In 1527 there were grand doings at Castello, when, as is described by old Varchi, two armies came, “one to attack and pillage Florence as an enemy—which was the army of the Bourbons; while the other under the guise of a friend and defender pillaged and spoiled her—which was the army of the League; and it happened that on the last Friday of April, which was on the twenty-sixth day of the year 1527, the Cardinal of Cortona [Silvio Passerini], although he knew all the intrigues and confabulations of both old and young against the State, either not believing or wishing to show he feared them not, left Florence most imprudently with the other two Cardinals, the Magnificent, Count Piero Noferi and the whole court, and went a little over two miles outside the Faenza gate to Castello, the villa of Signor Cosimo, to meet and receive the Duke of Urbino and the other heads of the League. Meanwhile the citizens rose and took possession of the palace of the Signoria, and the Cardinals with Ippolito had to return in all haste to quell the insurrection. Thereupon the citizens sadly and sorrowfully went back to their houses without injury but in great fear.” Maria Salviati, the mother of Cosimo I, died at Castello; and they say he was with difficulty persuaded to quit a hunting party and return to receive her last blessing. He enlarged the villa considerably on the eastern side after the designs of Tribolo, and charged Pontormo to decorate the Loggia, but all the frescoes have perished. Cosimo retired to Castello after his secret marriage with Camilla Martelli, a marriage so distasteful to his Austrian daughter-in-law that she wrote to her brother the Emperor to complain. He answered in the following arrogant lines which she was silly enough to send to her father-in-law: “I cannot conceive what the Grand Duke was thinking of when he made so shameful and odious an alliance, ridiculed by all; it is thought the good Duke must be out of his mind. I beg Your Highness not to permit this impudent woman to be exalted, and to hold no communication with her; for if in this matter you fail to show the greatness of Your soul and Your magnanimity, everyone will be angered.”