At dawn on the Festival of St. Sylvester, the thirty-first of December, he appeared before Sinigaglia. His trusty confidant and captain Don Michelotto led the van with two hundred lancers. Behind these Duke Cesare rode, accompanied by three and a half thousand Italian condottieri and as many foreigners. At the city-gate, Don Michelotto halted his cavalry on the bridge, and the infantry defiled between their ranks, entering the city where the forces of Don Oliverotto da Fermo were paraded. Don Paolo and Don Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, also were present, with Don Vitellozzo Vitelli who wore an ermine mantle and rode a mule like any cardinal. Duke Cesare appeared to be pleased at seeing them and allowed them to kiss his hand in the French style. The atrocious character of these brigands already has been described. Duke Cesare engaged them in conversation, siding with Don Francesco Orsini and Don Vitellozzo Vitelli. When they reached the palace which he was to occupy, the four prepared to take their leave; but he begged them to stay and dine, and to assist him in certain deliberations. As soon as they had crossed the threshold, the Duke’s gentlemen made them prisoners. Messer Niccolo Machiavelli, the official representative of the Signoria of Florence on the staff of Duke Cesare, (a capacity equivalent to that of foreign attaché with an army in the field,) reached Sinigaglia later in the day; and found the city filled with the Ducal mercenaries, who were engaged in stripping the troops of the conspirators and in doing a little pillage of some Venetian merchants. He was going to the palace to get the news, when Duke Cesare, rode out, armed cap-à-pie, and said to him, “I have had a chance, and I have taken it; and I have done a service that should cause your Signoria to rejoice.” Then he rode away and reduced his turbulent troops to order. During the night the fate of the conspirators was decided. In deference to their rank, the two Orsini were to be sent to Rome and judged there according to law: meanwhile they were detained at the palace of Sinigaglia under guard. The trial of the others began at once. Put to the Torture of the Question in the usual manner, they soon shewed of what poor stuff they were made. The lily-livered assassin Don Oliverotto da Fermo wept and groaned and reproached Don Vitellozzo Vitelli with having led him—innocent lamb as he was—into mischief by inducing him to intrigue against Duke Cesare. On the first day of the new year 1503, at four o’clock in the morning, they were ceremonially strangled in the courtyard of the palace. While Don Vitellozzo was struggling with the carnefex, dying by slow degrees, with blackening face and bulging eyes, he screamed continually to Duke Cesare begging hard that he would implore the Lord Alexander P.P. VI to grant him absolution after death and a plenary indulgence, until the red cord (which was his baronial privilege) cut into his gullet, and stilled his swollen tongue.