urt, surrounded with the finest scholars and the noblest
gentlemen of Italy. The ill-health which debarred him from the active
pleasures and employments of his station, was borne with uniform
sweetness of temper and philosophy.

When he died, in 1508, his nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere,
succeeded to the duchy, and once more made the palace of Urbino the
resort of men-at-arms and captains. He was a prince of very violent
temper: of its extravagance history has recorded three remarkable
examples. He murdered the Cardinal of Pavia with his own hand in the
streets of Ravenna; stabbed a lover of his sister to death at Urbino;
and in a council of war knocked Francesco Guicciardini down with a
blow of his fist. When the history of Italy came to be written,
Guicciardini was probably mindful of that insult, for he painted
Francesco Maria's character and conduct in dark colours. At the same
time this Duke of Urbino passed for one of the first generals of the
age. The greatest stain upon his memory is his behaviour in the year
1527, when, by dilatory conduct of the campaign in Lombardy, he
suffered the passage of Frundsberg's army unopposed, and afterwards
hesitated to relieve Rome from the horrors of the sack. He was the
last Italian Condottiere of the antique type; and the vices which
Machiavelli exposed in that bad system of mercenary warfare were
illustrated on these occasions. During his lifetime, the conditions of
Italy were so changed by Charles V.'s imperial settlement in 1530,
that the occupation of Condottiere ceased to have any meaning. Strozzi
and Farnesi, who afterwards followed this profession, enlisted in the
ranks of France or Spain, and won their laurels in Northern Europe.

While Leo X. held the Papal chair, the duchy of Urbino was for a while
wrested from the house of Della Rovere, and conferred upon Lorenzo de'
Medici. Francesco Maria made a better fight for his heritage than
Guidobaldo had done. Yet he could not successfully resist the power of
Rome. The Pope was ready to spend enormous sums of money on this petty
war; the Duke's purse was shorter, and the mercenary troops he was
obliged to use, proved worthless in the field. Spaniards, for the
most part, pitted against Spaniards, they suffered the campaigns to
degenerate into a guerilla warfare of pillage and reprisals. In 1517
the duchy was formally ceded to Lorenzo. But this Medici did not live
long to enjoy it, and his only child Catherine, the futu