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Updated: May 21, 2025
With insolence and effrontery he strutted up to the prime minister, and, confronting him with his head covered, demanded his sword in the prince's name. This was handed to him with a look of silent consternation; Martinengo, resting the naked point on the ground, snapped it in two with his foot, and threw the fragments at G -'s feet.
But the earliest to arrive, Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco, with his troop of Brescian peasants, found when he reached Milan that they were a few hours too late to share in the last shots fired upon the retreating Austrians. Nowhere, except in Milan, did the revolution meet with a Radetsky.
With a careless step he entered the well-known circle of courtiers, who, as unsuspicious as himself of what was to follow, paid their usual homage, awaiting his commands. After a short interval appeared Martinengo, accompanied by two adjutants, no longer the supple, cringing, smiling courtier, but overbearing and insolent, like a lackey suddenly raised to the rank of a gentleman.
The slightest circumstance might restore it to all its former vigor; and therefore Martinengo well understood that the blow which he was about to strike must be a mortal one. Whatever ground G might have lost in the prince's affections he had gained in his respect.
Two illegitimate daughters, Ursina and Isotta, were recognised and treated by him as legitimate. The first he gave in marriage to Gherardo Martinengo, and the second to Jacopo of the same family. Two other natural children, Doratina and Ricardona, were mentioned in his will: he left them four thousand ducats a piece for dowry.
Amongst those who watched all his movements with jealousy and envy, and who were silently preparing instruments for his destruction, was Joseph Martinengo, a Piedmontese count belonging to the prince's suite, whom G himself had formerly promoted, as an inoffensive creature, devoted to his interests, for the purpose of supplying his own place in attending upon the pleasures of the prince an office which he began to find irksome, and which he willingly exchanged for more useful employment.
Instead of boasting of his good fortune, or allowing his benefactor to feel that he could now dispense with his patronage, Martinengo was, on the contrary, the more cautious to maintain a show of dependence, and with studied humility affected to attach himself more and more closely to the author of his prosperity.
The Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, in a brilliant book published within the last few months on 'The Liberation of Italy, in describing Lord John Russell's opposition to the terms of peace at Villafranca, and the vigorous protest which, as Foreign Minister, he made on behalf of England, says: 'It was a happy circumstance for Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English Government during those difficult years.
The count, apprehensive for the city of Bergamo, besieged Martinengo, a castle so situated that the possession of it would enable him to relieve the former, which was closely pressed by Niccolo, who, having foreseen that the enemy could impede him only from the direction of Martinengo, had put the castle into a complete state of defense, so that the count was obliged to lend his whole force to the siege.
It was only because it smoothed his way to power that he had ever valued the prince's friendship, and he inconsiderately threw down the ladder by which he had risen as soon as he had attained the wished-for eminence. Martinengo was not the man to rest satisfied with so subordinate a part.
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