or degrading those whom he had made his confidants and friends.  The details of his assassination, in 1476, though well known, are so interesting that I may be excused for pausing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate a moral characteristic of this period which is intimately connected with the despotism.  Three young nobles of Milan, educated in the classic literature by Montano, a distinguished Bolognese scholar, had imbibed from their studies of Greek and Latin history an ardent thirst for liberty and a deadly hatred of tyrants.[2] Their names were Carlo Visconti, Girolamo Olgiati, and Giannandrea Lampugnani.  Galeazzo Sforza had wounded the two latter in the points which men hold dearest—­their honor and their property[3]—­by outraging the sister of Olgiati and by depriving Lampugnani of the patronage of the Abbey of Miramondo.  The spirit of Harmodius and Virginius was kindled in the friends, and they determined to rid Milan of her despot.  After some meetings in the garden of S. Ambrogio, where they matured their plans, they laid their project of tyrannicide as a holy offering before the patron saint of Milan.[4] Then having spent a few days in poignard exercise for the sake of training,[5] they took their place within the precincts of S. Stephen’s Church.  There they received the sacrament and addressed themselves in prayer to the Protomartyr, whose fane was about to be hallowed by the murder of a monster odious to God and man.  It was on the morning of December 26, 1476, that the duke entered San Stefano.  At one and the same moment the daggers of the three conspirators struck him—­Olgiati’s in the breast, Visconti’s in the back, Lampugnani’s in the belly.  He cried ‘Ah, Dio!’ and fell dead upon the pavement.  The friends were unable to make their escape; Visconti and Lampugnani were killed on the spot; Olgiati was seized, tortured, and torn to death.

[1] Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. 777, and Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures.  See too his character by Machiavelli, 1st.  Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p. 316.  Yet Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with the vice of unbridled sensuality.

[2] The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this time, as also during the French Revolution, fired the imagination of patriots.  Lorenzino de’ Medici appealed to the example of Timoleon in 1537, and Pietro Paolo Boscoli to that of Brutus in 1513.

[3] ’Le ingiurie conviene che siano nella roba, nel sangue, o nell’ onore....  La roba e l’onore sono quelle due cose che offendono piu gli uomini che alcun’ altra offesa, e dalle quali il principe si debbe guardare:  perche e’ non puo mai spogliare uno tanto che non gli resti un coltello da vendicarsi; non puo tanto disonorare uno che non gli resti un animo ostinato alla vendetta.’  Mach.  Disc. iii. 6.

    [4] See Olgiati’s prayer to Saint Ambrose in Sismondi, vii. 87,
    and in Mach.  Ist.  Fior. lib. 7.