ack to France, and on whom
Michelotto found a sum of 3000 crowns.

For himself, Caesar reserved the Swiss; for it was the Swiss in
particular who had despoiled his mother's house. The pope had in his
service about a hundred and fifty soldiers belonging to their nation,
who had settled their families in Rome, and had grown rich partly by
their pay and partly in the exercise of various industries. The cardinal
had every one of them dismissed, with orders to quit Rome within
twenty-four hours and the Roman territories within three days. The poor
wretches had all collected together to obey the order, with their wives
and children and baggage, on the Piazza of St. Peter, when suddenly,
by Cardinal Valentino's orders, they were hemmed in on all sides by two
thousand Spaniards, who began to fire on them with their guns and charge
them with their sabres, while Caesar and his mother looked down upon the
carnage from a window. In this way they killed fifty or perhaps sixty;
but the rest coming up, made a charge at the assassins, and then,
without suffering any loss, managed to beat a retreat to a house, where
they stood a siege, and made so valiant a defense that they gave the
pope time--he knew nothing of the author of this butchery--to send
the captain of his guard to the rescue, who, with a strong detachment,
succeeded in getting nearly forty of them safely out of the town: the
rest had been massacred on the piazza or killed in the house.

But this was no real and adequate revenge; for it did not touch Charles
himself, the sole author of all the troubles that the pope and his
family had experienced during the last year. So Caesar soon abandoned
vulgar schemes of this kind and busied himself with loftier concerns,
bending all the force of his genius to restore the league of Italian
princes that had been broken by the defection of Sforza, the exile of
Piero dei Medici, and the defeat of Alfonso. The enterprise was more
easily accomplished than the pope could have anticipated. The Venetians
were very uneasy when Charles passed so near, and they trembled lest,
when he was once master of Naples, he might conceive the idea of
conquering the rest of Italy. Ludovico Sforza, on his side, was
beginning to tremble, seeing the rapidity with which the King of
France had dethroned the house of Aragon, lest he might not make much
difference between his allies and his enemies. Maximilian, for his part,
was only seeking an occasion to break t