Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/468

462 ages, but not that of the fighting men.

Such was the profession, when a wandering Savoyard trooper – perhaps come home with his spoils in filial piety, or to makeglad the heart of a rustic love with trinkets dragged from the ears or pulled bloody from the throat of some Lombard maiden – took note among the fields of a keen-eyed boy, who carried his shaggy locks with such an aria fiera, so proud an air, that the soldier saw something beyond the common recruit in this young shepherd lad. Romance, like nature, is pretty much the same in all regions; and young Francesco, the peasant's son, under the big frontier tower of Carmagnola, makes us think with a smile of young Norval "on the Grampian Hills" – that noble young hero whose history has unfortunately fallen into derision. But in those days, when the fifteenth century had just begun, and through all the Continent there was nothing heard but the clatter of mail and the tread of the war-horse, there was nothing ridiculous in the idea that the boy, hearing of battles, should long "to follow to the field some warlike lord," or should leave the sheep to shift for themselves, and go off with the bold companion who had such stories of siege and fight to tell. He seems to have entered at once the service of Facino Cane, one of the greatest generals of the time, under whom he rose, while still quite young, to some distinction. Such, at least, would seem to have been the case, since one of the first notices in history of the young Piedmontese is the record in one of the old chronicles of a question made to Facino – Why did he not promote him? To which the great condottiero replied that he could not do so – the rustic arrogance of Francesco being such, that if he got one step he would never be satisfied till he was chief of all. For this reason, though his military genius was allowed full scope, he was kept in as much subjection as possible, and had but ten horsemen under him, and small honour as far as could be seen; yet was noted of the captains as a man born to be something beyond the ordinary level when his day should come.

The Italian world was as usual in a state of great disturbance in these days. Giovanni or Gian Galeazzo, the Duke of Milan, had died, leaving two sons – the one who succeeded him, Gian Maria, being a feeble and vicious youth, of whose folly and weakness the usual advantages were soon taken. Sovereignty was never a thing to be much reckoned on in those little restless fortified and fighting towns, where every municipality was always straining after freedom, – a little republic of its own if might be: or if not, a new ruler, from whom, perhaps, an additional concession of liberties might be got. When the young Duke was found to be so little worth reckoning on, the cities of Lombardy sprang with wonderful unanimity each into a revolution of its own. The generals who on occasion had served the house of Visconti faithfully enough, found now the opportunity to which these free-lances were always looking forward, and established themselves each with hopes of founding a new dukedom, and little independent dominion of his own, in the revolted cities. Piacenza, Parma, Cremona, Lodi, all found thus a new sovereign, with a ready-made army to back him. The Duke's younger brother, Filippo Maria, had been left by his father in possession of the town of Pavia, a younger son's inheri-