Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace, now in his twenty-second year and father of four children, raised a squadron of condottieri and attacked his August Father’s enemies: but on the night of the twentieth of January, the Orsini cavalry captured the Bridge of Nomentano where a fortress was; and all the Borgo rose in tumult. Messer Francesco Remolino Bishop of Sorrento, and the Orator of Siena, left the City for the camp of Duke Cesare carrying orders that he should leave everything and advance on Rome, which was in imminent peril. But before the envoys reached him, on the night of the seventeenth of January, at Citta di Pieve he suddenly had beheaded Don Paolo Orsini and Duke Francesco Orsini of Gravina, the two prisoners to whom he had promised a legal trial in Rome. The attitude of Orsini perfectly justified Duke Cesare in exercising his rights as sovereign justiciary and breaking his promise. His camp was surrounded by Orsini castles, the two barons undoubtedly were caught in the article of conspiracy; and their summary decapitation became a sudden necessity to intimidate the Orsini conspirators in and about Rome. It was not the custom of the Sixteenth Century to mince matters, from any silly humanitarian motives, by sacrificing thousands of proletariat lives when the fierce slaughter of a brace of notabilities would serve the purpose. The modern accusation, that the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was privy to the execution of these two Orsini, falls to the ground when the dates of His dispatches to Duke Cesare, and of their deaths, are compared. Cardinal Giambattista Orsini remained a state-prisoner in the Mola of Hadrian, within whose walls he had full liberty. By his own request, his food was sent in daily from his own House; and also he received visits from his relations. There he lived, attended by his own physicians, until the twenty-second of February when he died, and was buried in the church of San Salvatore _in Lauro_. Soon it was said that the Pope’s Holiness had envenomed him; and this is a charge which it is utterly difficult to prove. Giustiniani, the Orator of Venice, who was a friend of the House of Orsini, and always inimical to the Borgia, said without explanation or remark in a dispatch to his government dated the fifteenth of February: “The Lord Cardinal Orsini in prison shews signs of frenzy.” In the dispatch dated the twenty-second of February, he said: “The Lord Cardinal Orsini is reduced to the last extremity, and his physicians say that there is no hope of saving his life.” In the dispatch dated the twenty-third of February, he said: “I give notice that, yesterday, after the departure of my courier, the Lord Cardinal Orsini died; and this evening, with an honourable escort, he was taken to the church of San Salvatore, and there interred.”