580 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE iavelli should not be held personally responsible for the immoral statecraft depicted in his book. He held no brief for despotism and wrote another work on the republic. He did not invent the conduct prescribed for despots in his volume, but simply shrewdly observed and set down what he saw going on all about him. In northern Italy, Milan had absorbed most of her neigh- bor communes and so had become one of the leading Ital- The chief * an P owers of the tmie of the Renaissance. The despotisms Visconti family were the first dynasty of despots in the north ^ M ^ an ne who became archbishop utilized that office to establish a princedom for his nephew. In 1450 Francesco Sforza, a mercenary general who had married Bianca, a daughter of the last Visconti duke, became des- pot. To the west of the Milanese possessions princely dy- nasties had been ruling in Montferrat and Piedmont ever since the feudal period. To the east Verona and Padua were the centers of powerful principalities, ruled by the Scaliger (de la Scala) and Carrara families respectively until the first half of the fifteenth century, when Venice conquered those territories and brought her possessions up to the fron- tier of Milan. Other smaller despotisms whose courts be- came centers of the Renaissance were Mantua under the Gonzaga, Ferrara ruled by the House of Este, Urbino under Federigo di Montefeltro, and Rimini under Gismondo Mala- testa, famed for his moral enormities, his military skill, and his culture. He and Federigo were deadly enemies and often fought against each other upon opposite sides as condottieri. Such, indeed, was the military repute of both that if one were hired by one side in a war, the other was pretty sure to be engaged by the other side. The cities of Ferrara, Urbino, and Rimini were nominally in the Papal States where other petty tyrants abounded. Venice was one city in the north which remained free from despotic rule. The power of the doge was more and more limited until his position became largely a ceremonial one. He was paid a princely salary and was expected to maintain great state and magnificence; he presided over all the various
