Galeazzo Visconti, an elder brother of Bernabò, bore an even worse reputation for cruelty. Those he condemned to death had their suffering prolonged on a deliberate programme during forty-one days, losing now an eye, and now a foot or a hand, were beaten, forced to swallow nauseous drinks, and then, when the agony could be prolonged no further, broken on the wheel. The scene of this torture was a scaffold set in the public gaze that Milan might read what was the anger of the Visconti and tremble. The most famous of this infamous family was Gian Galeazzo, son of Galeazzo, a youth so timid by nature that he would shake and turn white at the sudden closing of a door, or at a noise in the street below. His uncle, Bernabò, believed him half-witted, and foolishly accepted an invitation to visit him after his father’s death, intending to manage the young man’s affairs for him and to keep him in terrified submission. The wily old man was to find himself outmatched, however, for Gian Galeazzo came to their meeting-place with an armed guard, arrested his uncle, and imprisoned him in a castle, where he died by slow poison. After this Gian Galeazzo reigned alone in Milan, with no law save his ruthless ambition; and by this and his skill in creating political opportunities, and making use of them at his neighbour’s expense, he succeeded in stretching his tyranny over the plains of Lombardy and southwards amongst the hill cities of Tuscany. Near at home he beat down resistance by force of arms, while farther away he secured by bribery or fraud the allegiance of cities too weak to stand alone, yet less afraid of distant Milan than of Venice or Florence that lay nearer to their walls. It was Gian Galeazzo’s aim to found a kingdom in North Italy, and he went far towards realizing his project, stretching his dominion at one time to Verona and Vicenza at the very gates of Venice, while in the south he absorbed as subject-towns Pisa and Siena, the two arch-enemies of Florence. This territory, acquired by war, bribery, murder, and fraud, he persuaded the Emperor to recognize as a duchy hereditary in his family, and at once proceeded to form alliances with the royal houses of Europe. The marriage of his daughter Valentina with the young and weak-minded Duke of Orleans, brother of the French king, though hardly an attractive union for the bride, proved fraught with importance for the whole of Italy, since at the very end of the fifteenth century, Louis, Duke of Orleans, a grandson of Valentina Visconti, succeeded to the French crown as Louis XII, and also laid claim to the duchy of Milan, as a descendant of the Visconti.[42]