[Footnote *64: Bianca Maria was promised and withheld from Sforza many times. At the beginning of the third war with Venice, which ended in 1432, the Emperor Sigismund came into Italy, and to Milan first, to receive the Iron Crown. It was on this occasion that Sforza was first betrothed to Bianca Maria Visconti, just then eight years old. At the date of their wedding--they had not met between--she was only seventeen, yet I suppose this to have been none too early for an Italian girl of the fifteenth century. Sforza was forty. A curious panegyric on the bride will be found in SABADINO G., _Gynevra de la clare donne_ (_Scelta di curiosità letterarie inedite o rare Dispensa_, 223, Bologna, 1888). And see C.M. ADY, _Milan under the Sforza_ (Methuen, 1907), pp. 18 and 24-5.] The Council of Basle, opened in July, 1431, to concert measures for extirpation of the Bohemian heresy, had occupied itself in reforming alleged abuses in the Church and the papal prerogatives. A collision with Eugene IV. was the natural result, when he fled to Florence, leaving his state a prey to Sforza, Piccinino, the Colonna, and other military adventurers. As the best means of bridling these bandits, he bribed the first of them to turn his arms against the others, by offering him the vicariate of La Marca, "That land Which lies between Romagna, and the realm Of Charles."[65] [Footnote 65: That is, Charles II., king of Naples, when Dante wrote. See _Purgatorio_, v.] But by degrees all Italy was involved in the struggle, Alfonso of Naples, the Florentines, Genoese, and eventually the Venetians, supporting the Pontiff, whilst Filippo Maria Visconti, the Angevine party at Naples, and the city of Bologna sided with the Council. In this war Piccinino led the Milanese army, and among his independent captains was Bernardino della Carda, who dying in 1437, his company of 800 men-at-arms was divided between his son Ottaviano and the young Federigo di Montefeltro. In the end of May, 1438, the latter set out for Piccinino's camp, assisting at the siege of Brescia, and in the opening of the Lombard war, where the rival generalship of Nicolò and Sforza was first brought to the test, with results more interesting in a military than an historical view. It is not to be supposed that services performed by so youthful a soldier could much influence the campaign, but they appear to have been approved by his commander.