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Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was now his general-in-chief a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni spent the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service, until his Condotta reached the number of 800 men.
I feel assured he will do all in his power to entice Erasmo from me; but hope, by constant watchfulness, to counteract his influence. Oh! Mary, how much we need a Protestant minister here: one who could effectually stem the tide of superstition and degradation that now flows unimpeded through this community.
Foolish and light-headed the young Queen doubtless was, and with some childish habits which must have been annoying to her grave consort, many years her senior, Erasmo Brasca, the Milanese envoy, says that he was obliged to remonstrate with her for the silly trick of eating her meals on the floor instead of at table, and yet she was a warm-hearted, affectionate girl, and like many another princess of that time, she deserved a happier fate than the loveless marriage that had been arranged for her.
Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was now his general-in-chief a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni spent the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service, until his condotta reached the number of eight hundred men.
In his extremity Lodovico turned to his sole remaining ally, the Emperor Maximilian, and sent Erasmo Brasca and Marchesino Stanga to Fribourg, to beg that a German force might be speedily sent to his assistance, while he earnestly entreated his niece the empress to plead his cause with her husband.
Even before his own marriage, in the summer of 1490, Lodovico had sent Erasmo Brasca on a private mission to the French king, to ask for a renewal of the investiture of the Duchy of Genoa, originally granted to Francesco Sforza by Louis XI. Since those days, Genoa had been lost during the regency of Duchess Bona, and only recovered in 1888, by Lodovico's successful negotiations.
But oh, mother, would you believe it! he told Erasmo, as he went off, that he must ask you to let him go to bathe to-morrow; and instead of going to the river, he must come to the church: he wanted to give him something. He told him in Spanish, but I understood what he said. Now, wasn't that teaching him to tell a lie? and he a Padre too! Mother, don't you think he ought to be ashamed?"
And if he himself wrote the life which we find before the Elzevir edition, said to be Erasmo autore, he does not particularly mention the year in which he was born, but places it circa annum 67 supra millesintum quadringentesimum. Another Latin life, which is prefixed to the above-mentioned London edition, fixes it in the year 1465; as does his epitaph at Basil.
There seems little doubt that Caiazzo's defection was one of the principal causes of Lodovico's ruin, but, whatever the circumstances of the case may have been, it is certain that on the next day the French entered Alessandria without meeting with any resistance, and Trivulzio sent word to his kinsman Erasmo that before the week was over he would dine with him in Milan.
And Messer Lodovico showed them also what he himself held to be his greatest treasures the precious books adorned by exquisite miniatures from the hand of Fra Antonio da Monza and other living artists, the Sforziada and the Chant de Roland, and the rare Greek and Latin manuscripts which he had been at such infinite pains to collect; the codici brought from Bobbio by Giorgio Merula, and the manuscripts which Erasmo Brasca had discovered when Il Moro sent him to search for missing texts in the convents of the South of France.
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