It was possible for a Condottiere to obtain the lordship of a district
even without usurpation, in the case when his employer, through want of
money or troops, provided for him in this way; under any circumstances
the Condottiere, even when he dismissed for the time the greater part
of his forces, needed a safe place where he could establish his winter
quarters, and lay up his stores and provisions. The first example of a
captain thus portioned is John Hawkwood, who was invested by Gregory XI
with the lordship of Bagnacavallo and Cotignola. When with Alberigo da
Barbiano Italian armies and leaders appeared upon the scene, the
chances of founding a principality, or of increasing one already
acquired, became more frequent. The first great bacchanalian outbreak
of military ambition took place in the duchy of Milan after the death
of Giangaleazzo (1402). The policy of his two sons was chiefly aimed at
the destruction of the new despotisms founded by the Condottieri; and
from the greatest of them, Facino Cane, the house of Visconti
inherited, together with his widow, a long list of cities, and 400,000
golden florins, not to speak of the soldiers of her first husband whom
Beatrice di Tenda brought with her. From henceforth that thoroughly
immoral relation between the governments and their Condottieri, which
is characteristic of the fifteenth century, became more and more
common. An old story--one of those which are true and not true,
everywhere and nowhere--describes it as follows: The citizens of a
certain town (Siena seems to be meant) had once an officer in their
service who had freed them from foreign aggression; daily they took
counsel how to recompense him, and concluded that no reward in their
power was great enough, not even if they made him lord of the city. At
last one of them rose and said, 'Let us kill him and then worship him
as our patron saint.' And so they did, following the example set the
Roman senate with Romulus. In fact the Condottieri had reason to fear
none so much as their employers: if they were successful, they became