To such a single crown Gian Galeazzo undoubtedly aspired. And though he was defeated in the end, it was by no mortal means. All the efforts of the hostile league of Florence, Venice, the Pope, and the lesser Italian Princes, could not hinder his advance. His dominions at the beginning of the fifteenth century embraced nearly the whole of Lombardy and the Romagna. The Umbrian cities Perugia and Assisi were his. Lucca, Pisa and Siena obeyed him. The tide of his success crept on. He foresaw and discomfited every move of his opponents. In 1401 Bologna, long an obstacle in his path, was surrendered to him by the Bentivogli. His bravest and most obstinate foe, Florence, lay virtually at his mercy. On every side of her he was supreme. Cut off from all help she waited his deadly attack. The moment of his triumph was at hand.

In July 1402 the Duke instructed his armies to close round the city of the Arno. Retiring from Milan, where the plague had appeared, to his villa at Melegnano, he had the mantle, sceptre and diadem prepared for his coronation as King of Italy. He had nothing to fear now from mortal enemies. There was one power only which his arms and calculations could not defy. On the 10th of August he was seized with the deadly contagion, and a few days later he died, at the age of 49.

Who can tell the thoughts of the man as he lay on his death-bed, in his hands at last all that he had laboured for day and night without ceasing, and they powerless to close upon it. Who can measure the passion of that defeated brain? His death caused infinite joy in Florence, and in Italy generally. Yet there were many who, with an anonymous poet of the time, wept for the loss which had deprived

Their lament was justified. The direct result of the tyrant’s death was the release of all the elements of disorder and reaction in Italy, the revival of angry faction, the break-up of a great organised State among a host of greedy and warring pretenders, and the terrorism of military adventurers over the whole country, ending in the establishment of a dynasty in Milan destined to sell Italy to her final shame and ruin. What if Gian Galeazzo had lived a few years longer? Florence would probably have fallen before him, Florence whose incurable spirit of individualism had been the one barrier between him and his ambition. But was that single little torch of liberty, which itself was soon to waver and be spent, worth the sacrifice of a united and peaceful Italy, strong enough to resist all outside foes, forward enough to lead all Europe in the path of progress?

Yet if that noble fruition of art and civilisation which glorifies the fifteenth century in Florence was conditional on her independence, then Italy through all the tears of her after centuries of sorrow and humiliation might well answer Yes.