is wealth he spent
upon his duchy, fortifying and beautifying its cities, drawing youths
of promise to his court, maintaining a great train of life, and
keeping his vassals in good-humour by the lightness of a rule which
contrasted favourably with the exactions of needier despots.

While fighting for the masters who offered him _condotta_ in the
complicated wars of Italy, Duke Frederick used his arms, when occasion
served, in his own quarrels. Many years of his life were spent in a
prolonged struggle with his neighbour Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta,
the bizarre and brilliant tyrant of Rimini, who committed the fatal
error of embroiling himself beyond all hope of pardon with the Church,
and who died discomfited in the duel with his warier antagonist.
Urbino profited by each mistake of Sigismondo, and the history of this
long desultory strife with Rimini is a history of gradual
aggrandisement and consolidation for the Montefeltrian duchy.

In 1459 Duke Frederick married his second wife, Battista, daughter of
Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Their portraits, painted by Piero
della Francesca, are to be seen in the Uffizzi at Florence. Some years
earlier, Frederick lost his right eye and had the bridge of his nose
broken in a jousting match outside the town-gate of Urbino. After this
accident, he preferred to be represented in profile--the profile so
well known to students of Italian art on medals and basreliefs. It was
not without medical aid and vows fulfilled by a mother's
self-sacrifice to death, if we may trust the diarists of Urbino, that
the ducal couple got an heir. In 1472, however, a son was born to
them, whom they christened Guido Paolo Ubaldo. He proved a youth of
excellent parts and noble nature--apt at study, perfect in all
chivalrous accomplishments. But he inherited some fatal physical
debility, and his life was marred with a constitutional disease, which
then received the name of gout, and which deprived him of the free use
of his limbs. After his father's death in 1482, Naples, Florence, and
Milan continued Frederick's war engagements to Guidobaldo. The prince
was but a boy of ten. Therefore these important _condotte_ must be
regarded as compliments and pledges for the future. They prove to what
a pitch Duke Frederick had raised the credit of his state and war
establishment. Seven years later, Guidobaldo married Elisabetta,
daughter of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. This union, though a
happy one