That saved us from that wintry tempest drear,
Which would have whelmed us from Jove’s angry sky.
Stanza vii. lines 3 and 4.
The allied Spanish and papal army, if victorious, would probably have turned their anus against the dukedom of Ferrara.
Hadst thou not made resistance to thy foe,
Setter, Ravenna, had it been for thee,
And thou been warned by Brescia’s fate, than so
Thine should Faenza warn and Rimini.
O Lewis, bid good old Trivulzio go
With thine, and to thy bands example be,
And tell what ills such license still has bred,
Heaping our ample Italy with dead.
Stanza ix.
Brescia was sacked a short time before Ravenna. The fate of this last city terrified Faenza and Rimini into a surrender.
Trivulzio may have been well fitted to restrain the excesses of others, but was not himself free from a similar reproach. He was a native of Milan, and banished from thence for his adherence to the Guelph party. He entered the service of France, and obtained great distinction in the wars of Charles VIII. Louis XII. and Francis I. He was made governor of Milan in 1500, and of Genoa in 1504. But he is accused of a rapacious administration of power, and of a haughty, ungovernable temper, and on this account forfeited the favour of Francis; which is said to have occasioned his death in 1518. His epitaph speaks his character.
‘qui nunquam requievit, hic tandem quiescit.’
Ariosto’s wish to see him at the head of the French troops might be founded on the maxim, ‘Nemo nisi Romanus Romanum feriat.’
