But the highest and the most admired form of illegitimacy
in the fifteenth century was presented by the Condottiere, who whatever may
have been his origin, raised himself to the position of an independent ruler.
At bottom, the occupation of Lower Italy by the Normans in the eleventh century
was of this character. Such attempts now began to keep the peninsula in a
constant ferment.
It was possible for a Condottiere to obtain the lordship
of a district even without usurpation, in the case when his employer, through
want of money or troops, provided for him in this way; under any circumstances
the Condottiere, even when he dismissed for the time the greater part of his
forces, needed a safe place where he could establish his winter quarters, and
lay up his stores and provisions. The first example of a captain thus portioned
is John Hawkwood, who was invested by Gregory XI with the lordship of
Bagnacavallo and Cotignola. When with Alberigo da Barbiano Italian armies and
leaders appeared upon the scene, the chances of founding a principality, or of
increasing one already acquired, became more frequent. The first great
bacchanalian outbreak of military ambition took place in the duchy of Milan
after the death of Giangaleazzo (1402). The policy of his two sons was chiefly
aimed at the destruction of the new despotisms founded by the Condottieri; and
from the greatest of them, Facino Cane, the house of Visconti inherited,
together with his widow, a long list of cities, and 400,000 golden florins, not
to speak of the soldiers of her first husband whom Beatrice di Tenda brought
with her. From henceforth that thoroughly immoral relation between the
governments and their Condottieri, which is characteristic of the fifteenth
century, became more and more common. An old story - one of those which are true
and not true, everywhere and nowhere - describes it as follows:
