o
(1434); Ostasio da Polenta's fratricide (1322); Obizzo da Polenta's
fratricide in the next generation, and the murder of Ugolino Gonzaga
by his brothers; Gian Francesco Gonzaga's murder of his wife; the
poisoning of Francesco Sforza's first wife, Polissena, Countess of
Montalto, with her little girl, by her aunt; and the murder of
Galeotto Manfredi, by his wife, at Faenza (1488).

To enumerate all the catastrophes of reigning families, occurring in the
fifteenth century alone, would be quite impossible within the limits of
this chapter. Yet it is only by dwelling on the more important that any
adequate notion of the perils of Italian despotism can be formed. Thus
Girolamo Riario was murdered by his subjects at Forli (1488), and
Francesco Vico dei Prefetti in the Church of S. Sisto at Viterbo[1]
(1387). At Lodi in 1402 Antonio Fisiraga burned the chief members of the
ruling house of Vistarini on the public square, and died himself of
poison after a few months. His successor in the tyranny, Giovanni
Vignate, was imprisoned by Filippo Maria Visconti in a wooden cage at
Pavia, and beat his brains out in despair against its bars. At the same
epoch Gabrino Fondulo slaughtered seventy of the Cavalcabo family
together in his castle of Macastormo, with the purpose of acquiring
their tyranny over Cremona. He was afterwards beheaded as a traitor at
Milan (1425). Ottobon Terzi was assassinated at Parma (1408), Nicola
Borghese at Siena (1499). Altobello Dattiri at Todi (about 1500),
Raimondo and Pandolfo Malatesta at Rimini, and Oddo Antonio di
Montefeltro at Urbino (1444).[2] The Varani were massacred to a man in
the Church of S. Dominic at Camerino (1434), the Trinci at Foligno
(1434), and the Chiavelli of Fabriano in church upon Ascension Day
(1435). This wholesale extirpation of three reigning families introduces
one of the most romantic episodes in the history of Italian despotism.
From the slaughter of the Varani one only child, Giulio Cesare, a boy of
two years old, was saved by his aunt Tora. She concealed him in a truss
of hay and carried him to the Trinci at Foligno. Hardly had she gained
this refuge, when the Trinci were destroyed, and she had to fly with her
burden to the Chiavelli at Fabriano. There the same scenes of bloodshed
awaited her. A third time she took to flight, and now concealed her
precious charge in a nunnery. The boy was afterwards stolen from the
town on horseback by a soldier o