merous small armies varying in size, each held
together by personal engagements to a captain, and all dependent on the
will of a general-in-chief, who had made a bargain with some prince or
republic for supplying a fixed contingent of fighting-men. The
_condottiere_ was in other words a contractor or _impresario_,
undertaking to do a certain piece of work for a certain price, and to
furnish the requisite forces for the business in good working order. It
will be readily seen upon this system how important were the personal
qualities of the captain, and what great advantages those condottieri
had who, like the petty princes of Romagna and the March, the
Montefeltri, Ordelaffi, Malatesti, Manfredi, Orsini, and Vitelli, could
rely upon a race of hardy vassals for their recruits.

It is not necessary to follow Colleoni's fortunes in the Regno, at
Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He continued in the service of Caldora, who
was now General of the Church, and had his _condotta_ gradually
increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the murderers of his father, began to
dread his rising power, and determined, if possible, to ruin him. He was
not a man to be easily assassinated; so they sent a hired ruffian to
Caldora's camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken his name by fraud, and
that he was himself the real son of Puho Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied
the liar to a duel; and this would have taken place before the army, had
not two witnesses appeared who knew the fathers of both Colleoni and
the _bravo_, and who gave such evidence that the captains of the army
were enabled to ascertain the truth. The impostor was stripped and
drummed out of the camp.

At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese,
Bartolommeo found himself without occupation. He now offered himself to
the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola
against Filippo Visconti. His engagement allowed him forty men, which,
after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were
increased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was
now his general-in-chief--a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes
to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni spent
the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring
against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service,
until his condotta reached the number of eight hundred men. Upon
Gattamelata's death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the m