'Aye, aye! Bring me back the head of that rogue Buonterzo. Good fortune to you!'
'Your highness is gracious.'
'God be with you!' He moved on. 'That rogue Squarcia is getting too far ahead. Ho, there! Squarcia! Damn your vile soul! Not so fast!' The gloom of the alley absorbed him. His bodyguard followed.
Again Facino laughed. '"God be with me," says the Duke's magnificence. May the devil be with him. I wonder upon what foulness he is bent to-night, Bellarion.' He touched his horse with the spur. 'Forward!'
They came to the Castle of Porta Giovia, the vast fortress of Gian Galeazzo, built as much for the city's protection from without as for his own from the city. The drawbridge was lowered to receive them, and they rode into the great courtyard of San Donato, which was thronged with men-at-arms and bullock-carts laden with the necessaries of the campaign. Here, in the inner courtyard and in the great plain beyond the walls of both castle and city, the army of Facino was drawn up, marshalled by Carmagnola.
Facino rode through the castle, issuing brief orders here and there as he went, then, at the far end of the plain beyond, at the very head of the assembled forces, he took up his station attended by Bellarion, Beppo the page, and his little personal bodyguard. There he remained for close upon an hour, and in the moonlight, supplemented by a dozen flaring barrels of tar, he reviewed the army as it filed past and took the road south towards Melegnano.
The order of the going had been preconcerted between Facino and his lieutenant Carmagnola, and it was Carmagnola who led the vanguard, made up of five hundred mounted men of the civic militia of Milan and three hundred German infantry, a mixed force composed of Bavarians, Swabians, and Saxons, trailing the ponderous German pike which was fifteen feet in length. They were uniform at least in that all were stalwart, bearded men, and they sang as they marched, swinging vigorously to the rhythm of their outlandish song. They were commanded by a Swabian named Koenigshofen.
Next came de Cadillac with the French horse, of whom eight hundred rode in armour with lances erect, an imposing array of mounted steel which flashed ruddily in the flare from the tar barrels; the remaining two hundred made up a company of mounted arbalesters.
After the French came an incredibly long train of lumbering wagons drawn by oxen, and laden, some with the ordinary baggage of the army—tents, utensils, arms, munitions, and the like—and the others with mangonels and siege implements including a dozen cannon.
Finally came the rearguard composed of Facino's own condotta, increased by recent recruitings to twelve hundred men-at-arms and supplemented by three hundred Switzers under Werner von Stoffel, of whom a hundred were arbalesters and the remainder infantry armed with the short but terribly effective Swiss halbert.