What Italian but would yield him homage? This barbarian tyranny stinks in all nostrils.

Let your illustrious House therefore take upon itself this enterprise with all the courage and all the hopes with which a just cause is undertaken; so that under your standard this our country may be ennobled, and under your auspices be fulfilled the words of Petrarch: —

Brief will be the strife

When valour arms against barbaric rage;

For the bold spirit of the bygone age

Still warms Italian hearts with life.

Petrarch, Canz. XVI, V. 93-96