save their persons, and these generally were allowed to go unharmed.[136] [Footnote 135: "Nunc ager Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofelli Dictus; erat nulli proprius, sed cedit in usum Nunc mihi, nunc aliis." HORACE, _Sat._, ii. 2.] [Footnote 136: See, as to later statistics of the duchy, the Appendix to Vol. III.] CHAPTER IX Count Federigo's varied engagements--Battle of La Molinella--Death and character of his enemy Malatesta--Affairs of Rimini. It was to the Pontiff's anxiety for his favourite project against the Infidel, that the Malatesta owed the shadow of sovereignty still left them. He inherited from Nicholas V. the design of a holy war; but though the ten years passed since the peace of Lodi had united the Italian powers for that purpose, the cross had not yet been raised against the aggressive and triumphant crescent. He now sought to redeem delays by redoubled zeal, and his temporal diplomacy seconded his spiritual exhortations in collecting troops and treasure from Western Europe, to be mustered at Ancona and led by his Holiness in person. But, as was shrewdly remarked by Cosimo de' Medici, it was an old man undertaking an enterprise which needed a young one. He travelled to Ancona when scarcely recovered from a severe fit of gout, and on arriving, had the mortification to discover that his ardour had been ill seconded by most of the Christian powers; that the soldiery, already disgusted with a service whose rewards were indulgences for the next world instead of present pay and pillage, were retiring in great numbers; and that the volunteers who crowded the port, far beyond the means provided for feeding or transporting them, were a mere mob of unarmed and undisciplined idlers. Chagrin, anxiety, and fatigue occasioned a relapse, which carried him off on the 14th of August.[137] The consistory countermanded the ill-advised expedition, and the conclave hurriedly chose as his successor the Venetian Barbo, whose character and habits, in all respects a contrast to those of Pius, would have been best expressed by Barbaro, but whose absurd personal vanity is said to have prompted him to propose assuming as his title Formoso I. [Footnote 137: Sismondi says the 14th; Harris Nicolas the 15th or 16th; Baldi mentions the morrow of the Assumption, which would be the 16th; but Berni specifies the fourth hour, or midnight of Tuesday the 14th, which corresponds with the calendar of that year.]