Excerpt from The Romance of a Medici Warrior: Being the True Story of Giovanni Delle Bande Nere, to Which Is Added the Life of His Son, Cosimo Grand Duke of Tuscany; A Study in Heredity OF the warrior women whom Italy delights to honour, one stands forth supreme above all others Caterina Sforza, known to fame as the great Madonna Of Forli. She was the illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan was born in 1462, and brought up with tender affection by his mother, bianca-visconti, until she was eight years Old, when, on the marriage Of Galeazzo with Bona Of Savoy, she, like a dutiful wife of those days, received the child of his mistress Lucrezia into her home as one of her own family. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.