s upon Bologna; but Gian di Bentivoglio, whose
ancestors had possessed this town from time immemorial, had not only made
all preparations necessary for a long resistance, but he had also put
himself under the protection of France; so, scarcely had he learned that
Caesar was crossing the frontier of the Bolognese territory with his
army, than he sent a courier to Louis XII to claim the fulfilment of his
promise. Louis kept it with his accustomed good faith; and when Caesar
arrived before Bologna, he received an intimation from the King of France
that he was not to enter on any undertaking against his ally Bentivoglio;
Caesar, not being the man to have his plans upset for nothing, made
conditions for his retreat, to which Bentivoglio consented, only too
happy to be quit of him at this price: the conditions were the cession of
Castello Bolognese, a fortress between Imola and Faenza, the payment of a
tribute of 9000 ducats, and the keeping for his service of a hundred
men-at-arms and two thousand infantry. In exchange for these favours,
Caesar confided to Bentivoglio that his visit had been due to the
counsels of the Mariscotti; then, reinforced by his new ally's
contingent, he took the road for Tuscany. But he was scarcely out of
sight when Bentivoglio shut the gates of Bologna, and commanded his son
Hermes to assassinate with his own hand Agamemnon Mariscotti, the head of
the family, and ordered the massacre of four-and-thirty of his near
relatives, brothers, sons, daughters, and nephews, and two hundred other
of his kindred and friends. The butchery was carried out by the noblest
youths of Bologna; whom Bentivoglio forced to bathe their hands in this
blood, so that he might attach them to himself through their fear of
reprisals.

Caesar's plans with regard to Florence were now no longer a mystery:
since the month of January he had sent to Pisa ten or twelve hundred men
under the Command of Regniero della Sassetta and Piero di Gamba Corti,
and as soon as the conquest of the Romagna was complete, he had further
despatched Oliverotto di Fermo with new detachments. His own army he had
reinforced, as we have seen, by a hundred men-at-arms and two thousand
infantry; he had just been joined by Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta,
di Castello, and by the Orsini, who had brought him another two or three
thousand men; so, without counting the troops sent to Pisa, he had under
his control seven hundred men-at-arms and five thousa