st the Council placed the citadel
in the hands of four of its own members together with Gianevangelista
Manfredi--Astorre's half-brother, and a bastard of Galeotto's. These
set about defending it against Cesare, who had now opened fire. The duke
caused the guns to be trained upon a certain bastion through which he
judged that a good assault might be delivered and an entrance gained.
Night and day was the bombardment of that bastion kept up, yet without
producing visible effect until the morning of the 20th, when suddenly
one of its towers collapsed thunderously into the moat.

Instantly, and without orders, the soldiers, all eager to be among the
first to enter, flung themselves forward in utter and fierce disorder to
storm the breach. Cesare, at breakfast--as he himself wrote to the Duke
of Urbino--sprang up at the great noise, and, surmising what was taking
place, dashed out to restrain his men. But the task was no easy one,
for, gathering excitement and the frenzy of combat as they ran, they had
already gained the edge of the ditch, and thither Cesare was forced to
follow them, using voice and hands to beat back again.

At last he succeeded in regaining control of them, and in compelling
them to make an orderly retreat, and curb their impatience until the
time for storming should have come, which was not yet. In the affair
Cesare had a narrow escape from a stone-shot fired from the castle,
whilst one of his officers--Onorio Savelli--was killed by a cannon-ball
from the duke's own guns, whose men, unaware of what was taking place,
were continuing the bombardment.

Hitherto the army had been forced to endure foul weather--rain, fogs,
and wind; but there was worse come. Snow began to fall on the morning of
the 22nd. It grew to a storm, and the blizzard continued all that day,
which was a Sunday, all night, and all the following day, and lashed the
men pitilessly and blindingly. The army, already reduced by shortness of
victuals, was now in a miserable plight in its unsheltered camp, and the
defenders of Faenza, as if realizing this, made a sortie on the 23rd,
from which a fierce fight ensued, with severe loss to both sides. On the
25th the snow began again, whereupon the hitherto unconquerable Cesare,
defeated at last by the elements and seeing that his men could not
possibly continue to endure the situation, was compelled to strike camp
on the 26th and go into winter quarters, no doubt with immense chagrin
at leaving