The crusade and all its preparations had passed away as completely and almost as rapidly as a stage-scene, and the quiet of Italy remaining undisturbed, the new Pontiff availed himself of it to chastise the Aversi of Anguillera, a band of robber barons whose predatory incursions extended to the gates of his capital. Although in more peaceful times this would have been a matter of police rather than a military movement, it fell to Federigo as gonfaloniere to repress their audacity. This he did in a few days during July, their strongholds about Ronciglione all surrendering without a blow. Paul, encouraged by this success, followed it up by similar proceedings against the Savelli, another great Campagna family, whose Angevine policy had led them into open rebellion five years before, and whose influence never recovered the loss of territory now wrested from them. The Count, having gone to visit his Holiness, received from him verbal instructions and a written commission to take effectual measures for securing the devolution to the Holy See of the Malatesta fiefs, as soon as these brothers should die, and there being some suspicion of intrigues on their part to defeat that arrangement under which Cesena and Rimini had been left them only for their respective lives, a solemn obligation to secrecy under pain of excommunication shrouded these deliberations. Thus were pursued those repressive steps adopted by Pius II., and which were matured into a fixed policy of successive pontiffs during the next seventy years, until, of all the sovereign vassals who divided and distracted the ecclesiastical territory, from Terraccini to the Po, there remained but those of Ferrara, Urbino, and Piombino. Malatesta Novello of Cesena, whose wife Violante had been sister of Federigo, died in November, when Cesena was at once seized by his nephew Roberto, eldest son of Sigismondo. The Count of Urbino, in obedience to the papal injunctions, marched into Romagna and blockaded that town, until matters were compromised by a concession of Meldola to Roberto, on his surrendering the rest of his uncle's fief, and entering the papal service, as a guarantee for his future obedience.