Colleoni is often
styled "di Andegavia e Borgogna." In the case of Rene, the honor was but
a barren show. But the patent of Charles the Bold had more significance.
In 1473 he entertained the project of employing the great Italian
general against his Swiss foes; nor does it seem reasonable to reject a
statement made by Colleoni's biographer, to the effect that a secret
compact had been drawn up between him and the Duke of Burgundy, for the
conquest and partition of the Duchy of Milan. The Venetians, in whose
service Colleoni still remained, when they became aware of this project,
met it with peaceful but irresistible opposition.

Colleoni had been engaged continually since his earliest boyhood in the
trade of war. It was not therefore possible that he should have gained a
great degree of literary culture. Yet the fashion of the times made it
necessary that a man in his position should seek the society of
scholars. Accordingly his court and camp were crowded with students, in
whose wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It will be
remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous, Francesco
Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, piqued
themselves at least as much upon their patronage of letters as upon
their prowess in the field.

Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of manners. As became
a soldier, he was temperate in food and moderate in slumber. It was
recorded of him that he had never sat more than one hour at meat in his
own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he
would converse with his friends, using commonly his native dialect of
Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of adventure, and
now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he resembled his
illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely pious
in an age which, however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial
religion, was profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal lordships in
the Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their fairest churches
and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for example, he rebuilt and
re-endowed two monasteries, the one dedicated to St. Chiara, the other
to St. Francis. In Bergamo itself he founded an establishment named "La
Pieta," for the good purpose of dowering and marrying poor girls. This
house he endowed with a yearly income of three thousand ducats. The
sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some dist