The Papacy generally has been allied with Colonna or with Orsini. Such was the importance of these houses, that during many hundred years all European treaties and concordats contained their names on one side or the other. But here, for once in their mysterious and interminable feud, these mighty barons of Rome, with all their collateral branches and their myriads of armed retainers, were found united in a common cause. The phenomenon may be explained by the rise of other baronial houses, who were becoming quite as numerous and quite as potent as Colonna or Orsini; and who were equally desirable as allies. The most prominent of these, in 1493, were the Sforza and the Cesarini. The Sforza descended from Don Giovanni Muzio Attendolo (detto Sforza); and included the Sovereign-Duchy of Milan, by the marriage of the great Francesco with the heiress of Duke Giangaleazzo Visconti; the Sovereign-County of Santafiora, by the marriage of Francesco’s brother Bosio with the heiress of Aldobrandeschi; and the Tyrannies of Pesaro, Chotignuola, Imola and Forli. The Sforza blazon the lion rampant with the holy flower of the quince for Santafiora, and the salvage boy couped at the thighs issuant from a serpent statant for Milan. The Cesarini were a Roman house of enormous wealth and distinction, claiming a Cesarian origin. It was already allied with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI by the marriage in 1482 of His bastard Madonna Girolama Borgia with Don Giovandrea Cesarini. Its representative, Don Gabriele Cesarini, was the Gonfaloniere of Rome, who fought the Prior of the Caporioni for precedence at the coronation of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Who, in person, accorded the first place to Cesarini. Don Giangiorgio Cesarini, the heir, was allied with Sforza by marriage with Madonna Maria Sforza di Guido di Santafiora; and Don Giuliano Cesarini held office in the Apostolic Chamber. It was a house which, during centuries, had been content with secondary rank, while accumulating immense reserves of power, now to be brought into action. These were the two patrician Houses which the Pope’s Holiness found ready to His hand when Colonna leagued with Orsini against His peace. In fact, Sforza and Cesarini were the right and left hands of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, as Colonna or Orsini were of His predecessors and successors. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, after relieving himself of some treasonable speeches, considered Rome to be unsafe; and fled down Tiber to his bishopric of Ostia, where he fortified himself and advertised for mercenaries.