ost important
of the generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships
of Romano in the Bergamasque, and of Covo and Antegnate in the
Cremonese, had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make
independent engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a
general was a combination of caution with audacity. He united the
brilliant system of his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of
the Sforzeschi; and thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring
stratagems and vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check.
He was a captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an
advantage, no less than for using a success with discretion. Moreover
he had acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with
his masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.
His company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops into
the field.

In the year 1443, Colleoni quitted the Venetian service on account of a
quarrel with Gherardo Dandolo, the Proveditore of the Republic. He now
took a commission from Filippo Maria Visconti, who received him at Milan
with great honor, bestowed on him the Castello Adorno at Pavia, and sent
him into the March of Ancona upon a military expedition. Of all Italian
tyrants, this Visconti was the most difficult to serve. Constitutionally
timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and base informers, shrinking
from the sight of men in the recesses of his palace, and controlling the
complicated affairs of his duchy by means of correspondents and
intelligencers, this last scion of the Milanese despots lived like a
spider in an inscrutable network of suspicion and intrigue. His policy
was one of endless plot and counterplot. He trusted no man; his servants
were paid to act as spies on one another; his body-guard consisted of
mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains in the field were watched and
thwarted by commissioners appointed to check them at the point of
successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard
task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand
his motives. Half the duke's time seems to have been spent in
unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and
weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power
was artificial, that the least breath might blow him back into the
nothingness from which he had arisen on the wrecks of his father'