DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36838#0504
LORENZO, DUKE OF URBINO 429
inferior to him. ... He has made himself lord of
Florence, and what he wills is law.'* The new
Duke's haughty airs made him everywhere un-
popular. He walked through the streets clad in
rich clothes and attended by hundreds of followers,
and openly declared that he meant to wed a bride
of royal birth and take his place among the crowned
heads of Europe. At the French court the young
Queen Claude listened with tears in her eyes
to Federico Gonzaga's touching account of the
sufferings endured by the two Duchesses, and both
she and her mother-in-law, Louise of Savoy, wrote
pressing letters to the Pope, begging him to allow
the exiles to live in peace at Mantua. Even
Francis 1., who had reluctantly sacrificed Francesco
Maria for reasons of political expediency, made no
secret of his dislike for the Pope's nephew. When
the Papal bull was issued, he sent Lorenzo a civil
letter of congratulation, but a few weeks afterwards
he remarked to the Ferrarese envoy : ' This is all
Lorenzo's doing, and he is as proud of himself as he
can be; but he is only a simpleton who plays at being
a captain and a great man, and boasts of these
conquests which have not cost him a single man or a
drop of blood, and wishes to make himself lord of all
Italy. But if he has any sense he will be content
with this one State of Urbino—I doubt myself if he
will ever manage to keep it!—for remember, after all,
he is only a merchant U
i Alberi, iii. 51.
2 Nitti, 81 ; Verdi, 27.
inferior to him. ... He has made himself lord of
Florence, and what he wills is law.'* The new
Duke's haughty airs made him everywhere un-
popular. He walked through the streets clad in
rich clothes and attended by hundreds of followers,
and openly declared that he meant to wed a bride
of royal birth and take his place among the crowned
heads of Europe. At the French court the young
Queen Claude listened with tears in her eyes
to Federico Gonzaga's touching account of the
sufferings endured by the two Duchesses, and both
she and her mother-in-law, Louise of Savoy, wrote
pressing letters to the Pope, begging him to allow
the exiles to live in peace at Mantua. Even
Francis 1., who had reluctantly sacrificed Francesco
Maria for reasons of political expediency, made no
secret of his dislike for the Pope's nephew. When
the Papal bull was issued, he sent Lorenzo a civil
letter of congratulation, but a few weeks afterwards
he remarked to the Ferrarese envoy : ' This is all
Lorenzo's doing, and he is as proud of himself as he
can be; but he is only a simpleton who plays at being
a captain and a great man, and boasts of these
conquests which have not cost him a single man or a
drop of blood, and wishes to make himself lord of all
Italy. But if he has any sense he will be content
with this one State of Urbino—I doubt myself if he
will ever manage to keep it!—for remember, after all,
he is only a merchant U
i Alberi, iii. 51.
2 Nitti, 81 ; Verdi, 27.