[Illustration: THE SNAKE OF THE VISCONTI] CHAPTER VI _From Visconti to Sforza_ “Una città corrotta che vive sotto un principe ... mai non si può ridurre libera.”—MACCHIAVELLI. Gian Galeazzo’s three sons by Isabella of Valois had died in infancy, leaving him with one daughter only, Valentina, whom in 1387 he had married to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, an alliance of immense immediate advantage to the Visconti, but of fatal issue for Milan and Italy generally, in days beyond even his far vision. After some years of marriage, his second wife, Caterina Visconte, had borne him a son, whom he had named Giovanni Maria, decreeing that every one of his descendants should thenceforth bear the name of Maria, as a token of his gratitude to the Virgin, to whose intercession he attributed the birth of his heir. A second son, Filippo Maria, was born later. At the time of the Duke’s death the elder was only fourteen, and the younger ten. In addition to their youth, they had the enduring disadvantage of issuing from parents both of the same stock, which already, in the ferocity and capriciousness of Bernabò and the physical timidity and weakness of Gian Galeazzo himself, had shown signs of vitiation. This taint in the blood became in Giovanni Maria a moral disease, amounting to mania, and in his brother an exaggerated misanthropy and timidity. Giovanni Maria succeeded to the dukedom, and Filippo became by his father’s will Count of Pavia, which had been erected into an appanage of the sovereign House. The charge of the young Duke’s person and state immediately became the object of a wild scramble among the different parties in the city. The dead man’s will, appointing his widow regent, was utterly disregarded, and she and her adviser, Francesco Barbavara, were driven out by Estorre and Carlo Visconte, two of Bernabò’s sons, who now reappeared after long exile, hoping to recover their heritage. The Duchess died in 1404, poisoned, it was believed, by her son. But this unhappy lady, who had seen her father entrapped and murdered and her whole family ruined by her husband, and whose sons were now helpless in the hands of robbers and foes—who had been driven hither and thither in the whirl of faction and was already paralytic—might well sink beneath her sorrows, without the help of this unnatural crime, which there seems to have been no better reason than his general wickedness for laying to the young Duke’s charge.