One event during the war shows how high the waves of party feeling rose. Lucrezia de’ Medici was at the Bagno a Morba with her son Giuliano, the bath in the district of Volterra employed, perhaps even in the times of the Romans, for rheumatic complaints. It is a lonely spot on the southern side of the chain of hills which, separating the valley of the Arno and Elsa from the sea-shore, bears the old Etruscan town on its ridge. The retired situation had long attracted many a prowler, and made the desolate region unsafe. One evening a hasty messenger from Piero came to his wife with the command that she was to repair without delay with the youth to Volterra, as it had been announced in Florence from San Gemignano that the exiles meditated a _coup-de-main_ to carry off both mother and son, whom they needed as hostages. Giuliano had set off for Florence that same day; Madonna Lucrezia, ill as she was, was carried to Volterra, fifteen miles distant, in a litter by night, by the arrangement of the officials of the place and vicinity, and here she was in safety. After having rested here, where she was kindly received, she returned to her family.[154] CHAPTER IV. PIERO DE’ MEDICI’S LATER LIFE. LORENZO’S MARRIAGE. AFTER the Colleonic war the Republic had peace for a time. For though she took an auxiliary part in the contest for Rimini, which broke out in 1469, her affairs were little influenced by it, and her territory not even touched. Sigismondo Malatesta, who had just been in negotiation with the _condottiere_ of Bergamo, but had held aloof from the strife and entered the Papal service, died on October 9, 1468. When we review the variety of events that followed close upon one another in this man’s life, and then consider that he only reached the age of fifty-one, we shall form some idea of the restless character of the epoch. According to the last stipulation, Pope Paul II. expected the reversion of Rimini, as Sigismondo had died without legitimate heirs, but his natural son Roberto, then only six and twenty, succeeded in taking possession of the city, and formed numerous allies, when the Pope prepared to expel him by force. When Alessandro Sforza undertook the siege of Rimini with the Papal army, Naples, Florence, Milan, and Urbino, came to the assistance of Malatesta, and on August 30, 1469, Sforza suffered a severe defeat, whereas the Pope’s allies, the Venetians, did not appear till after the event. Paul II. wished at first to continue the contest, but resolved the following year to come to terms, a decision confirmed by his conviction that Venice thought more of extending her own power in Romagna than of supporting him, and also by the progress of the Turks, which caused serious anxiety, not only to Venice, whose possessions in the Levant were threatened, but to all Italian powers. Paul’s successor had, at a critical moment, no reason to regret that Roberto Malatesta remained in Rimini.