there, with
his want of armed troops and his preoccupation with his own affairs.
He, however, sent Carlo Orsini, son of Virginio, the prisoner, and
Vitellozzo Vitelli, brother of Camillo Vitelli, one of the three
valiant Italian condottieri who had joined him and fought for him at the
crossing of the Taro: These two captains, whose courage and skill were
well known, brought with them a considerable sum of money from the
liberal coffers of Charles VIII. Now, scarcely had they arrived at Citta
di Castello, the centre of their little sovereignty, and expressed their
intention of raising a band of soldiers, when men presented themselves
from all sides to fight under their banner; so they very soon assembled
a small army, and as they had been able during their stay among the
French to study those matters of military organisation in which France
excelled, they now applied the result of their learning to their own
troops: the improvements were mainly certain changes in the artillery
which made their manoeuvres easier, and the substitution for their
ordinary weapons of pikes similar in form to the Swiss pikes, but two
feet longer. These changes effected, Vitellozzo Vitelli spent three
or four months in exercising his men in the management of their new
weapons; then, when he thought them fit to make good use of these, and
when he had collected more or less help from the towns of Perugia, Todi,
and Narni, where the inhabitants trembled lest their turn should come
after the Orsini's, as the Orsini's had followed on the Colonnas', he
marched towards Braccianno, which was being besieged by the Duke of
Urbino, who had been lent to the pope by the Venetians, in virtue of the
treaty quoted above.

The Venetian general, when he heard of Vitelli's approach, thought he
might as well spare him half his journey, and marched out to confront
him: the two armies met in the Soriano road, and the battle straightway
began. The pontifical army had a body of eight hundred Germans, on which
the Dukes of Urbino and Gandia chiefly relied, as well they might,
for they were the best troops in the world; but Vitelli attacked these
picked men with his infantry, who, armed with their formidable pikes,
ran them through, while they with arms four feet shorter had no chance
even of returning the blows they received; at the same time Vitelli's
light troops wheeled upon the flank, following their most rapid
movements, and silencing the enemy's artillery by the