Lodovico dall'Armi

The relations of trust which bravi occasionally maintained with foreign Courts, supply some curious illustrations of their position in Italian society. One characteristic instance may be selected from documents in the Venetian Archives referring to Lodovico dall'Armi.[228] This man belonged to a noble family of Bologna; and there are reasons for supposing that his mother was sister to Cardinal Campeggi, famous in the annals of the English Reformation. Outlawed from his native city for a homicide, Lodovico adopted the profession of arms and the management of secret diplomacy. He first took refuge at the Court of France, where in 1541 he obtained such credit, especially with the Dauphin, that he was entrusted with a mission for raising revolt in Siena against the Spaniards.[229] His transactions in that city with Giulio Salvi, then aspiring to its lordship, and in Rome with the French ambassador, led to a conspiracy which only awaited the appearance of French troops upon the Tuscan frontier to break out into open rebellion. The plot, however, transpired before it had been matured; and Lodovico took flight through the Florentine territory. He was arrested at Montevarchi and confined in the fortress of Florence, where he made such revelations as rendered the extinction of the Sienese revolt an easy matter. After this we do not hear of him until he reappears at Venice in the year 1545. He was now accredited to the English ambassador with the title of Henry VIII.'s 'Colonel,' and enjoyed the consideration accorded to a powerful monarch's privy agent.

His pension amounted to fifty crowns a month, while he kept eight captains at his orders, each of whom received half that sum as pay. These subordinates were people of some social standing. We find among them a Trissino of Vicenza and a Bonifacio of Verona, the one entitled Marquis and the other Count. What the object of Lodovico's residence in Italy might be, did not appear. Though he carried letters of recommendation from the English Court, he laid no claim to the rank of diplomatic envoy. But it was tolerably well known that he employed himself in levying troops. Whether these were meant to be used against France or in favor of Savoy, or whether, as the Court of Rome suggested, Henry had given orders for the murder of his cousin, Cardinal Pole, at Trento, remained an open question. Lodovico might have dwelt in peace under the tolerant rule of the Venetians, had he not exposed himself to a collision with their police. In the month of August he assaulted the captain of the night guard in a street brawl; and it was also proved against him that he had despatched two of his men to inflict a wound of infamy upon a gentleman at Treviso. These offenses, coinciding with urgent remonstrances from the Papal Curia, gave the Venetian Government fair pretext for expelling him from their dominions. A ban was therefore published against him and fourteen of his followers. The English ambassador declined to interfere in his behalf, and the man left Italy. At the end of August he appeared at Brussels, where he attempted to excuse himself in an interview with the Venetian ambassador. Now began a diplomatic correspondence between the English Court and the Venetian Council, which clearly demonstrates what kind of importance attached to this private agent. The Chancellor Lord Wriothesley, and the Secretary Sir William Paget, used considerable urgency to obtain a suspension of the ban against Dall'Armi. After four months' negotiation, during which the Papal Court endeavored to neutralize Henry's influence, the Doge signed a safe-conduct for five years in favor of the bravo. Early in 1546 Lodovico reappeared in Lombardy. At Mantua he delivered a letter signed by Henry himself to the Duke Francesco Gonzaga, introducing 'our noble and beloved familiar Lodovico Dall'Armi,' and begging the Duke to assist him in such matters as he should transact at Mantua in the king's service.[230] Lodovico presented this letter in April; but the Duchess, who then acted as regent for her son Francesco, refused to receive him. She alleged that the Duke forbade the levying of troops for foreign service, and declined to complicate his relations with foreign powers. It seems, from a sufficiently extensive correspondence on the affairs of Lodovico, that he was understood by the Italian princess to be charged with some special commission for recruiting soldiers against the French.

The peace between England and France, signed at Guines in June, rendered Lodovico's mission nugatory; and the death of Henry VIII. in January 1547 deprived him of his only powerful support. Meanwhile he had contrived to incur the serious displeasure of the Venetian Republic. In the autumn of 1546 they outlawed one of their own nobles, Ser Mafio Bernardo, on the charge of his having revealed state secrets to France. About the middle of November, Bernardo, then living in concealment at Ravenna, was lured into the pine forest by two men furnished with tokens which secured his confidence. He was there murdered, and the assassins turned out to be paid instruments of Lodovico. It now came to light that Lodovico and Ser Mafio Bernardo had for some time past colluded in political intrigue. If, therefore, the murder had a motive, this was found in Lodovico's dread of revelations under the event of Ser Mario's capture. Submitted to torture in the prisons of the Ten, Ser Mafio might have incriminated his accomplice both with England and Venice. It was obvious why he had been murdered by Lodovico's men. Dall'Armi was consequently arrested and confined in Venice. After examination, followed by a temporary release, he prudently took flight into the Duchy of Milan. Though they held proof of his guilt in the matter of Ser Mafio's murder, the Venetians were apparently unwilling to proceed to extremities against the King of England's man. Early in February, however, Sir William Paget surrendered him in the name of Lord Pro tector Somerset to the discretion of S. Mark. Furnished with this assurance that Dall'Armi had lost the favor of England, the Signory wrote to demand his arrest and extradition from the Spanish governor in Milan. He was in fact arrested on February 10. The letter announcing his capture describes him as a man of remarkably handsome figure, accustomed to wear a crimson velvet cloak and a red cap trimmed with gold. It is exactly in this costume that Lodovico has been represented by Bonifazio in a picture of the Massacre of the Innocents. The bravo there stands with his back partly turned, gazing stolidly upon a complex scene of bloodshed. He wears a crimson velvet mantle, scarlet cap and white feather, scarlet stockings, crimson velvet shoes, and rose-colored silk underjacket. His person is that of a gallant past the age of thirty, high-complexioned, with short brown beard, spare whiskers and moustache. He is good to look at, except that the sharp set mouth suggests cynical vulgarity and shallow rashness. On being arrested in Milan, Lodovico proclaimed himself a privileged person (persona pubblica), bearing credentials from the King of England; and, during the first weeks of his confinement, he wrote to the Emperor for help. This was an idle step. Henry's death had left him without protectors, and Charles V. felt no hesitation in abandoning his suppliant to the Venetians. When the usual formalities regarding extradition had been completed, the Milanese Government delivered Lo dovico at the end of April into the hands of the Rector of Brescia, who forwarded him under a guard of two hundred men to Padua. He was hand-cuffed; and special directions were given regarding his safety, it being even prescribed that if he refused food it should be thrust down his throat. What passed in the prisons of the State, after his arrival at Venice, is not known. But on May 14, he was beheaded between the columns on the Molo.

Venice, at this epoch, incurred the reproaches of her neighbors for harboring adventurers of Lodovico's stamp. One of the Fregosi of Genoa a certain Valerio, and Pietro Strozzi, the notorious French agent, all of whom habitually haunted the lagoons, roused sufficient public anxiety to necessitate diplomatic communications between Courts, and to disquiet fretful Italian princelings. Banished from their own provinces, and plying a petty Condottiere trade, such men, when they came together on a neutral ground, engaged in cross-intrigues which made them politically dangerous. They served no interest but that of their own egotism, and they were notoriously unscrupulous in the means employed to effect immediate objects. At the same time, the protection which they claimed from foreign potentates withdrew them from the customary justice of the State. Bedmar's conspiracy in 1617-18 revealed to Venice the full extent of the peril which this harborage of ruffians involved; for though grandees of the distinction of the Duke of Ossuna were involved in it, the main agents, on whose ambition and audacity all depended, sprang from those French, English, Spanish, and Italian mercenaries, who crowded the low quarters of the city, alert for any mischief, and inflamed with the wildest projects of self-aggrandizement by policy and bloodshed. Nothing testifies to the social and political decrepitude of Italy in this period more plainly than the importance which folk like Lodovico Dall'Armi acquired, and the revolutionary force which a man like Jaffier commanded.