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In this fashion the campaign dragged on to every one's disadvantage and without any decisive battle fought, until at last the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August of 1484, and the opposing armies withdrew from Ferrara. The news of it literally killed Sixtus.
His opportunities of travel, indeed, were limited by the duties of his position; but whenever he could find leisure, he gratified his roving taste by paying frequent visits to Milan or Venice, where the magnificent palace bestowed upon his ancestor Nicolas II. in the last century, but confiscated during the war with Ferrara, had been restored to him at the peace of Bagnolo.
He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484.
But the duke and his people had to make great sacrifices on their part, and at the peace of Bagnolo, which was finally concluded in 1484, seven towns were ceded to Venice, and the fertile district of Rovigo in the Polesina, "un petit pays," in the words of Commines, "tout environné d'eau et abondant a merveille en tous biens."
The Holy See, however, had no intention of submitting to the incursion of the republic into its long established territories without a protest. In the war of Ferrara, Venice had come into collision with the pope and had in reality been worsted, though the peace of Bagnolo gave her Rovigo, the Polesine, and Ravenna.
In this case they took the step of inviting the Duke of Orleans to lay claim to the dukedom of Milan, and the Duke of Lorraine to the throne of Naples. The move was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes.
Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani.
But the glory of Penarrow that is, of the new Penarrow begotten of the fertile brain of Bagnolo was the garden fashioned out of the tangled wilderness about the old house that had crowned the heights above Penarrow point. To the labours of Bagnolo, Time and Nature had added their own.
To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilian who appears to have been inveterately partial to the company of rascals of all denominations afforded shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow.
Since then the house had been repeatedly sequestered during the wars between Venice and Ferrara, and had only been restored to Duke Ercole after the conclusion of the peace of Bagnolo.
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