le virtue to this unhappy prince, who seems to have
united in himself all the vices of all the Gonzagas. He was licentious
and depraved as the first Vincenzo, and he had not Vincenzo's
courage; he was luxurious as the second Francesco, but had none of
his generosity; he taxed his people heavily that he might meanly enjoy
their substance without making them even the poor return of national
glory; he was grasping as Guglielmo, but saved nothing to the state;
he was as timid as the second Vincenzo, and yet made a feint of making
war, and went to Hungary at one time to fight against the Turk. But he
loved far better to go to Venice in his gilded barge, and to spend his
Carnivals amid the infinite variety of that city's dissoluteness. He
was so ignorant as scarcely to be able to write his name; but he knew
all vicious things from his cradle, as if, indeed, he had been gifted
to know them by instinct through the profligacy of his parents. It is
said that even the degraded Mantuans blushed to be ruled by so dull
and ignorant a wretch; but in his time, nevertheless, Mantua was all
rejoicings, promenades, pleasure-voyages, and merry-makings. "The
Duke recruited women from every country to stock his palace," says an
Italian author, "where they played, sang, and made merry at his will
and theirs." "In Venice," says Volta, "he surrendered himself to such
diversions without shame, or stint of expense. He not only took part
in all public entertainments and pleasures of that capital, but he
held a most luxurious and gallant court of his own; and all night long
his palace was the scene of theatrical representations by dissolute
women, with music and banqueting, so that he had a worse name than
Sardanapalus of old." He sneaked away to these gross delights in 1700,
while the Emperor was at war with the Spaniards, and left his Duchess
(a brave and noble woman, the daughter of Ferrante Gonzaga, Duke of
Guastalla) to take care of the duchy, then in great part occupied by
Spanish and French forces. This was the War of the Spanish Succession;
and it used up poor Ferdinand, who had not a shadow of interest in
it. He had sold the fortress of Casale to the French in 1681, feigning
that they had taken it from him by fraud: and now he declared that
he was forced to admit eight thousand French and Spanish troops into
Mantua. Perhaps indeed he was, but the Emperor never would believe it;
and he pronounced Ferdinand guilty of felony against the Empire,