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We who think the ring, the cockpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel 'a steccato chiuso. Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, Infessura writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit, puerorum amator et sodomita fuit. After mentioning the Riarii and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia, quæ circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo. It was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year.
Shortly after Cesare's return to Rome, Imola and Forli sent their ambassadors to the Vatican to beseech his Holiness to sign the articles which those cities had drawn up and by virtue of which they created Cesare their lord in the place of the deposed Riarii.
Sanuto comments upon this with satisfaction, accounting the city well served for having yielded herself up like a strumpet. It is a comment more picturesque than just, for obviously Forli did not surrender through pusillanimity, but to the end that it might be delivered from the detestable rule of the Riarii.
The lords in question were the Malatesti of Rimini, the Sforza of Pesaro, the Manfredi of Faenza, the Riarii of Imola and Farli, the Variani of Camerina, the Montefeltri of Urbino, and the Caetani of Sermoneta.
The lords in question were the Malatesti of Rimini, the Sforza of Pesaro, the Manfredi of Faenza, the Riarii of Imola and Farli, the Variani of Camerina, the Montefeltri of Urbino, and the Caetani of Sermoneta.
And our minds receive a shock upon learning that, when put to the question, these messengers actually made a confession upon which the story rests admitting that they had been sent by the countess to slay the Pope, in the hope that thus Forli might be saved to the Riarii.
The Riarii in common with so many other of the Romagna tyrants had so abused their rule, so ground the people with taxation, so offended them by violence, and provoked such deep and bitter enmity that in this hour of their need they found themselves deservedly abandoned by their subjects.
Imola and Forli had, themselves, applied to the Pontiff to appoint Cesare Borgia their ruler in the place of the deposed Riarii. To these was now added Cesena. In July disturbances occurred there between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Swords were drawn and blood flowed in the streets, until the governor was constrained to summon Ercole Bentivogli and his horse from Forli to quell the rioting.
At the same time the Ordelaffi who in the old days had been deposed from the Tyranny of Forli to make room for the Riarii deemed the opportunity a good one to attempt to regain their lordship; but their attempt, too, was frustrated. Cesare sat impotent in Rome, no doubt vexed by his own inaction.
So well does he keep this promise that we see him utterly abandoning his cousins the Riarii, who were likely to be crushed under the hoofs of the now charging bull, and devoting himself strenuously to equip Cesare for that same charge.
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