But the Duke had neither means nor leisure amid the struggles of his ambition and the pressure of his fears for much attention to the peaceful arts. He was entirely occupied in redeeming his heritage and preserving it from the greed of Venice, the inveterate hate of Florence, the envy of the smaller States, and, from what he feared most of all, the ambition and intrigues of the Condottieri in his own employ. The fortunes of Italy were now, in fact, in the hands of the great military adventurers. After a century and a half of physical lassitude, during which her wars had been carried on by foreign mercenaries, she had bred a race of warriors who had learnt their craft so well in the camps of the German and English Condottieri that they had now superseded the foreigners. With hosts of trained and disciplined soldiers at their command, who knew no faith except to their leader, they took service now with one sovereign, now with another, and with their fickle arms and policy made and unmade States at their will. Facino Cane and Jacopo dal Verme had already played their parts, to the disruption of the Milanese State. Carmagnolo, after serving Duke Filippo for many years, went over to Venice, and for long balanced the two States one against the other, by his crafty conduct of the war, till he fell a victim to the superior cunning of the Doge and his councillors in 1432. And now, in the midst of the noise of battle and the ferment of intrigue, in which all the years of Duke Filippo were wrapped, the great name of Sforza is first heard in Milanese story. With the first Sforza and his son Francesco on the one side, and Braccio Montone and Niccolò Piccinino on the other, the age of the Condottieri culminated. The whole of Italy was plunged into strife by these great leaders, in whom the old faction divisions of the country were revived, and cities and States split up once again into hostile parties, Guelfs and Ghibellines reappearing under the new names of Sforzeschi and Bracceschi. These rival forces were at once the salvation and the torment of Duke Filippo. The hope of succeeding to the heirless man’s dominions—an elevation not beyond the attainment of an obscurely born individual, in an age and country in which men made themselves, and everything was possible to strength and ability—was a bait which drew them to his service; and with all his cunning and perfidious diplomacy he manipulated them for his own advantage, pitting them against each other, now encouraging one, now compassing his downfall by means of another. But they, too, were cunning. It was a game of wits, and Filippo often found himself outdone. Yet to the very end, though plagued, cajoled and defeated on all sides, he succeeded in circumventing all the efforts of either party to seat itself securely in Milan, preferring, with his strange spite towards mankind, to leave his kingdom to anarchy rather than adopt an heir.