He was the fighting Pope, stern, resolute, indomitable. The whippings he had received from his father had steeled his spirit instead of breaking it. His portrait by Raphael admirably expresses the character of this second Della Rovere Pope. The hard, cold eye, the set frown, the determined mouth, about which a smile never quivered, and the flowing white beard, are eminently characteristic of the man. There is not in the face a trace of the ecclesiastic, not an indication of his having led a spiritual life. But for the habit, he might have been a doge or a military leader. Ranke thus describes him:— “Old as Julius was, worn by the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune experienced through a long life, by the fatigues of war and exile, and, above all, by the consequences of intemperance and profligacy, he yet did not know what fear or irresolution meant. In the extremity of age, he still retained that great characteristic of manhood, an indomitable spirit. He felt little respect for princes, and believed himself capable of mastering them all. He took the field in person, and having stormed Mirandola, he pressed into the city across the frozen ditches and through the breach; the most disastrous reverses could not shake his purpose, but seemed rather to waken new resources in him. He was accordingly successful; not only were his own baronies rescued from the Venetians, but in the fierce contest that ensued he finally made himself master of Parma, Placentia, and even Reggio, thus laying the foundation of a power such as no Pope ever possessed before him.” [Illustration: POPE SIXTUS IV] A shrewd, dissolute, wicked man, he was superior to Sixtus in ability. He had his mistresses, his luxury, his simony, and his cruelty, as Macchiavelli wrote of him.[22] Savona has no cause to glory in those whom she sent to occupy the chair of S. Peter. But the place is associated with another Pope, and that one of a different stamp altogether, the unfortunate Pius VII., relegated there in 1809, and obliged to remain there till 1814. Pius was a good, quiet man, without force of character. When Napoleon let him understand that the States of the Church were to be taken from him, Pius was in dire distress and perplexity. Acting on the advice of his confidential attendant, Cardinal Pacca, he launched an excommunication at Bonaparte, Miollis, governor of Rome, all the French, and all such Romans as participated in the annexation of the States to the kingdom. The document was nailed up to the doors of several of the Churches of Rome,— “But nobody seemed a penny the worse.” till an event occurred which startled the good people of the Eternal City.