‘Francesco’s crown,’ says Ripamonti, ’was destined to pass to more than six inheritors, and these five successions were accomplished by a series of tragic events in his family.  Galeazzo, his son, was murdered because of his abominable crimes, in the presence of his people, before the altar, in the middle of the sacred rites.  Giovanni Galeazzo, who followed him, was poisoned by his uncle Lodovico.  Lodovico was imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a dungeon.[1] One of his sons perished in the same way; the other, after years of misery and exile, was restored in his childless old age to a throne which had been undermined, and when he died, his dynasty was extinct.  This was the recompense for the treason of Francesco to the State of Milan.  It was for such successes that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and danger.’  In these rapid successions we trace, besides the demoralization of the Sforza family, the action of new forces from without.  France, Germany, and Spain appeared upon the stage; and against these great powers the policy of Italian despotism was helpless.

[1] In the castle of Loches, there is said to be a roughly painted wall-picture of a man in a helmet over the chimney in the room known as his prison, with this legend, Voila un qui n’est pas content.  Tradition gives it to Il Moro.

We have now reached the threshold of the true Renaissance, and a new period is being opened for Italian politics.  The despots are about to measure their strength with the nations of the North.  It was Lodovico Sforza who, by his invitation of Charles VIII. into Italy, inaugurated the age of Foreign Enslavement.  His biography belongs, therefore, to another chapter.  But the life of Galeazzo Maria, husband of Bona of Savoy, and uncle by marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an integral part of that history of the Milanese despots which we have hitherto been tracing.  In him the passions of Gian Maria Visconti were repeated with the addition of extravagant vanity.  We may notice in particular his parade-expedition in 1471 to Florence, when he flaunted the wealth extorted from his Milanese subjects before the soberminded citizens of a still free city.  Fifty palfreys for the Duchess, fifty chargers for the Duke, trapped in cloth of gold; a hundred men-at-arms and five hundred foot soldiers for a body-guard; five hundred couples of hounds and a multitude of hawks; preceded him.  His suite of courtiers numbered two thousand on horseback:  200,000 golden florins were expended on this pomp.  Machiavelli (1st.  Fior. lib. 7) marks this visit of the Duke of Milan as a turning-point from austere simplicity to luxury and license in the manners of the Florentines, whom Lorenzo de’ Medici was already bending to his yoke.  The most extravagant lust, the meanest and the vilest cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recreation.[1] He it was who used to feed his victims on abominations or to bury them alive, and who found a pleasure in wounding