In Italy, as a whole, the elevation of Francesco Sforza meant the boon of peace. It enrolled on the side of order and stability the chief element of disturbance in the country. For more than a century continual strife had been kept up by the Condottieri in their own interests. But now that the greatest of them all had attained a solid throne, the era of their irresponsible energies was over. The splendid title and wealth of the Visconti, and the immense resources of the Lombard capital, united with the military skill and renown of the Sforza, could consolidate and safeguard once again that great empire of the Snake, whose decrepitude had been the chief opportunity of the Condottieri, and the provocation of the late wars. On the part chosen by Milan depended largely the fate of the whole peninsula. The far-eyed ambition of the Visconti had chosen war. The new dynasty, on the contrary, preferred to develop the vast wealth of the State which it had won rather than increase its bounds, and was content to relinquish for the sake of peace all pretensions to the cities once belonging to the Visconti, and now usurped by Venice. Neither Francesco nor his successor sought the aggrandisement of their dominions. And where the Visconti, aggressive though they were, had studied the peace of Italy in the larger sense, they were nobly followed by the two first Sforza. Gian Galeazzo’s national policy—Italy for the Italians—his care to keep those Alpine gates, whose keys had been committed to Milan’s charge, locked against a possible invader, was adopted and carried on by the Sforza, through nearly half a century; and when it was reversed, and the flood of disaster and ruin let loose upon the country by Francesco’s younger son, the brilliant prince to whom Fate had denied no gift except just those two qualities which had made the Visconti great—judgment and knowledge of men—there is reason to believe that fear rather than ambition was the motive.