was left alive.  In revenge for this massacre, the Marescotti, aided by the populace, hunted down the Canetoli for three whole days in Bologna, and nailed their smoking hearts to the doors of the Bentivoglio palace.  They then drew from his obscurity in Florence the bastard Santi Bentivoglio, who found himself suddenly lifted from a wool-factory to a throne.  Whether he was a genuine Bentivoglio or not, mattered little.  The house had become necessary to Bologna, and its popularity had been baptized in the bloodshed of four massacres.  What remains of its story can be briefly told.  When Cesare Borgia besieged Bologna, the Marescotti intrigued with him, and eight of their number were sacrificed by the Bentivogli in spite of their old services to the dynasty.  The survivors, by the help of Julius II., returned from exile in 1536, to witness the final banishment of the Bentivogli and to take part in the destruction of the palace, where their ancestors had nailed the hearts of the Canetoli upon the walls.

    [1] The family of the Prefetti fed up the murderer in their castle
    and then gave him alive to be eaten by their hounds.

[2] Sforza Attendolo killed Terzi by a spear-thrust in the back.  Pandolfo Petrucci murdered Borghese, who was his father-in-law.  Raimondo Malatesta was stabbed by his two nephews disguised as hermits.  Dattiri was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal by the people, who bit his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate it—­distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament among themselves.

    [3] See the article ‘Perugia’ in my Sketches in Italy and Greece.