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I reason unwillingly of the thynges succeded in our tyme, for that to me and to mine, it should be a burthen, and to reason of other, I cannot tel what to saie: notwithstanding, I cannot to this purpose but declare, the insample of Cesar Borgia, called duke Valentine, who beyng at Nocera with his menne, under colour of goyng to besiege Camerino, tourned towardes the state of Urbin, and gotte a state in a daie, and without any paine, the whiche an other with moche time and cost, should scante have gotten.
Thence Cesare pushed on, as swiftly as the foul weather would allow him, by way of Viterbo, Assisi, and Nocera to cross the Apennines at Gualdo. Here he paused to demand the release of certain prisoners in the hill fortress of Fossate, and to be answered by a refusal.
His establishment of the Saracen colony at Nocera, as the nucleus of an army ready to fulfill his orders with scrupulous disregard for Italian sympathies and customs, taught all future rulers to reduce their subjects to a state of unarmed passivity, and to carry on their wars by the aid of German, English, Swiss, Gascon, Breton, or Hungarian mercenaries, as the case might be.
For after he had drawn up his forces behind the hills, he sent out a number of his soldiers, disguised as herdsmen, to drive great herds of cattle across the plain; who being captured by the Romans, and interrogated as to where the Samnite army was, all of them, as they had been taught by Pontius, agreed in saying that it had gone to besiege Nocera: which being believed by the consuls, led them to advance within the Caudine Valley, where no sooner were they come than they were beset by the Samnites.
Let us picture then to ourselves a compact town, an irregular oval in form, surrounded by walls pierced by eight gates and embellished with twelve towers; its eastern extremity towards Nocera containing the Amphitheatre, and its most westerly point marked by the Herculaneum gate leading to the Street of Tombs.
Gaspare sat down by the table, and Artois gave him some Nocera and lemon-juice. He would not have brandy or whiskey, though he would not have refused wine had it been offered to him. "Where have you been?" Artois asked him. "Signore, I have been all over the Piazza di Masaniello and the Mercato. I have been through all the streets near by. I have been down by the harbor. And the Signorina?"
Strange to relate, her husband, the Marquis of Pescara, was destined to forestall his learned lady in the matter of poetry, for during his imprisonment at Milan in the year 1512, he composed a “Dialogo d’Amore” to send to his sorrowing wife at Ischia, a production which the learned Paolo Giovio, the historian and bishop of Nocera, pronounced as being “summae jucunditatis,” though in reality it seems to have been feeble enough.
A worthier effort at self-perpetuation than that of Strangoli. . . . A sturgeon, he notes, was caught in 1593 by the Spanish Castellan of the town. This nobleman, puzzling whom he could best honour with so rare a dainty, despatched it by means of a man on horseback to the Duke of Nocera.
When he arrived at Nocera, he began to assemble the militia, with intent to form a camp at Barletta. The count de Montemar marched with a body of forces against this general, and obtained over him a complete victory at Bitonto in Apuglia, on the twenty-fifth of May, when the Imperialists were entirely routed, and a great number of principal officers taken prisoners.
Artois brought him some Nocera and lemons. "Do you want brandy, whiskey?" "No, no. Grazie." He poured out the Nocera gently, and began carefully to squeeze some lemon-juice into it, holding the fruit lightly in his strong fingers, and watching the drops fall with a quiet attention. "Where have you been to-night?" The Marchesino looked up. "In the Piazza di Masaniello." "Where have you been?"