ecame his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the
lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna. Thus he
collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of
mercenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him
established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their
own strength was on the decline, determined if possible to check the
career of this formidable tyrant by assassination. The conspiracy known
as the 'Diet of La Magione' was the consequence. In this conjuration the
Cardinal Orsini, Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house,
together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta di Castello, the
Baglione of Perugia, the Bentivoglio of Bologna, Antonio da Venasso from
Siena, and Oliverotto da Fermo took each a part. The result of their
machinations against the common foe was that Cesare for a moment lost
Urbino, and was nearly unseated in Romagna. But the French helped him,
and he stood firm. Still it was impossible to believe that Louis XII.
would suffer him to advance unchecked in his career of conquest; and as
long as he continued between the French and the Orsini his position was
of necessity insecure. The former had to be cast off; the latter to be
extirpated; and yet he had not force enough to play an open game. 'He
therefore,' says Machiavelli, 'turned to craft, and displayed such skill
in dissimulation that the Orsini through the mediation of Paolo became
his friends again.' The cruelty of Cesare Borgia was only equalled by
his craft; and it was by a supreme exercise of his power of
fascination that he lured the foes who had plotted against him at La
Magione into his snare at Sinigaglia. Paolo Orsini, Francesco Orsini,
duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da Fermo were all
men of arms, accustomed to intrigue and to bloodshed, and more than one
of them were stained with crimes of the most atrocious treachery. Yet
such were the arts of Cesare Borgia that in 1502 he managed to assemble
them, apart from their troops, in the castle of Sinigaglia, where he had
them strangled. Having now destroyed the chiefs of the opposition and
enlisted their forces in his own service, Cesare, to use the phrase of
Machiavelli, 'had laid good foundations for his future power.' He
commanded a sufficient territory; he wielded the temporal and spiritual
power of his father; he was feared by the princes and respected by the
people thro