A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Attenduli, Margaret d'
ATTENDULI, MARGARET D',
A sister of the great Sforza, founder of the house of Sforza, dukes of Milan, was born about 1375, at Catignola, a small town in Italy. Her father was a day labourer; but after her brother James, under the name of Sforza, had made himself distinguished by his valour and skill, he sent for her to share his honours. She had married Michael de Catignola.
She seems to have shared her brother's heroic spirit: when James, count de la Marche, came to espouse Joanna the Second, queen of Naples, Sforza, then grand constable of Naples, was sent to meet him; but that prince threw him, his relations, and all his suit, into prison, thinking by this means to attain, more easily, the tyrannic power he afterwards assumed. When the news of Sforza's arrest arrived, Margaret, with her husband, and other relations who had served with honour in his troops, were at Tricarico. They assembled an army, of which Margaret took the command. The ill treatment Joanna experienced from her new husband, soon made the revolt general, and James was at length besieged in a castle, where the conditions proposed to him were, to be contented with the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and give Sforza his liberty Knowing the value of his hostage, James sent deputies to Margaret, menacing her brother with instant death, if Tricarico were not given up to him. Anxious for her brother, but indignant at the proposition, she immediately imprisoned the deputies, whose families, alarmed for their safety, ceased not to intercede, until the count consented to set Sforza and his friends at liberty, and to reinstate him in his former situation.