The first foray of Sigismondo into the wild valleys of Montefeltro was repaid by Federigo, in a successful descent upon the richer possessions of the Malatesta; but he was checked by a serious wound, before the petty fortress of Campi, and on his recovery rejoined Guidaccio. Piccinino, having again changed the seat of war from Lombardy to Romagna, crossed into Tuscany, and during the summer of 1440, carried on an active but unsuccessful campaign in the upper valley of the Tiber, till it was closed by his complete defeat at Anghiari, leaving his baggage and half his army in the hands of the Florentines. This battle has obtained a singular notoriety, and affords a valuable test of condottiere tactics, where combats were interested calculations, not internecine onsets. Machiavelli, the opponent of that system, asserts that only one man lost his life, out of some thirty or forty thousand combatants, and he by a fall from his horse; whilst the largest calculation of slaughter on both sides gives but seventy killed and six hundred wounded. Federigo was little interested in that campaign, but ere long found occupation in the defence of his wife's rights, disputed by Alberigo di Brancaleone. This pretender had seized on Santa Croce and Montelocco, both of which the Count recovered in the autumn of 1442, after a severe action, which first tested his military skill. Sigismondo Pandolfo, having secretly abetted this onset, was punished by an attack upon S. Leo. That small city was the capital of Montefeltro, although this honour has been claimed for Penna di Billi. Its situation is perhaps the most singular in Europe. In a country whose rugged mountains and precipitous ravines seem monuments of some tremendous primeval convulsion, there stand uptossed two isolated pinnacles, the very obelisks of nature, rising on three sides sheer from the valley. On the remaining side of each, a narrow and rapidly descending ridge connects the summit with the surrounding level, affording toilsome and precarious footing to mules and mountaineers. On either peak, a fortress commands a cluster of dwellings, nestled wherever the rocky crest afforded footing, and inhabited by men of iron hearts and stout sinews. The larger of these is S. Leo, the smaller Maiuolo, and we shall often have occasion to mention them as the chief strongholds of Montefeltro, to which they both originally belonged,[*69] though S. Leo had for some time been possessed by the Malatesta. Its loftiest pinnacle was crowned, in classic times, by a temple dedicated to Jupiter Feretrius, affording an easy etymology for Montefeltro: a later era found it sheltering a Christian hermit, whose ascetic virtues obtained canonisation, and who left his name to the township which rose around his cell. During the competition for her crown which ravaged Italy in the tenth century, and rendered that the most dismal as well as confused period of her dark ages, S. Leo became the refuge