n would yield him six or seven thousand men,
who could be mobilized in a couple of days. He increased the number
of arquebusiers, appreciating the power and value of a weapon
which--although invented nearly a century earlier--was still regarded
with suspicion. He was also the inventor of the military uniform,
putting his soldiers into a livery of his own, and causing his
men-at-arms to wear over their armour a smock, quartered red and
yellow with the name CESARE lettered on the breast and back, whilst the
gentlemen of his guard wore surcoats of his colours in gold brocade and
crimson velvet.

He continued to levy troops and to arm them, and it is scarcely
over-stating the case to say that hardly a tyrant of the Romagna would
have dared to do so much for fear of the weapons being turned against
himself. Cesare knew no such fear. He enjoyed a loyalty from the people
he had subjected which was almost unprecedented in Italy. The very
officers he placed in command of the troops of his levying were, for the
most part, natives of the Romagna. Is there no inference concerning him
to be drawn from that!

For every man in his service Cesare ordered a back-and-breast and
headpiece of steel, and the armourers' shops of Brescia rang busily that
summer with the clang of metal upon metal, as that defensive armour for
Cesare's troops was being forged. At the same time the foundries were
turning out fresh cannon in that season which saw Cesare at the very
height and zenith of his power, although he himself may not have
accounted that, as yet, he was further than at the beginning.

But the catastrophe that was to hurl him irretrievably from the eminence
to which in three short years he had climbed was approaching with
stealthy, relentless foot, and was even now upon him.

BOOK IV. THE BULL CADENT

"Cesar Borgia che era della gente Per armi e per virtu tenuto un sole,
Mancar dovendo ando dove andar sole Phebo, verso la sera, al Occidente.

"Girolamo Casio--Epitaffi."

CHAPTER I. THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER VI

Unfortunate Naples was a battle-field once more. France and Spain were
engaged there in a war whose details belong elsewhere.

To the aid of France, which was hard beset and with whose arms things
were going none too well, Cesare was summoned to fulfil the obligations
under which he was placed by virtue of his treaty with King Louis.

Rumours were rife that he was negotiating secretly with Gonzalo de
Cordoba, th