twenty-two years before, but had been defeated and driven to the coasts of Maremma. Carlo Fortebraccio had, however, chosen an unfavourable moment, for peace prevailed in the whole of Central and Southern Italy, and the governments were on their guard on account of Milanese affairs. To the Florentines, in spite of their ancient friendly connections with the Fortebracci, the intended attack upon Perugia was most unwelcome, not so much on the Pope’s account, as because they were endeavouring to draw the town into their own league. They therefore hindered the _condottiere_ by strong representations from making an attack on Umbria. They could not, however, prevent him from falling in old freebooter fashion upon the neighbouring territory of Siena. He set up as a pretext old demands of his father, who had been dead more than half a century, and, like Piccinino, began to plunder and raise black-mail in the Arbia valley. The republic of Siena had always been a battle-field for factions which weakened it within and made it powerless abroad. The old jealousy of the Florentines had made it always easy for every power possessing the preponderance in Italy for the time being to plot against Florence from thence. Thus it happened in the present case, and not without the fault of Florence. The Sienese were taken by surprise by the attack of Carlo Fortebraccio. Long at peace with their neighbours, a peace which was not disturbed by occasional quarrels between places on their frontier in the Chiana valley, they had but a small armed power to oppose to the freebooters. They complained bitterly to the Pope and the King of Naples of the wrong done them, and sent ambassadors to Florence to beg the intervention of the Republic, whose connections with the mischief-maker were no secret. The Florentines, when called upon to put a stop to the favour shown to Carlo by their subjects on the frontiers and to keep honest neighbourliness, gave at first an equivocal answer. They had, they said, nothing to do with the matter, and if Fortebraccio should find support with the Sienese emigrants, it was not their doing. They did not escape the suspicion of having acted in this affair with the same want of sincerity as that shown the Venetians in the Colleonic troubles. Sixtus IV. resolved to be no longer a mere looker on.[218] He remembered that the father of this man had once said that he would bring Pope Martin to read twenty masses for one Bolognino. The Duke of Urbino, captain-general of the Church, caused Antonio di Montefeltro to march into the Sienese territory; everything was in movement in the patrimony, where men were enlisted both for and against the cause. ‘It seemed,’ says the chronicler of Viterbo, ‘as if men were weary of the long peace and took the field for little money.’ The attack on Fortebraccio was unsuccessful, so that the duke himself set out, marched into Perugia, and invested the castle of Montone, which yielded after thirty-three days’ siege. Neapolitan