mily, held a semi-constitutional authority,
which the Visconti first helped him to transmute into a tyranny, and
then, upon Pandolfo's assassination, seized as his own.[7] All Italy and
even Germany had now begun to regard the usurpations of the Milanese
despot with alarm. But the sluggish Emperor Wenceslaus refused to take
action against him; nay, in 1395 he granted to the Visconti the
investiture of the Duchy of Milan for 100,000 florins, reserving only
Pavia for himself. In 1399 the Duke laid hands on Siena; and in the next
two years the plague came to his assistance by enfeebling the ruling
families of Lucca and Bologna, the Guinizzi and the Bentivogli, so that
he was now able to take possession of those cities.

[1] Il Biscione, or the Great Serpent, was the name commonly given
to the tyranny of the Visconti (see M. Villani, vi. 8), in allusion
to their ensign of a naked child issuing from a snake's mouth.

[2] Corio, p. 255, tells how the murder was accomplished. Antonio
tried to make it appear that his brother Bartolommeo had met his
death in the prosecution of infamous amours.

[3] Savoy was not in his hands, however, and the Marquisate of
Montferrat remained nominally independent, though he held its heir
in a kind of honorable confinement. Venice, too, remained in
formidable neutrality, the spectator of the Visconti's conquests.

[4] The policy adopted by the Visconti against the Estensi and the
Gonzaghi was that recommended by Machiavelli (Disc. iii. 32):
'quando alcuno vuole o che un popolo o un principe levi al tutto l'
animo ad uno accordo, non ci e altro modo piu vero, ne piu stabile,
che fargli usare qualche grave scelleratezza contro a colui con il
qual tu non vuoi che l' accordo si faccia.'

[5] This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina,
daughter of Bernabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy
the more disgraceful.

[6] The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty
despotism. Appiano's crime, which gave a tyranny to his children, is
similar to that of Tremacoldo, who murdered his masters, the
Vistarini of Lodi, and to that of Luigi Gonzaga, who founded the
Ducal house of Mantua by the murder of his patron, Passerino
Buonacolsi.

[7] Pandolfo was murdered in 1393. Gian Galeazzo possessed