The Romagna immensely was benefited by a strong and decent government where law—martial law, certainly; but law—at last was observed. Duke Cesare’s army was the only great Italian army. He, representing the Pope, was absolute in Central Italy, where no Pope had had direct authority for centuries. He was hated; hated by the great baronial Houses which he had ruined, whose heirs he had slain: but he was not even disliked by the people whom he ruled.[51] It was not extraordinary; for the mob always adores the strong bowelless man, the rigid fearless despot, the conquering autocrat who brings peace with security. He took no different measures against rebellious vassals than those taken by his contemporaries, Louis XII of France, Hernando of Spain, Henry VII Tudor of England. He was more precise, more systematic: that is all. All the sovereigns who were his contemporaries congratulated him. The Duke was cruel; almost as cruel as his splendid parallel of the Nineteenth Century; and as fervently disliked and decried: but he was just, with a justice as far above the mawkish humanitarian system of compromise, (which, nowadays it is the mode to applaud,) as the sun is above the stars. Through the length and breadth of his dominions he continually went, to oversee the restoration of order, to consolidate his victories. The slightest spark of opposition he relentlessly crushed out. It was a hundred-headed hydra with which he had to deal. As he passed from city to city of his provinces, he left governours in charge of each, bloody men, ruthless giants, equal to the work in hand; for the work was dangerous; and men, whose hearts were triply-cased in hardened bronze, were needed, where each man’s life was in his own hands until it was in his enemy’s. Messer Lionardo da Vinci, that “scientific sceptic,” was his engineer in chief and designer of fortifications: and Messer Niccolo Machiavelli said that, of all Princes, he could discover no ensample more blooming and more vigorous than Duke Cesare. The headquarters of the Duke were at Cesena; and that same Messer Niccolo Machiavelli—the only man who ever knew the real Cesare (detto Borgia) naked face to naked face, naked soul to naked soul,—advised the Signoria of Florence that an Orator kept at Cesena would profit the republic more than an Orator at Rome.[52] In his absences from headquarters, Duke Cesare left Messer Ramiro d’Orco there as governor. Cesena was a nest of would-be brigands. Messer Ramiro d’Orco was a governor who made these quail with the steel of his garrison and his own iron will.