personal timidity
of this formidable prince prevented him from leading his armies in the
field. He therefore found it necessary to employ paid generals, and took
into his service all the chief Condottieri of the day, thus giving an
impulse to the custom which was destined to corrupt the whole military
system of Italy. Of these men, whom he well knew how to choose, he was
himself the brain and moving principle. He might have boasted that he
never took a step without calculating the cost, carefully considering
the object, and proportioning the means to his end. How mad to such a
man must have seemed the Crusaders of previous centuries, or the
chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their
force upon such unprofitable and impossible undertakings as the
subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his
character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said
to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI.
Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the
following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity:
'False and pitiless, he joined to immeasurable ambition a genius for
enterprise, and to immovable constancy a personal timidity which he did
not endeavor to conceal. The least unexpected motion near him threw him
into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince employed so many soldiers
to guard his palace, or took such multiplied precautions of distrust. He
seemed to acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. But the
vices of tyranny had not weakened his ability. He employed his immense
wealth without prodigality; his finances were always flourishing; his
cities well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; all the
captains of adventure scattered throughout Italy received pensions from
him, and were ready to return to his service whenever called upon. He
encouraged the warriors of the new Italian school; he knew well how to
distinguish, reward, and win their attachment.'[3] Such was the tyrant
who aimed at nothing less than the reduction of the whole of Italy
beneath the sway of the Visconti, and who might have achieved his
purpose had not his career of conquest been checked by the Republic of
Florence, and afterwards cut short by a premature death.

[1] Giovio is particular upon these points: 'Ho veduto io ne gli
armari de' suoi Archivi maravigliosi libri in carta pecora, i quali
contene