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Updated: July 17, 2025
See Corio, p. 238, who adds sententiously, 'il che quasi fu l' ultima roina del suo stato. Sismondi says he gave 600,000 florins to Charles, the brother of Isabella, but authorities differ about the actual amount. Galeazzo held his court at Pavia. His brother reigned at Milan. Bernabo displayed all the worst vices of the Visconti.
It is this view of the subject which has led Sismondi, among other critics, to consider that the principal end of the author was "the ridicule of enthusiasm the contrast of the heroic with the vulgar" and he sees something profoundly sad in the conclusions to which it leads. This sort of criticism appears to be over-refined.
'In the middle of the fourteenth century, writes Sismondi, 'all the soldiers who served in Italy were foreigners: at the end of the same century they were all, or nearly all, Italian. This sentence indicates a most important change in the Condottiere system, which took place during the lifetime of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.
Récamier and the Duchess of Devonshire, Canova and Foscolo, and Sismondi and Werner, the whole intellectual world of the Empire and the Restoration, all seem to be projected, figures now flitting past like shadows, now dwelling long, clear and coloured, upon the rather colourless and patternless background of Mme. d'Albany's house; nay, of Mme. d'Albany herself.
When we have reduced the number of toilers," wrote Sismondi, "to a fourth or a fifth of what it is at present, we shall need only a fourth or a fifth as many priests, physicians, etc. When we have cut them off altogether, we shall be in a position to dispense with the human race."
Yet while setting forth the vices of this tyranny in language which even Sismondi would have been contented to translate and sign, Guicciardini shows no passion. The Medici were only acting as befitted princes eager for power, although they crushed the spirit of the people, discouraged political ardor, extinguished military zeal, and did all that in them lay to enervate the nation they governed.
When liberated he proceeded to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Sismondi, the Swiss historian, who treated him with great kindness and urbanity, and introduced him to Pellegrino Rossi, the exiled publicist, at that time professor of law at Geneva. From Geneva Mazzini went to Lyons, and there collected a band of Italian exiles, mostly military men, who contemplated the invasion of Savoy.
Such is the story of Mme. d'Albany's friendship for two of the noblest spirits, Sismondi and Foscolo, of their day; the noblest, the one in his pure austerity, the other in his magnanimous passionateness, that ever crossed the path of the beloved of Alfieri. With her other friends, who gave less of their own heart and asked less of hers, Mme. d'Albany was more fortunate.
One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares, thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the thirteenth century is entirely republican. The architecture of the thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the newly risen popular power.
She played, she sang, she discoursed on everything, a priestess, a sibyl, full of inspiration, listened to as an oracle or an idol. "To hear her," says Sismondi, "one would have said that she was the experience of many souls mingled into one, I looked and listened with transport.
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