Sibilla Odaleta, Tr from the Ital [of C Varese]

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter I. In the year 1493, Ludovico Sforza surnamed the Moor, exercised the office of guardian to his nephew John Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, who though of age twenty years before, was weak in intellect and delicate in health. This Ludovico had, for a long time, held the reigns of government, and with the...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter I. In the year 1493, Ludovico Sforza surnamed the Moor, exercised the office of guardian to his nephew John Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, who though of age twenty years before, was weak in intellect and delicate in health. This Ludovico had, for a long time, held the reigns of government, and with the title of Duke besides, reigned with the full authority of a despotic prince; since he had subdued by his own power, the fortresses, the soldiery, and the treasures of the state. But ambitious beyond all belief, he could not sleep tranquilly owing to the precarious state of affairs, and therefore he pondered seriously on the means of ridding himself of his nephew; not because he feared the latter capable of resuming the supreme command; but because Isabella, of Arragon, his wife, a woman of a masculine mind, incessantly urged her fathei4 Ferdinand, King of Naples, no longer to tolerate such a disgrace; and warmly besought him to take into consideration the danger to their lives, continually exposed with those of their children to the plots and treachery of Ludovico. On the other hand he know that his name was hateful to the people, and that the greatest compassion was felt by each individual for the unhappy John Galeazzo, the legitimate lord of Milan; however, in order to gain his ends, he first scattered with a lavish hand the seeds of discordbetween the king of Naples and Alexander VI., Bodrigo Borgia, (who had the year before unjustifiably put on the tiara, ) in order that by thus exciting a formidable enemy against Ferdinand, the latter might find his power and his ability to maintain the rights of his son-in-law, diminished. Some facts, which, in other circumstances would have been considered of no account, served him as a pretext, and these represented afterward with a ma...