es, exercising the
franchise in the government of their own states--could show in the
fifteenth only about 18,000 such burghers:[1] and these in Venice were
subject to the tyranny of the Council of Ten, in Florence had been
enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by party feuds and vulgar
despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the splendors of revived
literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this
indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary to publish his
prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to fulfill them.
Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of fate
which imposed upon his country the insult of such a conqueror as
Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza
the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of Italy. Lodovico,
called II Moro, not, as the great historian asserts, because he was of
dark complexion, but because he had adopted the mulberry-tree for his
device,[2] was in himself an epitome of all the qualities which for the
last two centuries had contributed to the degradation of Italy in the
persons of the despots. Gifted originally with good abilities, he had
so accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was now incapable of
taking a straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself
the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that
ran: _God only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure_, he never
acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable
tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking
ruler; yet he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that
they tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of
him. He disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and
the arts by which he forced his nephew into an early grave, have left an
ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court was adorned by the
presence of Lionardo da Vinci; but at the same time it was so corrupt
that, as Corio tells us,[3] fathers sold their daughters, brothers their
sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a word Lodovico, in spite of
his boasted prudence, wrought the ruin of Italy and himself by his
tortuous policy, and contributed by his private crimes and dissolute
style of living no little to the general depravity of his country.[4]

[1] This is Sismondi's calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). I