The ill-success of Bartolommeo Colleone’s undertaking put an end of course to all the exiles’ hopes of returning to their homes. The biographer of Donato Acciaiuoli, Angiolo Segni, observes rightly, ‘The war excited by the exiles was soon ended. Bartolommeo’s army was not defeated in battle with the allies, but it was equally far from conquering, and the cause of the rebels was lost thereby. For those who ruled in Florence it was enough not to be defeated; not so with those in the field. Only by a victory could they expel their enemies, and regain their home.’ All the distinguished men of the losing side had been with Colleone—foremost of all Diotisalvi Neroni and Niccolò Soderini, who in Venice opposed his own brother, whom Florence had sent thither as her representative. Agnolo Acciaiuoli joined them at last. Persuaded at length by the representations of his friends, he had quitted Barletta and gone to Naples; King Ferrante, who, remembering old connections, wished him well, vainly sought to persuade him not to trust to the matter, nor to break the exile pronounced on him. He went to Rome, and from thence to Romagna. When he saw the organisation of Colleone’s troops, he is said to have anticipated the result at once. When peace was concluded, he was declared a rebel with all the others, his property confiscated, and a price put upon his head; he returned to Naples, where he lived on the support afforded him by the King, and passed his days mostly in pious exercises and the companionship of the Carthusian monks, whose order had stood in intimate connection with his family for more than a century. Niccolò Soderini went to Ravenna, where the Emperor Frederick III. made him a knight and Palatine on his second journey to Rome—cheap honours then, which could hardly have sweetened the exile in which he died, 1474. Niccolò, says Alamamo Rinuccini, was far more courageous than prudent; he did not know fear. Had his advice been followed when he wished directly to give battle, his party would not perhaps have had to submit, but Messer Luca, either cowardly or bribed, betrayed his party and himself. Diotisalvi Neroni, at first banished to the island of Sicily, saw sixteen years of exile pass away, and died in extreme old age at Rome, where his tombstone is to be seen in the Dominican church, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, which contains many Florentine monuments.[153]