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Galeazzo Maria Sforza (24 January 1444 - 26 December 1467) was the fifth Duke of Milan from 1466 until his death in 1467.
Villainy
- Sforza was notorious for his sadism and bloodlust, and was reputed to have enjoyed breaking apart men's limbs with his bare hands.
- He was a notorious womanizer, and made many enemies among the Milanese nobility by raping the wives and daughters of many nobles, often passing them on to his courtiers once he was finished with them.
- He subjected criminals to ridiculously cruel methods of execution, most infamously killing a poacher by forcing him to swallow an entire hare with fur intact and having Pietro Drago nailed alive to his coffin.
- He repeatedly abused his power as Duke of Milan to dispose of his enemies, most notably having humanist Cola Montano publicly flogged and exiled from Milan after Montano opposed him.
- Other examples of abuses of power by Sforza include ordering for a man's hands to be cut off for refusing to let Sforza have sex with his wife.
- Shortly after coming to power, Sforza asked a Milanese priest how long he would reign for. When the priest predicted that he would only reign for eleven years, Sforza had him taken away to a dungeon, where he was starved and forced to eat his own excrement. Unsurprisingly, the man died after only twelve days.
- He allegedly poisoned his mother.
Assassination
On 26 December 1467, Sforza was attending Mass in the Santo Stefano church when he was approached by Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, a courtier who was involved in a land dispute with him. Lampugnani knelt before Sforza, and words were exchanged, before Lampugnani jumped up and stabbed Sforza in the groin. Lampugnani and his co-conspirators Carlo Visconti, Gerolamo Olgiati and a servant of Lampugnani known only as Franzone then stabbed Sforza repeatedly, killing him in a matter of seconds. In the ensuing mayhem, Visconti and Olgiati managed to escape, although Lampugnani became entangled in the church cloth and was killed by one of Sforza's guards. Sforza's corpse soon fell into the hands of a mob, which dragged it through the streets beating it, before decapitating the corpse and hanging it upside down outside Lampugnani's house.