again of the Scotti at Piacenza, the Rossi and Correggi at Parma, the Benzoni at Crema, the Rusconi at Como, the Soardi and Colleoni at Bergamo, the Landi at Bobbio, the Cavalcabo at Cremona.  Facino Cane appropriated Alessandria; Pandolfo Malatesta seized Brescia; Ottonbon Terzo established himself in Parma.  Meanwhile Giovanni Maria Visconti was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo Maria occupied Pavia.  Gabriello, a bastard son of the first duke, fortified himself in Crema.

    [1] The anarchy which prevailed in Lombardy after Gian Galeazzo’s
    death makes it difficult to do more than signalize a few of these
    usurpations.  Corio, pp. 292 et seq., contain the details.

In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, there was a progressive tendency to degeneration.  The strain of tyranny sustained by force and craft for generations, the abuse of power and pleasure, the isolation and the dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a kind of hereditary madness.[1] In the case of Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria Visconti these predisposing causes of insanity were probably intensified by the fact that their father and mother were first cousins, the grandchildren of Stefano, son of Matteo il Grande.  Be this as it may, the constitutional ferocity of the race appeared as monomania in Giovanni, and its constitutional timidity as something akin to madness in his brother.  Gian Maria, Duke of Milan in nothing but in name, distinguished himself by cruelty and lust.  He used the hounds of his ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of living men.  All the criminals of Milan, and all whom he could get denounced as criminals, even the participators in his own enormities, were given up to his infernal sport.  His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the dogs to their duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.[2] In 1412 some Milanese nobles succeeded in murdering him, and threw his mangled corpse into the street.  A prostitute is said to have covered it with roses.  Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of Facino Cane,[3] who brought him nearly half a million of florins for dowry, together with her husband’s soldiers and the cities he had seized after Gian Galeazzo’s death.  By the help of this alliance Filippo was now gradually recovering the Lombard portion of his father’s dukedom.  The minor cities, purged by murder of their usurpers, once more fell into the grasp of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and political tragedies that drenched their streets with blood.  Piacenza was utterly depopulated.  It is recorded that for the space of a year only three of its inhabitants remained within the walls.

    [1] I may refer to Dr. Maudsley (Mind and Matter) for a scientific
    statement of the theory of madness developed by accumulated and
    hereditary vices.

    [2] Corio, p. 301, mentions by name Giovanni da Pusterla and
    Bertolino del Maino as ‘lacerati da i cani del Duca.’  Members of the
    families of these men afterwards helped to kill him.