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Updated: June 14, 2025
He won over adherents among the Mantuans, and then made a league with Can Grande of Verona to divide the spoils of the Bonacolsi; and so, one morning, having bribed the guards to open the city gates, he entered Mantua at the head of the banded forces.
In this time, the wife of a farmer not far from the city dreams a marvelous dream of bringing forth a laurel-bough, and in due time bears into the world the chiefest of all Mantuans, with a smile upon his face. This is a poet, and they call his name Virgil.
The Mantuans, far from imitating the ungrateful Paduans, who, when the Crusaders liberated them from Eccelino, grudged these brave fellows three days' pillage of their city, and even wished back their old tyrant, the Mantuans, we say, seemed not in the least to mind being devoured, but gratefully elected the Gonzaga their captain-general, and purchased him absolution from the Pope for his crimes committed in the sack.
'Sulmona, says Boccaccio, 'bewails that Ovid lies buried far away in exile; and Parma rejoices that Cassius sleeps within its walls. The Mantuans coined a medal in 1257 with the bust of Virgil, and raised a statue to represent him.
It was first called Palazzo del T, from the convergence of roads there in the form of that letter; and the modern Mantuans call it Del Tè, from the superstition, transmitted to us by the Custode of the Ducal Palace, that the Gonzagas merely used it on pleasant afternoons to take tea in! so curiously has latter-day guidemanship interpreted the jolly purpose expressed by the Duke to Giulio.
They were brave, and led many nameless Mantuans to die in forgotten battles for alien quarrels which they never understood. The succession of the Gonzagas was of four captains, ending in 1407; four marquises, ending in 1484; and ten dukes, ending in 1708. The first of the captains was Luigi, as we know.
Meanwhile Spain and Savoy seized Monferrato, but they were afterwards defeated by the French, and the Spanish Milanese was overrun by the Venetians and Mantuans. The German Emperor then sent down his Landsknechts, and in 1630 besieged Mantua, while the French promised help and gave none, and the Pope exhorted Charles to submit.
All seemed lost, when a tall female figure appeared among the defenders. It was Manto. "Fools and cowards!" she exclaimed, "must ye learn your duty from a woman?" And, seizing a catapult, she discharged a stone which laid the masked warrior stunned and senseless on the ground. The next instant Eustachio and Leonardo fell dead, pierced by showers of arrows. The Mantuans sallied forth.
The story has the completeness of a tragedy; but it runs over many centuries, and it ends like a farce, though it ends with a death. One feels, indeed, almost as great satisfaction in the catastrophe as the Mantuans themselves, who terminated their national existence and parted from their last Duke with something like exultation.
It is said that even the degraded Mantuans blushed to be ruled by so dull and ignorant a wretch; but in his time, nevertheless, Mantua was all rejoicings, promenades, pleasure-voyages, and merry-makings. "The Duke recruited women from every country to stock his palace," says an Italian author, "where they played, sang, and made merry at his will and theirs."
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