| } | |||||
| Bartolomeo of Capranica, Field-Marshal. | |||||
| Piero Santa Croce. | |||||
| Giulio Alberino. | |||||
| Mario Don Marian de Stephano. | All Noblemen of Rome. | ||||
| Menico Sanguigni. | |||||
| Jo. Baptista Mancini. | |||||
| Dorio Savello. |
Prominent Men in the Duke's Household.
| } | |||||
| Bishop of Elna, | Spaniards. | ||||
| Bishop of Sancta Sista, |
| Bishop of Trani, an Italian. |
| A Neapolitan abbot. |
| Sigr Ramiro del Orca, Governor; he is the factotum. |
| Don Hieronymo, a Portuguese. |
| Messer Agabito da Amelio, Secretary. |
| Mesr Alexandro Spannocchia, Treasurer, who says that the duke |
| since his departure from Rome up to the present time has spent |
| daily, on the average, eighteen hundred ducats. |
Collenuccio in his letter omits to mention the fact that he had addressed to Cæsar, the new master of Pesaro, a complaint against its former lord, Giovanni Sforza, and that the duke had reinstated him in the possession of his confiscated property. He was destined a few years later bitterly to regret having taken this step. Guido Posthumus, on the other hand, whose property Cæsar appropriated, fled to the Rangone in Modena. Sforza, expelled, reached Venice November 2d, where he endeavored, according to Malipiero, to sell the Republic his estates of Pesaro—in which attempt he failed. Thence he went to Mantua. At that time Modena and Mantua were the asylums of numerous exiled tyrants who were hospitably received into the beautiful castle of the Gonzaga, which was protected by the swamps of the Mincio.
After the fall of Pesaro, Rimini likewise expelled its hated oppressors, the brothers Pandolfo and Carlo Malatesta, whereupon Cæsar Borgia laid siege to Faenza. The youthful Astorre, its lord, finally surrendered, April 25, 1501, to the destroyer, on the duke's promise not to deprive him of his liberty. Cæsar, however, sent the unfortunate young man to Rome, where he and his brother Octavian, together with several other victims, were confined in the castle of S. Angelo. This was the same Astorre with whom Cardinal Alessandro Farnese wished to unite his sister Giulia in marriage, and the unfortunate youth may now have regretted that this alliance had not taken place.
CHAPTER XIX
ANOTHER MARRIAGE PLANNED FOR LUCRETIA
During this time Lucretia, with her child Rodrigo, was living in the palace of S. Peter's. If she was inclined to grieve for her husband, her father left her little time to give way to her feelings. He had recourse to her thoughtlessness and vanity, for the dead Alfonso was to be replaced by another and greater Alfonso. Scarcely was the Duke of Biselli interred before a new alliance was planned. As early as November, 1500, there was talk of Lucretia's marrying the hereditary Prince of Ferrara, who, since 1497, had been a widower; he was childless, and was just twenty-four years of age. Marino Zorzi, the new Venetian ambassador, first mentioned the project to his signory November 26th. This union, however, had been considered in the Vatican much earlier—in fact while Lucretia's husband was still living. At the Christmas holidays of 1500 it was publicly stated that she was to marry the Duke of Gravina, an Orsini who, undeterred by the fate of Lucretia's former husbands, came to Rome in December to sue for her hand. Some hope was held out to him, probably with a view to retaining the friendship of his family.