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The capture of Naples gave the Duke of Valentinois his liberty again; so he left the French army, after he had received fresh assurances on his own account of the king's friendliness, and returned to the siege of Piombino, which he had been forced to interrupt.
I was reconducted on board my galley with music and a discharge of the artillery, and sailed to Port Mahon, and thence through the Gulf of Lyons to the canal between Corsica and Sardinia, where our ship was very nearly cast away upon a sandbank; but with great difficulty we got her off and reached Porto Longone. There we quitted the galley, and went by land to Piombino.
They are not wanting in a certain ostentatious and theatrical liberality. A Piombino sent his ambassador to the conference at Vienna, allowing £4,000 for the expenses of the mission. A Borghese gave the mob of Rome a banquet that cost £48,000, to celebrate the return of Pius VII. Almost all the Roman princes open their palaces, villas, and galleries to the public.
This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina, daughter of Bernabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy the more disgraceful. The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty despotism.
Dialogues were often carried on between him and his friend Pasquin, and a share in their conversation was sometimes taken by the Facchino, or so called Porter of the Palazzo Piombino. In his "Roma Nova," published in 1660, Sprenger says that Pasquin was assigned to the nobles, Marforio to the citizens, and the Facchino to the common people.
I was reconducted on board my galley with music and a discharge of the artillery, and sailed to Port Mahon, and thence through the Gulf of Lyons to the canal between Corsica and Sardinia, where our ship was very nearly cast away upon a sandbank; but with great difficulty we got her off and reached Porto Longone. There we quitted the galley, and went by land to Piombino.
They accordingly raised a new levy of foot-soldiers, and equipped a fresh squadron of horse, which they despatched to Marradi under the joint command of Jacopo IV. d'Appiano, lord of Piombino, and Count Rinuccio of Marciano. These troops taking up their position on the hill above Marradi, the Venetians withdrew from the investment of Castiglione and lodged themselves in the village.
Lucca was thus elevated to a hereditary principality, a dependent of the French Empire, which should revert to the French crown in case the male line of the Bacciocchi should become extinct. It was a sort of revival of the old Germanic fiefs. Evidently the memory of Charlemagne continually filled Napoleon's thoughts. Elisa thenceforth bore the title of Princess of Lucca and of Piombino.
Cesare, being a Pope's son, had nothing to look to but the influence of his father. At first he designed to use this influence in the Church; but after murdering his elder brother, he threw aside the Cardinal's scarlet and proclaimed himself a political aspirant. His father could not make him lord of any state, unless it were a portion of the territory of the Church: and though, by creating, as he did, twelve Cardinals in one day, he got the Sacred College to sanction his investiture of the Duchy of Romagna, yet both Venice and Milan were opposed to this scheme. Again there was a difficulty to be encountered in the great baronial houses of Orsini and Colonna, who at that time headed all the mercenary troops of Italy, and who, as Roman nobles, had a natural hatred for the Pope. It was necessary to use their aid in the acquisition of Cesare's principality. It was no less needful to humor their animosity. Under these circumstances Alexander thought it best to invite the French king into Italy, bargaining with Louis that he would dissolve his marriage in return for protection awarded to Cesare. The Colonna faction meanwhile was to be crushed, and the Orsini to be flattered. Cesare, by the help of his French allies and the Orsini captains, took possession of Imola and Faenza, and thence proceeded to overrun Romagna. In this enterprise he succeeded to the full. Romagna had been, from the earliest period of Italian history, a nest of petty tyrants who governed badly and who kept no peace in their dominions. Therefore the towns were but languid in their opposition to Cesare, and were soon more than contented with a conqueror who introduced a good system for the administration of justice. But now two difficulties arose. The subjugation of Romagna had been effected by the help of the French and the Orsini. Cesare as yet had formed no militia of his own, and his allies were becoming suspicious. The Orsini had shown some slackness at Faenza; and when Cesare proceeded to make himself master of Urbino, and to place a foot in Tuscany by the capture of Piombino which conquests he completed during 1500 and 1501 Louis began to be jealous of him. The problem for the Duke was how to disembarrass himself of the two forces by which he had acquired a solid basis for his future principality. His first move was to buy over the Cardinal d'Amboise, whose influence in the French Court was supreme and thus to keep his credit for awhile afloat with Louis. His second was to neutralize the power of the Orsini, partly by pitting them against the Colonnesi, and partly by superseding them in their command as captains. For the latter purpose he became his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna. Thus he collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of mercenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their own strength was on the decline, determined if possible to check the career of this formidable tyrant by assassination. The conspiracy known as the 'Diet of La Magione' was the consequence. In this conjuration the Cardinal Orsini, Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house, together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citt
With this view they equipped four galleys at Livorno, and having succeeded in throwing three hundred infantry into Piombino, took up their own position at the Caldane, a place where it would be difficult to attack them; and they thought it would be dangerous to encamp among the thickets of the plain.
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