ees and pensions in the name of past services swelled
his income, the exact extent of which has not, so far as I am aware,
been estimated, but which must have made him one of the richest of
Italian princes. All this wealth he spent upon his duchy, fortifying 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. 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 bas-reliefs. 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