"I wished to give your Ladyship all these particulars, that you may share with me the encouragement they afford us. The favour which God has this morning vouchsafed us, and for which our gratitude is due, gives me hope that the justice of my cause will be daily advanced by new successes; and so to your Ladyship do I commend myself: from my joyous camp near Genestreto, 6 May, 1517.
"Consors, Franciscus Maria Dux Urbini, &c.
ac Alme Urbis Prefectus."[275]
To this spirited despatch little remains to be added. The assailants ascended from the Rimini side, leaving below a strong body of horse to cut off the fugitives. The troops being discouraged by the absence of Maldonato's Spaniards, who had straggled behind, and by the late hour at which, owing to blunders of their guides, they reached the mountain, the Duke encouraged them with assurances that the chances of success were greatest after daybreak, as the sentinels would be less on the alert; and for an omen of victory, and a badge to distinguish them from the enemy, he desired them to twine oak twigs, emblematic of his name, round their headgear. He led their file in person; and after a complete victory was left with eight hundred prisoners on his hands, besides the entire camp equipage and much booty. Next day the Gascons, who had not shared in the rout, came over in a body to Francesco Maria, headed by Monsieur d'Ambras, who returned to the court of Francis I., after publicly declaring that he would no longer permit his men to be sacrificed by officers that could neither protect them nor annoy their enemy, but would leave them under a prince whose tactics and discipline were a pattern even to his foes. This secession did not, however, prevent his master bolstering up the papal policy by loans of 100,000 livres Tournois to Lorenzo, and half that sum to the Pontiff, a course condemned by Sismondi in his French history.
[CHAPTER XXXVI]
Continuation of the ruinous contest—The Duke finally abandons it—Death of Lorenzo de’ Medici—Charles V. elected Emperor.
ABOUT this time a serious conspiracy against Leo was discovered. The prime mover in it was Alfonso Petrucci, Cardinal of Siena, whose property having been confiscated, and his family ruined by the Pontiff, he burned for revenge, and induced one Battista, a famous surgeon of Vercelli, along with the Pope's valet, to enter into his views. Leo being ill of fistula, it was arranged that Battista, who had procured recommendations as a skilful operator, should introduce poison into the dressings. The plot was revealed in time, and the Pontiff used every art, with promises of reconciliation and renewed favour, to entice the principal culprit to Rome. Having with difficulty effected this, he imprisoned him, along with his brother-cardinals Raffaello Riario and Bandinello Bishop of Sauli, along with the captain of the Sienese troops. Cardinal Alfonso was secretly put to death; the surgeon and the valet were publicly hanged and quartered; Sauli, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, was liberated but to die; while Riario, after purchasing at a high rate restoration to his escheated dignities, spent the brief remainder of his life in voluntary exile. Cardinals Soderini and Adriano of Corneto (the latter of whom held the sees of Hereford and Bath, and was papal collector in England), having confessed in open consistory their privacy to the plot, escaped from Rome. The former was saved by chancing to ride out to the chase on a mule, instead of going as usual in his litter, which followed at some distance, and was seized by the guard in consequence of his scarlet robe being left in it, whilst the culprit, in a simple chaplain's dress, fled to the Colonna strongholds. A mystery which hung over the fate of Adriano has been partially cleared up by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown from the Sanuto Diaries, wherein it appears that he safely reached Venice through Calabria, and that the occasion of his unaccountable disappearance was a journey to the conclave on Leo's death, not his flight from Rome in the present year, as stated by Guicciardini, Valeriano, and Roscoe.[276]
Thus baffled in the field, and betrayed in the consistory, Leo found a great effort necessary. On the 20th of June he wrote a letter to Henry VIII., which has been published by Rymer, representing, in vague generalities, and abusive terms, the outrages committed against the dignity and temporal dominion of the Church by relentless robbers and adversaries, and enjoining him to contribute assistance, in the way to be orally explained by the bearer, a predicant friar named Nicholas.[277] He also made renewed instances with his other allies for more efficient aid against his contumacious vassal in Umbria, and sent to levy six thousand Swiss. In order to raise money for these new expenses, he, on the 26th of June, created thirty-one cardinals, thus at once filling his treasury with the price of their hats, and surrounding himself by chosen adherents. Nor did he omit still more profligate expedients. He had repeatedly profited by Maldonato's perfidy in the Urbino war, and now offered him 10,000 ducats, with the dignity of cardinal to his son, if he would deliver up Francesco Maria alive or dead.[278]
After the affair at Imperiale, the Papal troops keeping close in their garrisons, Francesco Maria had recourse to a partisan warfare of sallies and surprises, which greatly harassed them, but did not give sufficient employment to his own somewhat unmanageable levies. He had now ascertained from intercepted letters the full extent of Maldonato's treason; but, ere he ventured upon making an example, he thought it well to put his troops into good humour by a foraging expedition, which should also free his own state from their burdensome presence. Gian Paolo Baglioni, Lord of Perugia, had, during the whole campaign, been in the field against the Duke with three thousand men, and his relation and rival Carlo, exiled by his intrigues from that city, besought Francesco Maria's aid for his re-establishment. No proposal could have been more opportune, and the Duke drew all his forces towards the vale of Tiber.