After provocations so aggravated, and in the certainty that opportunity alone was wanting to renew them in manner more perilous to his interests, Federigo no longer hesitated to act upon the reservations of the treaty of Lodi, and in June hastened to Naples, in order to obtain assistance. It happened that Giacopo, son of Nicolò Piccinino, was then in the Abruzzi with his company of adventure, retained by Alfonso, but waiting the chances of war. The Count, therefore, applied for permission to employ him against Malatesta, who, like a true braggart, lost courage on finding himself exposed to just vengeance, and virtually excluded from assistance by the terms of the league. Recurring as usual to intrigue, he sent his eldest son Roberto to Naples, that he might gain favour with the beautiful Lucrezia Allagno, or del Lagno, who, though said to have equalled her Roman namesake in propriety, held the elderly monarch by the silken chain of youthful passion. Her dragon-like virtue did not exempt her from womanly weakness, and in exchange for the most brilliant ruby which the jewellers of Venice could supply, backed by an offer of his hand for her niece, Roberto gained her influence in his father's behalf. Months were lost in the counteracting this back-stairs interposition; and meanwhile Federigo was widowed by the death of Gentile, of whom nothing is known beyond the excessive stoutness of her person. These delays enabled him to prepare the munitions of war, and he addressed to the magistrates of Siena this request for a person qualified to cast mortars:-- "Mighty and potent Lords, and Fathers honourable and beloved: "I have immediate want of a master mortar-founder, and being informed that there is in Siena one such, able and sufficiently qualified, who would well satisfy me, and whom I knew when detained there ill [in 1453], I urgently pray your lordships, as a particular favour, to give him leave of absence. And my need of him being urgent, I trust that he will come quickly along with the bearer hereof, and I shall so pay him his dues that he shall be well satisfied. I have reason to hope that your lordships will oblige me as to this artist, for in all that tends to the weal of your republic I would be most affectionate, and observant beyond any other ally you have in the world. As for the mortars, I want to use them against the Lord Sigismondo, the enemy of your lordships, to whom I commend myself. From Urbino, the 7th of November 1457."[93] [Footnote 93: _Carteggio d'Artisti_, I., p. 178. Promis, the recent editor of Francesco di Giorgio's works, conjectures this artillery-founder to have been Agostino da Piacenza, not Francesco, as had been supposed.]