Very different from the earnest pleading of Ridolfi was the bravado of the orator from Milan. He declared that he and his companions had come on no important embassy, but simply to pay their respects to Venice and her Senate in the name of their Duke. They had no league to make, no favors to ask, since the treaties which existed between Milan and the Republic were still unbroken. He then represented the Florentines as false men, whose speech was full of lies. He declared that though the former rulers of Milan had been enemies of the Venetians, Duke Philip was their friend, as the Visconti had been for a century, and that he desired peace and repose, being "the {190} very model of liberality and courtesy." In fact, no new light was thrown on any subject by the speech of the Milanese, and the Senators were much divided in their opinions. A part were for immediate war with Philip, who only desired to speak them fair until he could overcome Florence; the others begged for greater caution, and recalled the truth that to begin a struggle was much easier than to end it. It was now Carmagnola's turn, and a new wrong which he had suffered filled his wrath to the full. At Treviso an attempt had been made to poison him. It had failed, and the perpetrator of the act had paid for it with his life; but it had turned the feeling of injury which Carmagnola had cherished before into fierce hatred, and he appeared before the Venetian Senate with fire in his heart and on his tongue. With hot words he depicted the benefits he had conferred on Philip, and the base ingratitude with which he had been treated. He declared that he had received no rewards, but simply the just hire for what he had accomplished; and now, he said, the prince he had thus served had not only wounded and insulted him, not only turned his back on him, and driven him into exile, but he had sought to kill him,--not in a fair and open battle, such as soldiers love, but in the way of the cowardly assassin, with poison. He then congratulated himself on his preservation, and declared that although he had left his wife, his children, and his wealth in the country he had lost, he was still fortunate in that he had found a country where justice was honored and villains did not rule. Carmagnola then represented that Philip was far less powerful than he was thought by the Florentines; that his soldiers were not paid, his citizens were not rich, and his own means were much exhausted; that the Duke's successes had depended on himself; and that without him {191} Philip was weaker than the Florentines, and much weaker than Venice. And finally he offered his services to the Republic, promising to increase its dominions and to conquer Philip, and declaring that though they might have had greater commanders, none had been more loyal than he would be to Venice, and none had ever hated her enemies as he hated the Milanese.