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EST neutral in his policy, amidst the foreign wars which distressed Italy in consequence of the expedition of Charles VIII. against the Arragonese dynasty at Naples, with which the duke was connected through his wife Eleonora d'Arragona. His court was a seat of chivalry, of literature, and of splendid feasts. Romantic traditions, theatricals, the graces of art, and choice society enlivened it. There the genius of Boiardo shaped into a charming poem the mediæval legends about the adventures of Roland. The Ferrarese school of painting vied in excellence with the best in Italy. The town was doubled in size; the country embellished with parks; and agriculture protected from inundation by skilful hydraulic contrivances. With Ercole I. closes the golden age of the rule of the Estensi. They had been up to that time liberal and self-relying. Now, with the subjection of Italy to foreign influence, the corruption of her princes, and the growth of the temporal power of the popes, began a period of servility and decline.— I., though endowed with courage and occasional impulses of patriotism, bowed to the stranger. Still, as if to protest against his dependency, at the battle of Ravenna, though fighting in the French camp, he ordered his gunners to fire on both French and Spaniards, crying out to them that it was all the same, as they were all enemies, "Sono tutti nemici." Obliged to balance his policy between papal and imperial influence, during the pontificates of Giulius II., Leo X., and Clement VII., he bequeathed to his successors, II. and II., a state entirely subservient to catholic reaction. Still, under him literature and the fine arts continued to flourish. Ariosto was private secretary to Cardinal, brother to the duke; a luxurious churchman, a soldier, and a pompous, though often stingy patron of literary men, as was the case towards the penniless bard of the Orlando Furioso—(see his Satire to Annibale Malaguzzo). Under the pomp and glitter of the court domestic plots and licentiousness sullied the interior of the family. The duke, to console himself for his marriage with Lucrezia Borgia—a connection formed through reasons of state, when the Borgias were powerful in Italy—had for his concubine the celebrated Laura Eustochia, by whom he had several sons. The fate of the house appears with increasing gloominess under Ercole II. France was no more at hand; papacy and Spanish influence all-powerful. Jesuits and other religious orders flocked in and ruled the state. His wife, the good Renée of France, a patroness of the reformers, was sternly watched over by her bigoted husband and by her son Alfonso. When the latter succeeded to the throne, she returned to her native country, and with her departed from Ferrara the last hope of protection to civil and religious freedom. Literature remained still honoured, particularly under the genial influence of womanly feeling; as both Lucrezia and Eleonora, sisters to the duke, were fond of poetry, and enthusiastic admirers of the noble Torquato, the poet of chivalry and religion—(see ). Though Alfonso II. was not a tyrant, still his fondness for amusements, for chivalrous exercises, for hunting, and for every sort of pomps and shows, proved ruinous to his subjects, who consequently became lukewarm in the support of the petty dynasty, when through want of legitimate successors, and the resolve of Pope Clement VIII. to have Ferrara reversed to the church, the last day of the lordship of the Estensi over that town was looming on the horizon. The nearest relation to Alfonso II. was his cousin , whose father, the marquis of Montecchio, was born of Alfonso I. and the above-mentioned Laura Eustochia. The marquises of San Martino, a. collateral branch of the house of Este, were disliked by the duke. He consequently chose for his heir the son of Montecchio, though he was not otherwise very partial to him. Meanwhile, Pope Clement VIII. was eagerly plotting for the acquisition of Ferrara to the Holy See. He refused to recognize Cesare, called him an usurper, and excommunicated him. The investiture of Ferrara had never been settled as a permanent right in the house of Este, much less with regard to illegitimate succession. The fact that Alfonso I. had legitimized by subsequent marriage the marquis of Montecchio, had no weight on the mind of the pope; who, being then stronger than any municipal or feudal power in his domains sent an army to occupy Ferrara. No manly resistance was offered; and Lucrezia, through private hatred against Cesare on account of the share that his father had had in the misfortunes of Tasso, gave up the dukedom and every jurisdiction of the Estensi to the papal legate. Cardinal Aldobrandini.

The annals of the Estensi after the loss of Ferrara are of no importance in the history of Italy, and present no interest in themselves. Modena, Reggio, the Garfagnana, &c., remained to the house as imperial fiefs. A succession of princes of no distinction, except occasionally as generals in the service of the foreign powers—France, Austria, Spain—which converted Italy, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, into a military field for the carrying out of their ambitions, brings us to the final extinction of the house at the beginning of our century.— III., the son of Cesare, died a monk in 1629. II. (1658), IV. (1662), II. (1684), and his uncle, who resigned the dignity of cardinal in order to obtain the ducal throne, and married the Princess Carlotta Felicita of Brunswick (1696), were treated as vassals by the contending powers. The son of the latter, III., was general-in-chief of the Spanish armies in Italy in the war for the Spanish succession.— III., who succeeded him in 1780, had only one daughter, Maria Beatrice Ricciarda, with no hope of other children, having separated himself from his wife, Maria Teresa, duchess of Massa. Maria Teresa of Austria obtained Beatrice as wife to her son Ferdinand. Thence the Austrian succession to the duchy of Modena and Reggio, which after having been conquered by Napoleon in 1796, was, through the treaty of Vienna, given up a prey to the tyranny of the petty Austrian dukes who have oppressed it down to the last events in Italy.

During the Estensi sway at Modena nothing occurs worthy of note, save the encouragement afforded by the native genius of the inhabitants to public instruction in the last century, and, above all, the revival of historical studies, owing in a great measure to the heroic exertions of one single man, Antonio Muratori. To him we are indebted for the best sources of information concerning the history of the house of Este. (See also Litta Celebri Famiglie Italiane, Casa d' Este.)—A. S., O.  ESTE,, a miscellaneous writer, born in 1753; died in 1829. He was the son of poor parents; was for some time connected with the stage, afterwards engaged in medical pursuits, and finally entered the church, having been ordained in 1777, and appointed one of the reading chaplains at Whitehall. He was editor of the daily journal called the World.—J. S., G.  ESTERHAZY, the wealthiest family of the Hungarian aristocracy, was founded by Francis Esterhazy, who died in 1595. By marrying a rich widow, in the house of whose first husband he had been a clerk, he got considerable influence in the county of Presburg, and was elected sheriff.—His youngest son,, born in 1582, followed his father's example, and married a rich widow and heiress, by whose extensive landed property he became a man of great importance in the religious wars which raged during his lifetime, when the successive emperors, Rudolph, Matthias, and the two Ferdinands, were determined to put down protestantism in Hungary as well as in Bohemia and Germany. Nicholas Esterhazy sided in these struggles with the German emperor and Roman Catholicism, and, by the favour of the court and his talents, rose soon to the highest offices in the state. He was already chief-justice at thirty; and in 1625 the diet elected him palatine, or viceroy, the highest post to which a Hungarian could then aspire. The primate, archbishop of Grass, Peter Pazman, was at that time busy in bringing the great protestant houses back to the Romish church, and the palatine most heartily co-operated with the crafty priest; but the oppression of the protestants brought about an invasion of Hungary by Prince Gabriel Bethler of Transylvania, who, for the second time, had taken up the cause of protestantism in Hungary. Two-thirds of the country were now in the hands of Bethler, and Esterhazy wisely modified his former policy, and succeeded in inducing the stubborn emperor to make peace. It was concluded at Presburg in 1626, and confirmed the religious liberty established by the peace of Vienna in 1606. The palatine was equally successful in bringing about a peace with the Turks in 1628, after which he administered the country with moderation and great political sagacity for eight years, to the satisfaction both of the emperor and the diet. In 1637, however, he suddenly resigned his office and secretly encouraged the opposition, when the imperial authorities had refused to acknowledge the questionable rights of Elizabeth Thurzo, his daughter-in-law, to the immense inheritance of the Thurzos, who had just failed in the male line. The emperor, Ferdinand III., ordered now that the estates of the Thurzos should be given up to the son of the palatine; and Nicholas 