To us the story seems simple: the father, proud to have an offspring who does not lie, looks at the mother with ill-concealed contentment and administers a mild punishment to save face. But Roberto then embroidered this event at length, arriving at the conclusion that his father and mother had no doubt guessed the culprit was Ferrante, had appreciated the fraternal heroism of their preferred son, and had felt relieved not to have to bare the family secret.
Perhaps it is I who am embroidering, from meager clues, but the presence of the absent brother will have its importance in our story. We will find traces of this puerile game in the behavior of the adult Roberto—or at least of Roberto at the moment we find him on the Daphne, in a plight that, to tell the truth, would have ensnared anyone.
But I digress; we have still to establish how Roberto arrived at the siege of Casale. And here we must give fantasy free rein and imagine how it might have happened.
It took time for news to reach La Griva, but for at least two years they had known that the succession to the dukedom of Mantua was causing the Monferrato region much trouble, and a bit of a siege had already taken place. To be brief (and this is a story that others have already told, though in a fashion even more fragmentary than mine): in December of 1627 the duke Vincenzo II of Mantua is dying, and around the deathbed of the old rake who has been unable to produce sons there is a ballet of four claimants, with their agents and their protectors.
The victor is the marquis of SaintCharmont, who manages to convince Vincenzo that the inheritance should go to a cousin in the French line, Charles de Gonzaga, duke of Nevers. Old Vincenzo, between one dying gasp and the next, forces or allows Nevers to marry in great haste his niece Maria Gonzaga, then he dies, leaving his new nephew the dukedom.
Now Nevers was French, and the duchy he was inheriting comprised also the march of Monferrato with Casale, its capital, the most important fortress in Northern Italy. Situated as it was, between Spanish Milan and the lands of the Savoys, Monferrato controlled the upper course of the Po, the passes between the Alps and the south, the road from Milan to Genoa, and it acted as a cushion between France and Spain; for neither of the two powers could trust that other cushion-state, the duchy of Savoy, where Charles Emmanuel I was playing a game that it would have been kind to call duplicitous.
If Monferrato went to Nevers, practically speaking it would go to Richelieu; so Spain obviously preferred someone else inherit, say, the duke of Guastalla, ignoring the fact that the duke of Savoy also had some claim to the succession. But since a will existed, and it designated Nevers, the other pretenders could only hope that the germanic Holy Roman Emperor, whose feudatory the duke of Mantua formally was, would refuse to ratify the succession.
But the Spanish were impatient and, while all were waiting for the Emperor to come to a decision, Casale had already been besieged once by Gonzalo de Córdoba and now, for the second time, an imposing army of Spaniards and imperials commanded by Spinola was surrounding it. The French garrison was preparing to resist, expecting a French army to come to its aid, but that army was still engaged in the north, and only God knew if it would arrive at Casale in time.
This was more or less the situation when old Pozzo, in mid-April, assembled before the castle the younger men of his household and the most keen of his peasants, and distributed the arms in his possession; then he called Roberto and to all made this speech, which he must have spent the whole night rehearsing: “Now listen to me, the lot of you.
This land of ours, La Griva, has always paid tribute to the lord of Monferrato, who for quite a while has also been, practically speaking, the duke of Mantua. Now the duke is this Nevers, and if anybody comes and tells me that Nevers is not a Mantuan or a Monferrino, I’ll kick his backside, because you’re nothing but a bunch of ignoramuses, incapable of understanding these things, so best you keep your mouths shut and leave everything to your master, who at least knows what honor is. For most of you, I know, honor is not worth spitting on, but let me tell you something: if the imperials enter Casale —they are not men with scruples—your vineyards will go to hell and as for your women, better not think about it. So we are off to defend Casale.
I am not forcing anybody. If there is some lazy, lily-livered lout who does not agree with me, he should speak up right now, and I will have him hanged from that oak.” None of those present could yet have seen the etchings of Callot with clumps of people like these hanging from other oaks, but there must have been something in the air: they all raised their weapons, muskets or pikes or simple poles with a sickle tied to the top, and they yelled, “Viva Casale, down with the imperials.” In one voice.
“My son,” Pozzo said to Roberto as they were riding over the hills, their little army following them on foot, “that Nevers isn’t worth one of my balls, and old Vincenzo, when he passed on the dukedom, not only had a limp prick but a limp brain as well. But he gave it to Nevers and not to that blockhead Guastalla, and the Pozzos have been vassals of the legitimate lords of Monferrato since the beginning of time. So we’re going to Casale and, if we have to, we’ll get ourselves killed because, God damn it, you can’t stick with somebody when things go well and then drop him when he’s up to his neck in the muck. But if we manage not to get ourselves killed, all the better. So keep your eyes open.”
The journey of those volunteers, from the border of the Alessandria country to Casale, was surely one of the longest in recorded history. Old Pozzo’s reasoning was in itself exemplary: “I know Spaniards,” he said, “they’re people who like to take their time. They’ll head for Casale by way of the plains to the south, where wagons and cannons and various contraptions can pass more easily. So if we turn west, just before Mirabello, and follow the road through the hills, we’ll take a day or two longer, but we’ll get there without running into trouble, and we’ll still be ahead of the Spaniards.”
Unfortunately, Spinola had more tortuous ideas about the preparation of a siege and, when he was to the southeast of Casale, he began by ordering the occupation of Valenza and Occimiano; several weeks previously he had sent the duke of Lerma, Ottavio Sforza, and the count of Gemburg to the west of the city, with about seven thousand foot-soldiers, to try to take immediately the castles of Rosignano, Pontestura, and San Giorgio, thinking to block any possible support that might come from the French army, as, scissor-like, from the north, crossing the Po and heading south, the governor of Alessandria, Don Geronimo Augustin, was advancing with another five thousand men. And all were deployed along the path that Pozzo believed to be felicitously deserted. Nor, when our gentleman learned as much from some peasant, could he change his route, for to the east, by now, there were more imperials than to the west.
Pozzo said simply: “We’ll stick to our plan. I know these parts better than they do, and we’ll slip past like weasels.” Which meant altering the plan considerably. And they even encountered the French from Pontestura, who meanwhile had surrendered and, on condition that they did not return to Casale, had been allowed to proceed towards Finale, where they could set out for France by sea. The Griva men came upon them around Otteglia, and they were close to firing, each side believing that the other was an enemy; from their commander Pozzo learned that, among the terms of the surrender, it was established that the Pontestura wheat should be sold to the Spanish, who would send the money to the people of Casale.
“The Spaniards are gentlemen, my son,” Pozzo said, “and it’s a pleasure to fight against such people. Luckily we are no longer living back in the times when Charlemagne fought the Moors, who, when they were at war, it was all killing here, there, and yonder. These new wars are between Christians, thank God! Now that they have their hands full at Rosignano, we’ll pass behind them, slip between Rosignano and Pontestura, and we’ll be at Casale in three days.”
Having spoken these words at the end of April, Pozzo with his men arrived in sight of Casale on the 24th of May. It was—at least in Roberto’s recollection—a fine journey, as they always abandoned roads and trails to cut across the fields. Makes no difference, Pozzo said, in wartime everything goes to hell anyway, and if we don’t ruin the crops, the others will. In their concern to survive they had a high old time in vineyards, orchards, and chicken-runs. Why not? Pozzo said, this was Monferrato land and it should nourish its defenders. When a Mombello peasant objected, Pozzo had the men give him thirty lashes, saying that if you
