Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He continued in the service of Caldora,
who was now General of the Church, and had his _Condotta_
gradually increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the murderers of his
father, began to dread his rising power, and determined, if possible,
to ruin him. He was not a man to be easily assassinated; so they sent
a hired ruffian to Caldora's camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken
his name by fraud, and that he was himself the real son of Puho
Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel; and this would have
taken place before the army, had not two witnesses appeared, who knew
the fathers of both Colleoni and the _bravo_, and who gave such
evidence that the captains of the army were enabled to ascertain the
truth. The impostor was stripped and drummed out of the camp.

At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese,
Bartolommeo found himself without occupation. He now offered himself
to the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola
against Filippo Visconti. His engagement allowed him forty men,
which, after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were
increased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was
now his general-in-chief--a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes
to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni
spent the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring
against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service,
until his Condotta reached the number of 800 men. Upon Gattamelata's
death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the
generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships of
Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and Antegnate in the Cremonese
had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make independent
engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a general, was a
combination of caution with audacity. He united the brilliant system
of his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of the Sforzeschi;
and thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring stratagems
and vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check. He was a
captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an advantage,
no less than for using a success with discretion. Moreover he had
acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with his
masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.
His company was po