n 1414, when the
Jewelers and Goldsmiths' Guild gave a tournament in the Piazza San
Marco, offering as prizes to the victorious lances a collar enriched
with pearls and diamonds, the work of the jewelers, and two helmets
excellently wrought by the goldsmiths. On this occasion the Gonzaga,
with two hundred and sixty Mantuan gentlemen, mounted on superb
horses, contested the prizes with the Marquis of Ferrara, at the
head of two hundred Ferrarese, equally mounted, and attended by their
squires and pages, magnificently dressed. There were sixty thousand
spectators of the encounter. "Both the Marquises," says Mutinelli
in his "Annali Urbani," "being each assisted by fourteen well-armed
cavaliers, combated valorously at the barrier, and were both judged
worthy of the first prize: a Mantuan cavalier took the second."

The Marquis Gonzaga was the first of his line who began that royal
luxury of palaces with which Mantua was adorned. He commenced the
Ducal Palace; but before he went far with the work, he fell a prey to
the science then much affected by Italian princes, but still awaiting
its last refinement from the gifted Lucrezia Borgia. The poor Marquis
was poisoned by his wife's paramour, and died in the year 1444.
Against this prince, our advocate Arrighi records the vandalism of
causing to be thrown down and broken in pieces the antique statue
of Virgil, which stood in one of the public places of Mantua, and of
which the head is still shown in the Museum of the city. In all times,
the Mantuans had honored, in diverse ways, their great poet, and at
certain epochs had coined money bearing his face. With the common
people he had a kind of worship (more likely as wizard than as poet),
and they celebrated annually some now-forgotten event by assembling
with songs and dances about the statue of Virgil, which was destroyed
by the uncle of the Marquis, Malatesta, rather than by the Marquis's
own order. This ill-conditioned person is supposed to have been
"vexed because our Mantuan people thought it their highest glory to be
fellow-citizens of the prince of poets." We can better sympathize with
the advocate's indignation at this barbarity, than with his blame of
Francesco for having consented, by his acceptance of the marquisate,
to become a prince of the Roman Empire. Mantua was thus subjected
to the Emperors, but liberty had long been extinguished; and the
voluntary election of the Council, which bestowed the captaincy on
each