The Lord Julius P.P. II was capable of doing without Duke Cesare in the Romagna. The Pope’s Holiness Himself was a man of war, Who found it consistent to wear cuirass and casque on battlefields equally with pluviale and triregno in the Vatican Basilica. Men called Him _Il Pontifice Terribile_. “Give Us in Our hands no stupid book, but a bare blade,” He impatiently roared to the painter of His portrait, now in the National Gallery. But Messer Rafaele Sanzio, despite all his conventional macaronics, was for once in his life artist enough to omit both book and blade, and to concentrate on the painting of the character of those fierce vulgar insatiable empty hands gripping the arms of the chair. And the Romagna found the whips of Duke Cesare to be preferred before the scorpions of the Lord Julius P.P. II. Perugia was the seat of the Baglioni. Twenty years before, in 1487, there had been an outbreak of the feud of Baglioni and Oddi, months of continual rioting, the gutters running blood, the city like a slaughterhouse; until Oddi was driven away, and Baglioni turned the place into a fortress and the churches into barracks. In 1491, in another outbreak, Baglioni hanged a hundred and thirty conspirators from the windows of the Palazzo Communale in a single day; and, (with the quick reversion from carnage to piety which is a characteristic of the age,) incontinently erected five and thirty altars in the public square, and caused continuous masses to be said and processions to be performed, to purify the city and to procure repose for the souls of the slain. Duke Cesare made a marked impression on these brigands, who learned to give him little trouble: but, when he was dispossessed and his long sword sealed in its scabbard, Baglioni took the bit between their teeth and reared, refused tribute to their sovereign Over-lord, and broke out in rebellion in the customary manner. The Lord Julius P.P. II promptly raised an army which He led in person; and reduced Perugia. Without precautions for His safety, trusting to the moral effect of His presence for the inviolability of His sacrosanct person, He adventured Himself in the heart of the rebel city, and beat Don Giampaolo Baglioni to his knees. In a man of sensibility this hardihood would indicate a very dare-devil: in the case of the Supreme Pontiff a distinction must be made between courage and mere plebeian callousness. Messer Niccolo Machiavelli sneered at this miserable Don Giampaolo Baglioni, because he lacked the boldness to strangle his unwelcome visitor, the Lord Julius P.P. II, and so crown his life of crime with a signal act of “Magnanimità”! Certainly a man would need some boldness to strangle the Pope, the Ruler of the World, the Father of Princes and of Kings, the Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour! Certainly, a man who would strangle in cold blood the Sovereign Pontiff coming to him as his guest, unarmed, under a flag of truce, would win fame, or infamy, for endless ages.