CHAPTER XI
THE SIEGE OF ALESSANDRIA
Gabriello Maria Visconti's plans for the restoration of Ghibelline authority suffered shipwreck, as was to be expected in a council mainly composed of Guelphs.
The weapon placed in their hands by Gabriello Maria for his own defeat was the Marquis Theodore's demand, as the price of his alliance, that he should be supported in the attempt to recover Genoa to Montferrat.
Della Torre laughed the proposal to scorn. 'And thereby incur the resentment of the King of France!' He developed that argument so speciously that not even Facino, who was present, suspected that it did not contain the true reason of della Torre's opposition.
In hiring a French contingent to strengthen the army which he had led against Buonterzo, Facino had shown the uses that could be made of Boucicault. What Facino had done della Torre could do, nominally on the Duke's behalf. He could hire lances from Boucicault to set against Facino himself when the need for this arose.
'Possibly,' ventured Gabriello, 'the surrender of Vercelli and certain other guarantees would suffice to bring Montferrat into alliance.'
But della Torre desired no such alliance. 'Surrender Vercelli! We have surrendered too much already. It is time we sought alliances that will restore to Milan some of the fiefs of which she has been robbed.'
'And where,' Facino quietly asked him, 'will you find such allies?'
Della Torre hesitated. He knew as well as any man that policies may be wrecked by premature disclosure. If his cherished scheme of alliance with Malatesta of Rimini were suspected, Facino, forewarned, would arm himself to frustrate it. He lowered his glance.
'I am not prepared to say where they may be found. But I am prepared to say that they are not to be found in Theodore of Montferrat at the price demanded by that Prince.'
Gabriello Maria was left to make what excuses he could to the Marquis Theodore; and the Marquis Theodore received them in no pleasant manner. He deemed himself slighted, and said so; hinting darkly that Milan counted enemies enough already without wantonly seeking to add to them. Thus in dudgeon he returned to Montferrat.
Della Torre's patient reticence was very shortly justified.
In the early days of June came an urgent and pitiful appeal from the Duke's brother, Filippo Maria, Count of Pavia, for assistance against the Vignati of Lodi, who were ravaging his territories and had seized the city of Alessandria.
The Duke was in his closet with della Torre and Lonate when that letter reached him. He scowled and frowned and grunted over the parchment awhile, then tossed it to della Torre.
'A plague on him that wrote it! Can you read the scrawl, Antonio?'
Della Torre took it up. 'It is from your brother, highness; the Lord Filippo Maria.'
'That skin of lard!' Gian Maria was contemptuous. 'If he remembers my existence, he must be in need of something.'
Della Torre gravely read the letter aloud. The Prince guffawed once or twice over a piteous phrase, meanwhile toying with the head of a great mastiff that lay stretched at his feet.
He guffawed more heartily than ever at the end, the malice of his nature finding amusement in the calamities of his brother. 'His Obesity of Pavia is disturbed at last! Let the slothful hog exert himself, and sweat away some of his monstrous bulk.'
'Do not laugh yet, my lord.' Della Torre's lean, crafty, swarthy face was grave. 'I have ever warned you against the ambition of Vignate, and that it would not be satisfied with the reconquest of Lodi. He is in arms, not so much against your brother as against the house of Visconti.'
'God's bones!' Goggle-eyed, the Duke stared at his adviser. Then to vent unreasoning fury he rose and caught the dog a vicious kick which drove it yelping from him. 'By Hell, am I to go in arms against Vignate? Is that your counsel?'
'No less.'
'And this campaign against Buonterzo scarcely ended! Am I to have nothing but wars and feuds and strife to distract my days? Am I to spend all in quelling brigandage? By the Passion! I'd as soon be Duke of Hell as reign in Milan.'
'In that case,' said della Torre, 'do nothing, and the rest may follow.'
'Devil take you, Antonio!' He caught up a hawk-lure from the table, and set himself to strip it as he talked, scattering the feathers about the room. 'Curb him, you say? Curb this damned thief of Lodi? How am I to curb him? The French lances are gone back to Boucicault. The parsimonious fathers of this miserly city were in haste to dismiss them. They think of nothing but ducats, may their souls perish! They think more of ducats than of their duke.' Inconsequently, peevishly, he ranted on, reducing the hawk-lure to rags the while, and showing the crafty della Torre his opportunity.
'Vignate,' he said at last, when the Duke ceased, 'can be in no great strength when all is reckoned. Facino's own condotta should fully suffice to whip him out of Alessandria and back to Lodi.'
Gian Maria moved restlessly about the room.
'What if it should not? What if Facino should be broken by Vignate? What then? Vignate will be at the gates of Milan.'
'He might be if we could not prepare for the eventuality.'
With a sudden curious eagerness Gian Maria glared at his mentor. 'Can we? In God's name, can we? If we could ...' He checked. But the sudden glow of hate and evil hope in his prominent pale eyes showed how he was rising to the bait.
Della Torre judged the moment opportune. 'We can,' he answered firmly.
'How, man? How?'
'In alliance with Malatesta your highness would be strong enough to defy all comers.'
'Malatesta!' The Duke leapt as if stung. But instantly he curbed himself. The loose embryonic features tightened, reflecting the concentration of the embryonic wicked mind within. 'Malatesta, eh?' His tone was musing. He let himself drop once more into his broad armchair, and sat there, cross-legged, pondering.
Della Torre moved softly to his side, and lowered his voice to an impressive note.
'Indeed, your highness should consider whether you will not in any event bring in Malatesta so soon as Facino has departed on this errand.'
The handsome, profligate Lonate, lounging, a listener by the window, cleared up all ambiguity: 'And so make sure that this upstart does not return to trouble you again.'
Gian Maria's head sank a little between his shoulders. Here was his chance to rid himself for all time of the tyrannical tutelage of that condottiero, made strong by popular support.
'You speak as if sure that Malatesta will come.'
Della Torre put his cards on the table at last. 'I am. I have his word that he will accept a proposal of alliance from your highness.'
'You have his word!' The ever-ready suspicions of a weak mind were stirring.
'I took his feeling against the hour when your potency might need a friend.'
'And the price?'
Della Torre spread his hands. 'Malatesta has ambitions for his daughter. If she were Duchess of Milan ...'
'Is that a condition?' The Duke's voice was sharp.
'A contingency only,' della Torre untruthfully assured him. 'Yet if realised the alliance would be consolidated. It would become a family affair.'
'Give me air! Let me think.' He rose, thrusting della Torre away by a sweep of his thin arm.
Ungainly in his gaudy red and white, shuffling his feet as he went, he crossed to the window where Lonate made way for him. There he stood a moment looking out, whilst between Lonate and della Torre a look of intelligence was flashed.
Suddenly the boy swung round again, and his grotesque countenance was flushed. 'By God and His Saints! What thought does it ask?' He laughed, slobberingly, at the picture in his mind of a Facino Cane ruined beyond redemption. Nor could he perceive, poor fool, that he would be but exchanging one yoke for another, probably heavier.
Still laughing, he dismissed della Torre and Lonate, and sent for Facino. When the condottiero came, he was given Filippo Maria's letter, which he spelled out with difficulty, being little more of a scholar than the Duke.
'It is grave,' he said when he had reached the end.
'You mean that Vignate is to be feared?'
'Not so long as he is alone. But how long will he so continue? What if he should be joined by Estorre Visconti and the other malcontents? Singly they matter nothing. United they become formidable. And this bold hostility of Vignate's may be the signal for a league.'
'What then?'
'Smash Vignate and drive him out of Alessandria before it becomes a rallying-ground for your enemies.'
'About it, then,' rasped the Duke. 'You have the means.'
'With the Burgundians enlisted after Travo, my condotta stands at two thousand three hundred men. If the civic militia is added ...'
'It is required for the city's defence against Estorre and the other roving insurgents.'
Facino did not argue the matter.
'I'll do without it, then.'
He set out next day at early morning, and by nightfall, the half of that march to Alessandria accomplished, he brought his army, wearied and exhausted by the June heat, to rest under the red walls of Pavia.
To proceed straight against the very place which Vignate had seized and held was a direct course of action in conflict with ideas which Bellarion did not hesitate to lay before the war-experienced officers composing Facino's council. He prefaced their exposition by laying down the principle, a little didactically, that the surest way to defeat an opponent is to assault him at the weakest point. So much Facino and his officers would have conceded on the battle-ground itself. But Bellarion's principle involved a wider range, including the enemy's position before ever battle was joined so as to ensure that the battle-ground itself should be the enemy's weakest point. The course he now urged entailed an adoption of the strategy employed by the Athenians against the Thebans in the Peloponnesian war, a strategy which Bellarion so much admired and was so often to apply.
In its application now, instead of attacking Alessandria behind whose walls the enemy lay in strength, he would have invaded Vignate's own temporarily unguarded Tyranny of Lodi.
Facino laughed a little at his self-sufficiency, and, emboldened by that, Carmagnola took it upon himself to put the fledgling down.
'It is in your nature, I think, to avoid the direct attack.' He sneered as he spoke, having in mind the jousts at Milan and the manner in which Bellarion had cheated him of the satisfaction upon which he counted. 'You forget, sir, that your knighthood places you under certain obligations.'
'But not, I hope,' said Bellarion innocently, 'under the obligation of being a fool.'
'Do you call me that?' Carmagnola's sudden suavity was in itself a provocation.
'You boast yourself the champion of the direct attack. It is the method of the bull. But I have never heard it argued from this that the bull is intelligent even among animals.'
'So that now you compare me with a bull?' Carmagnola flushed a little, conscious that Koenigshofen and Stoffel were smiling.
'Quiet!' growled Facino. 'We are not here to squabble among ourselves. Your assumptions, Bellarion, sometimes become presumptions.'
'So you thought on the Trebbia.'
Facino brought his great fist down upon the table. 'In God's name! Will you be pert? You interrupt me. Battering-ram tactics are not in my mind. I choose a different method. But I attack Alessandria none the less, because Vignate and his men are there.'
Discreetly Bellarion said no more, suppressing the argument that by reducing unguarded Lodi and restoring it to the crown of Milan from which it had been ravished, a moral effect might be produced of far-reaching effect upon the fortunes of the duchy.
After a conference with Filippo Maria in his great castle of Pavia, Facino resumed his march, his army now increased by six hundred Italian mercenaries under a soldier of fortune named Giasone Trotta, whom Filippo Maria had hired. He took with him a considerable train of siege artillery, of mangonels, rimbaults, and cannon, to which the Count of Pavia had materially added.
Nevertheless, he did not approach Alessandria within striking distance of such weapons. He knew the strength to withstand assault of that fortress-city, built some three hundred years before on the confines of the Pavese and Montferrat to be a Guelphic stronghold in the struggle between Church and Empire. Derisively then the Ghibellines had dubbed it a fortress of straw. But astride of the river Tanaro, above its junction with the Bormida, this Alessandria of Straw had successfully defied them.
Facino proposed to employ the very strength of her strategic position for the undoing of her present garrison if it showed fight. And meanwhile he would hem the place about, so as to reduce it by starvation.
Crossing the Po somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bassignana, he marched up the left bank of the Tanaro to Pavone, a village in the plain by the river just within three miles of Alessandria. There he took up his quarters, and thence on a radius of some three miles he drew a cordon throughout that low-lying, insalubrious land, intersected with watercourses, where only rice-fields flourished. This cordon crossed the two rivers just above their junction, swept thence to Marengo, recrossing the Bormida, ran to Aulara in the south and on to Casalbagliano in the West, just beyond which it crossed the Tanaro again, and, by way of San Michele in the north, went on to complete the circle at Pavone.
So swift had been the movement that the first intimation to the Alessandrians that they were besieged was from those who, issuing from the city on the morrow, were stopped at the lines and ordered to return.
From information obtained from these, in many cases under threat of torture, it became clear that the populous city was indifferently victualled, and unequal, therefore, to a protracted resistance. And this was confirmed during the first week by the desperate efforts made by Vignate, who was raging like a trapped wolf in Alessandria. Four times he attempted to break out in force. But within the outer circle, and close to the city so as to keep it under observation, Facino had drawn a ring of scouts, whose warning in each case enabled him to concentrate promptly at the point assailed. The advantage lay with Facino in these engagements, since the cavalry upon which Vignate chiefly depended found it impossible to operate successfully in those swampy plains. Over ground into which the horses sank to their fetlocks at every stride, a cavalry charge was a brutum fulmen. Horses were piked by Koenigshofen's foot, and formations smashed and hurled back by an enemy upon whom their impact was no more than a spent blow.
If they escaped it was because Facino would make no prisoners. He would not willingly relieve Alessandria of a single mouth that would help to eat up its power of endurance. For the same reason he enjoined it upon his officers that they should be as sparing as possible of life.
'That is to say, of human life,' said Bellarion, raising his voice in council for the first time since last rebuked.
They looked at him, not understanding.
'What other life is in question?' asked Carmagnola.
'There are the horses. If allowed to survive, they may be eaten in the last extremity.'
They acted upon that reminder when Vignate made his next sally. Facino did not wait as hitherto to receive the charge upon his pikes, but raked the enemy ranks, during their leisurely advance and again during their subsequent retreat with low-aimed arbalest bolts which slew only horses.
Whether Vignate perceived the reason, or whether he came to realise that the ground was not suitable for cavalry, his fourth sally, to the north in the direction of San Michele, was made on foot. He had some two thousand men in his following, and had they been lightly armed and properly led it is probable that they would have broken through, for the opposing force was materially less. But Vignate, unaccustomed to handling infantry, committed the error of the French at Agincourt. He employed dismounted men-at-arms in all the panoply in which normally they rode to battle. Their fate was similar to that of the French on that earlier occasion. Toiling over the clammy ground in their heavy armour, their advance became leaden-footed, and by the time they reached Facino's lines they were exhausted men easily repulsed, and as glad as they were surprised to escape death or capture.
After that failure, three representatives of the Commune of Alessandria, accompanied by one of Vignate's captains, presented themselves at Facino's quarters in the house of the Curate of Pavone, temporarily appropriated by the condottiero.
They were ushered into a plain yellow-washed room, bare of all decoration save that of a crudely painted wooden crucifix which hung upon the wall above a straight-backed wooden settle. An oblong table of common pine stood before this settle; a writing-pulpit, also of pine, placed under one of the two windows by which the place was lighted, and four rough stools and a shallow armchair completed the furniture.
The only gentle touch about that harsh interior was supplied by the sweet-smelling lemon verbena and rosemary mingled in the fresh rushes with which the floor was copiously strewn to dissemble its earthen nudity.
Carmagnola, showily dressed as usual in blue and crimson, with marvellously variegated hose and a jewelled caul confining his flaxen hair, had appropriated the armchair, and his gorgeous presence seemed to fill the place. Stoffel, Koenigshofen, Giasone Trotta, and Vougeois, who commanded the Burgundians, occupied the stools and afforded him a sober background. Bellarion leaned upon the edge of the settle, where Facino sat alone, square-faced and stern, whilst the envoys invited him to offer terms for the surrender of the city.
'The Lord Count of Pavia,' he told them, 'does not desire to mulct too heavily those of his Alessandrian subjects who have remained loyal. He realises the constraint of which they may have been the victims, and he will rest content with a payment of fifty thousand florins to indemnify him for the expenses of this expedition.' The envoys breathed more freely. But Facino had not yet done. 'For myself I shall require another fifty thousand florins for distribution among my followers, to ransom the city from pillage.'
The envoys were aghast. 'One hundred thousand gold florins!' cried one. 'My lord, it will ...'
He raised his hand for silence. 'That as regards the Commune of Alessandria. Now, as concerns the Lord Vignate, who has so rashly ventured upon this aggression. He is allowed until noon to-morrow to march out of Alessandria with his entire following, but leaving behind all arms, armour, horses, bullocks, and war material of whatsoever kind. Further, he will enter into a bond for one hundred thousand florins, to be paid either by himself personally or by the Commune of Lodi to the Lord Count of Pavia's city of Alessandria, to indemnify the latter for the damages sustained by this occupation. And my Lord Vignate will further submit to the occupation of the city of Lodi by an army of not more than two thousand men, who will be housed and fed and salaried at the city of Lodi's charges until the indemnity is paid. With the further condition that if payment is not made within one month, the occupying army shall take it by putting the city to sack.'
The officer sent by Vignate, a stiff, black-bearded fellow named Corsana, flushed indignantly. 'These terms are very harsh,' he complained.
'Salutary, my friend,' Facino corrected him. 'They are intended to show the Lord Vignate that brigandage is not always ultimately profitable.'
'You think he will agree?' The man's air was truculent. The three councillors looked scared.
Facino smiled grimly. 'If he has an alternative, let him take advantage of it. But let him understand that the offer of these terms is for twenty-four hours only. After that I shall not let him off so lightly.'
'Lightly!' cried Corsano in anger, and would have added more but that Facino cropped the intention.
'You have leave to go.' Thus, royally, Facino dismissed them.
They did not return within the twenty-four hours, nor as day followed day did Vignate make any further sign. Time began to hang heavily on the hands of the besiegers, and Facino's irritation grew daily, particularly when an attack of the gout came to imprison him in the cheerless house of the Curate of Pavone.
One evening a fortnight after the parley and nearly a month after the commencement of the siege, as Facino sat at supper with his officers, all save Stoffel, who was posted at Casalbagliano, the condottiero, who was growing impatient of small things, inveighed against the quality of the food.
It was Giasone Trotta, to whose riders fell the task of provisioning the army, who answered him. 'Faith! If the siege endures much longer, it is we who will be starved by it. My men have almost cleaned up the countryside for a good ten miles in every direction.'
It was a jocular exaggeration, but it provoked an explosion from Facino.
'God confound me if I understand how they hold out. With two thousand ravenous soldiers in the place, a week should have brought them to starvation.'
Koenigshofen thoughtfully stroked his square red beard. 'It's colossally mysterious,' said he.
'Mysterious, aye! That's what plagues me. They must be fed from outside.'
'That is quite impossible!' Carmagnola was emphatic. As Facino's lieutenant, it fell to his duty to see that the cordon was properly maintained.
'Yet what is the alternative,' wondered Bellarion, 'unless they are eating one another?'
Carmagnola's blue eyes flashed upon him almost malevolently for this further reflection upon his vigilance.
'You set me riddles,' he said disdainfully.
'And you're not good at riddles, Francesco,' drawled Bellarion, meeting malice with malice. 'I should have remembered it.'
Carmagnola heaved himself up. 'Now, by the Bones of God, what do you mean?'
The ears of the ill-humoured Facino had caught a distant sound. 'Quiet, you bellowing calf!' he snapped. 'Listen! Listen! Who comes at that breakneck speed?'
It was a hot, breathless night of July, and the windows stood wide to invite a cooling draught. As the four men, so bidden, grew attentive, they caught from the distance the beat of galloping hooves.
'It's not from Alessandria,' said Koenigshofen.
'No, no,' grunted Facino, and thereafter they listened in silence.
There was no reason for it save such colour as men's imaginings will give a sound breaking the deathly stillness of a hot dark night, yet each conceived and perhaps intercommunicated a feeling that these hooves approaching so rapidly were harbingers of portents.
Carmagnola went to the door as two riders clattered down the village street, and, seeing the tall figure silhouetted against the light from within, they slackened pace.
'The Lord Facino Cane of Biandrate? Where is he quartered?'
'Here!' roared Carmagnola, and at the single word the horses were pulled up with a rasping of hooves that struck fire from the ground.