The citizens had thus abandoned and defied in her danger and extremity the high-handed and haughty mistress, before whom they had so often trembled; and were doubtless congratulating themselves in having been permitted so easily to change their allegiance from a sinking house to one in the ascendant, when they were suddenly reminded that they were not yet well "off with the old love," by the opening of the fortress guns on the city. The astonishment was great, that Catherine, who must well know that she would shortly have need of every arm and every ounce of powder she could muster, should thus commence a contest with a second enemy, as if the Borgia were not enough. But the proud Dame held that all those who were not for her, were against her; and could ill brook the disobedience and desertion of her vassals. But this cannonading her own city, was, under any provocation, an act but poorly excusable by the motives set forth in its defence by Burriel;—that the enemy might not suppose that she was an acquiescing party in the abandonment of the city, or that she was alarmed or discouraged by it. On the other hand it must not be imagined that the injury inflicted on the citizens by such a measure was in any way comparable to that which we naturally picture to ourselves, as the result of firing on a city from the walls of a fortress. The proportion between the means of offence and defence at the disposal of European combatants, has for the last four hundred years been continually changing in favour of the former. So that the mischief done in a given time by any military operations is infinitely greater now than was the case when Catherine battered Forlì. On the 19th of December Cesare Borgia made his triumphal entry into Forlì, with all those theatrical circumstances of personal pomp and bravery which in the conceptions of those peacock-like southern idiosyncracies form so large and essential portion of the idea of "greatness." The troops and their officers having filed into the city before him, the great man,—most wicked, base, and incapable of any great or noble thought of all men there;—the great man, most reverenced, admired, and obeyed of all men there, advanced stately in full armour on a white horse, with an heraldically embroidered silk tunic over his armour, a tall white plume nodding above his helmet, and in his hand a long green lance, the point of which rested on the toe of his boot.