nister. Taking advantage of the
discontent, he caused Ramiro to be massacred one morning in the
market-place, and his body exposed upon a gibbet, with a cutlass near it
stained with blood. The horror of this spectacle satisfied the resentment
of the people and petrified them at once with terror and astonishment.

The Duke had now delivered himself in a great measure from present
enemies, and taken effectual means to secure himself by employing against
them arms of his own, putting it out of the power of his neighbors to
annoy him. To secure and increase his acquisitions, he had nothing to
fear from anyone but the French. He well knew that the King of
France, who had at last perceived his error, would oppose his further
aggrandizement. He resolved, in the first place, to form new connections
and alliances, and adopted a system of prevarication with France, as
plainly appeared when their army was employed in Naples against the
Spaniards who had laid siege to Gaeta. His design was to fortify himself
against them, and he would certainly have succeeded if Alexander VI had
lived a little longer. Such were the methods he took to guard against
present dangers.

Against those which were more remote--as he had reason to fear that the
new pope would be inimical to him and seek to deprive him of what had
been bestowed on him by his predecessor--he designed to have made four
different provisions: In the first place, by utterly destroying the
families of all those nobles whom he had deprived of their states, so
that the future pope might not reestablish them; secondly, by attaching
to his interests all the gentry of Rome, in order, by their means, to
control the power of the Pope; thirdly, by securing a majority in the
college of cardinals; fourthly and lastly, by acquiring so much power,
during the lifetime of his father, that he might be enabled of himself
to resist the first attack of the enemy. Three of these designs he had
effected before the death of Alexander, and had made every necessary
arrangement for availing himself of the fourth. He had put to death
almost all the nobles whom he had despoiled, and had gained over all the
Roman gentry; his party was the strongest in the college of cardinals;
and, for a further augmentation of his power, he designed to have made
himself master of Tuscany. He was already master of Perugia and Piombino,
and had taken Pisa under his protection, of which he soon afterward took
actual possessi