be propitious, to be able, by the consent of the Bishop himself, to subject it either to his brother or his nephew.” In the following year the Cardinal Alfonso Petrucci plotted against the Pope’s life in Rome, was degraded from the Cardinalate, and strangled in prison. One of his accomplices was the condottiere Pochintesta who, when examined, accused the Bellanti of similarly intending to murder the Bishop Raffaello at Siena. Raffaello summoned Giulio and Guidone Bellanti to his presence; the first was butchered by Francesco di Camillo Petrucci in the street outside, the second cut to pieces in the palace before Raffaello’s eyes, while he knelt and begged for mercy. Leonardo Bellanti, their old father, was sent to a fortress in the Maremma and there beheaded. Shortly afterwards, Raffaello was raised to the Cardinalate.
In spite of his personal immorality and cruelty, the tyranny of the Cardinal Raffaello does not seem to have been utterly bad. He governed with a firm hand, keeping Siena in peace and comparative prosperity for six years. During his absence at the conclave after the death of Leo X., the exiles and anti-Mediceans prevailed upon the Duke of Urbino in January, 1522, to invade the Sienese contado in favour of Lattanzio Petrucci, also an ecclesiastic and a cousin of Borghese; but with no result. And in March, after his return, another unsuccessful attempt led by Renzo da Ceri, backed by France and secretly favoured by a party in Siena itself, was made to overthrow his regime. The Cardinal died suddenly in his villa on December 17th, 1522, in such a tempest “that it seemed the mouth of Hell were opened.” When his body was brought to Siena to be buried in San Domenico, a howling mob assailed the funeral procession, hurling stones and hooting, shouting that the dead man should be thrown out into the place where the carrion was cast. The friars all fled, leaving the bier alone in the midst of the police, who with difficulty got it safe into the church. Raffaello left one illegitimate son, Eustacchio, who held the command of the mercenaries in the Campo.
Francesco di Camillo Petrucci, the son of a younger brother of Pandolfo, who had been at the head of the government during the Cardinal’s absence, now seized the chief power; while part of the citizens looked to the imperial agents in Rome for the restoration of their liberties, and another part desired the recall of Pandolfo’s youngest son Fabio—Borghese having gone mad at Naples. Francesco’s tyrannical behaviour and his murder of Marcello Saracini disgusted all classes. Pope Clement VII., who intended to marry Fabio Petrucci with the daughter of Galeotto de’ Medici, summoned Francesco to Rome and kept him there, while Fabio, in December 1523, entered Siena. Fabio was a youth of eighteen years of age, excessively handsome and winning in manners, most incompetent and more dissolute than even Borghese had been. The Sienese stood his mercenaries and his unsavoury amours for about nine months. On September 18th, 1524, there was a general rising against him, headed by Giovanni Martinozzi, Mario Bandini and Giovanni Battista Piccolomini. Fabio’s mercenaries occupied the Palazzo, while his few remaining friends assembled in the house of Alessandro Bichi. There was prolonged fighting in the Campo, in the Piazza Tolomei, at the Croce del Travaglio, the adherents of Fabio raising the Florentine shout of “Marzocco” only to be drowned by the swelling thunder of “Popolo e Libertà!” Had Fabio held his ground for a couple of days more, aid would have been forthcoming from the Florentines and the Pope; but his heart failed him and, rejecting the compromise which the leaders of the revolution offered him, he fled at nightfall through the Porta Tufi and escaped to Florence. Thus ignominiously ended the tyranny of the Petrucci in Siena.