The peculiar feature of the day was the employment of flying artillery, gunnery having, till now, been limited to clumsy battering-pieces, adapted only for sieges and fortifications. The new weapons called spingards and invented by Colleoni were long swivels, measuring three cubits,[145] mounted upon carriages, and discharging balls somewhat larger than a walnut or plum. Although the advantage has been claimed for the confederates, the battle was a drawn one; indeed, Colleoni remained upon the field, whilst Federigo led his exhausted troops to the encampment he had previously resolved on. Yet the results became equivalent to a victory as regarded the Medici, for their outlawed opponents, no longer possessing money or credit, were overlooked in the arrangements for peace which followed early next year. Galeazzo Sforza having withdrawn most of his troops for protection of his frontier on the side of Savoy, the autumn was passed by the armies beating over their former ground about Faenza and Imola, Federigo vainly anxious, as we are assured, to bring on another engagement. Finally, sickness and winter terminated a campaign quite unworthy of the space that has been allowed it by most annalists. [Footnote 145: So described by Ricotti, who apparently has declined reducing this measurement to an intelligible quantity. The cubit of Vitruvius was of six, sixteen, or thirty-six palms, a Roman palm being nine inches and a half. Dr. Johnson defines the cubit as eighteen or twenty-one Paris inches. Such want of precision in weights, measures, and money, occasions constant and often inextricable embarrassment in mediæval history.]