The citizens of a
certain town (Siena seems to be meant) had once an officer in their service who
had freed them from foreign aggression; daily they took counsel how to
recompense him, and concluded that no reward in their power was great enough,
not even if they made him lord of the city. At last one of them rose and said,
'Let us kill him and then worship him as our patron saint.' And so they did,
following the example set the Roman senate with Romulus. In fact the
Condottieri had reason to fear none so much as their employers: if they were
successful, they became dangerous, and were put out of the way like Roberto
Malatesta just after the victory he had won for Sixtus IV (1482); if they
failed, the vengeance of the Venetians on Carmagnola showed to what risks they
were exposed (1432). It is characteristic of the moral aspect of the situation
that the Condottieri had often to give their wives and children as hostages,
and notwithstanding this, neither felt nor inspired confidence. They must have
been heroes of abnegation, natures like Belisarius himself, not to be cankered
by hatred and bitterness; only the most perfect goodness could save them from
the most monstrous iniquity. No wonder then if we find them full of contempt
for all sacred things, cruel and treacherous to their fellows men who cared
nothing whether or no they died under the ban of the Church. At the same time,
and through the force of the same conditions, the genius and capacity of many
among them attained the highest conceivable development, and won for them the
admiring devotion of their followers; their armies are the first in modern
history in which the personal credit of the leader is the one moving power.
