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Updated: May 20, 2025
Beyond the Po he was surprised by the Pontifical army under Ferrante Orsini, and there his force was cut to pieces. My father himself escaped and with him some other gentlemen of Piacenza, notably one of the scions of the great house of Pallavicini, who took a wound in the leg which left him lame for life, so that ever after he was known as Pallavicini il Zopo.
But King Ferrante still hesitated to declare war against Milan, and, while he raised forces and made preparations for the defence of his dominions, was far more concerned to detach Lodovico from the French alliance than to interfere in the domestic affairs of Milan on behalf of his granddaughter and her husband.
Prince Ferrante had been seriously ailing since the night of the electrical treatment, but the Pope having sent his private physician to Pianura, the boy had rallied under the latter's care.
He foresaw the injured dignity of the Spanish House of Naples, and Ferrante's wrath at the Pope's light treatment of him and apathy for his interests; and the cardinal knew that with Ferrante were allied the mighty houses of Colonna and Orsini. Thus, by his political divorcement from the Holy See, he flung in his lot with theirs, hoping for red war and the deposition of Alexander.
On the 20th of May, he finally left Naples, and on the 1st of June entered Rome by the Latin gate, two days after the Pope had fled to Orvieto. Almost at the same moment, King Ferrante returned to Calabria, and his subjects flocked to join the old banner of the house of Aragon.
In the Chamber of Justice of the Communal Palace sat that day not the Assessors of the Ruota, but the Councillors in their damask robes the Council of Ten of the City of Piacenza. And to preside over them sat not their Prior, but Ferrante Gonzaga himself, in a gown of scarlet velvet edged with miniver.
In a few days his defiant mood gave place to one of abject terror, the two cardinals were released and sent to plead the Pope's cause with Charles VIII., and on the 30th of December Ferrante retired with his troops towards Naples.
'It belongs to the position of the great, says Matarazzo, 'to keep horses, dogs, mules, falcons, and other birds, court-jesters, singers, and foreign animals. The menagerie at Naples, in the time of Ferrante, contained even a giraffe and a zebra, presented, it seems, by the ruler of Baghdad.
However, finding there neither relatives nor friends, and recognizing that Prato was no abiding place for him, he repented too late that he had behaved ungratefully to Niccolò, and returned to Lombardy to serve the sons of Don Ferrante.
There may be some truth in the story of that terrible white powder used by the Borgias, which did its work at the end of a definite period, and it is possible that it was really a 'venenum atterminatum' which the Prince of Salerno handed to the Cardinal of Aragon, with the words: 'In a few days you will die, because your father, King Ferrante, wished to trample upon us all. But the poisoned letter which Caterina Riario sent to Pope Alexander VI would hardly have caused his death even if he had read it; and when Alfonso the Great was warned by his physicians not to read in the Livy which Cosimo de' Medici had presented to him, he told them with justice not to talk like fools.
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