[*311] He halted at S. Giovanni in Val d'Arno, where, though he ought never to have been allowed to come so far, he might have been easily crushed in that narrow pass. But if the Duke of Urbino showed now a certain activity, it was not of the sort to crush this adventure. Bourbon wheeled into the Via Francigena and marched down to Rome and death. "To Rome! to Rome!" were his dying words.
[312] Many facts regarding the war in Lombardy and the march to Rome are given by Baldi (Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 906) with a minuteness and impartiality not found in other writers. The feeble views of Clement are illustrated by his brieves to the Duke of Urbino, noticed in I. of the Appendix to our next volume.
[313] In Leonardo da Vinci he saw only a military engineer. His commission, desiring that great genius to survey and report upon all his fortresses, in the summer of 1502, is quoted in Brown's Life of Leonardo, p. 118, and accordingly Urbino was visited by him on the 30th of July.
[314] MSS. No. 374, vol. I., p. 55.
[315] It is pleasant to find the arts from time to time becoming handmaids of history as well as of religion; and the friendly feeling for England then cherished at Urbino is curiously illustrated by a bequest of Bishop Arrivabene, who, in 1504, left 400 golden scudi to be expended in decorating a chapel, dedicated to St. Martin and St. Thomas of Canterbury: the Duchess Elisabetta was one of the trustees, and the fresco ordered by them from Girolamo Genga included a representation of the English saint, and a portrait of Duke Guidobaldo.
[316] Hall quaintly says that the King intended "to stop two gappes with one bushe."
[317] The palace thus gifted to Henry is believed to have been that in Borgo, called Palazzo Giraud, in which many of our countrymen have of late received the splendid hospitalities of Prince Torlonia.
[318] Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 498, f. 273. For Polydoro di Vergilio, see above, [pp. 115-18].
[319] I can find nothing in support of Roscoe's assertion that he was wounded while aiding Guidobaldo to recover his duchy, and the whole facts seem to contradict it. Leo X., ch. vii., § 7, note. That usually accurate writer has fallen into the mistake of ascribing to the Count's sister his interment and monumental inscription in the church of the Minims, near Mantua, while the epitaph which he has printed, bears that Aloysia Gonzaga placed it over a worthy son, whom she unwillingly survived. Several dates in our text are supplied from Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 904, p. 43.