Death had, however, selected a partner in the game more important than the Lord of Pesaro. The dread hour of reckoning was arrived to the arch-spirit of turbulence, who from the chair of St. Peter had, during thirteen years, been the scourge of Italy. Nor was his end out of character with his career. By counter-plots, which we need not stay to develop, the crafty Venetians contrived to seduce Ludovico il Moro from the hostile band by whom they were beset, and turning the tables upon the Pope, effected a pacification without including or even consulting him. The treaty of Bagnolo aggrandised the maritime republic with no reference to the interests of Riario. It reached Sixtus on the 12th of August, 1484, and brought on a sudden attack of his constitutional malady, gout, which struck him speechless. In a few hours he expired of vexation, at finding himself outmanoeuvred in his favourite game of intrigue, and at seeing those broils which he had done so much to foment, thus brought to an unexpected close. The Venetians, on learning that their rancorous foe had ceased to live, redoubled the joy with which they heard of the general pacification; and the satirical wits of the day commemorated his death in this biting epigram:-- "No truce could Sixtus bind, though ratified: A peace at length proclaimed,--he heard and died."[222] [Footnote 222: "Sistere qui potuit nullo cum foedere Sixtus, Audito tantum nomine pacis, obiit." _MSS. Bib. Magliab._ Cl. vii. No. 345.]