[Footnote 258: MARINO SANUTO'S Diary MS. i. 374. From another passage in his annals we learn that a then usual scale of ransom was twenty-five ducats for a man-at-arms, twelve for a light-horseman, and three for a foot-soldier. These Diaries extend to fifty-seven large volumes, from 1495 to 1533. Our various extracts from them were most kindly communicated to us by Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has printed at Venice a very curious digest of their contents, and whose successful diligence in illustrating the secret history of that Republic may well put her own citizens to the blush. They are preserved in Bib. Marciana, MSS. Ital. classe vii. No. 419.] [Footnote 259: Diary MS. i. 448.] CHAPTER XVI The crimes and ambition of the Borgia--Murder of the Duke of Gandia--Duke Guidobaldo's expeditions against Perugia and Tuscany--He adopts Francesco Maria della Rovere as his heir--Louis XII. succeeds to Charles VIII., and to his views upon Italy--Cesare Borgia created Duke Valentino--Duke Guidobaldo at Venice. Time was meanwhile maturing the crimes of the Borgia, whose sinister influence upon the destiny of Guidobaldo was about to be signally manifested. So far from regarding his spurious progeny with shame, Alexander was indefatigable in his endeavours to elevate them to the most conspicuous places. He had obtained for the eldest the dukedom of Gandia in Spain, and one of the highest offices at Naples. For the youngest he had secured, by political intrigue, a similar dignity there, with the principality of Squillace, and the hand of an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso II. He had loaded Cesare with ecclesiastical benefices, and had remarried Lucrezia to the sovereign of Pesaro. But his ambition became insatiable in proportion as it was pampered. Upon a vague pretext he annulled his daughter's marriage, that he might give her hand to the Duke of Bisceglia, natural son of Alfonso. His schemes for endowing his sons with the Orsini holdings having entirely miscarried, he resolved to provide for the Duke of Gandia a sovereign principality from the states of the Church, consisting of Benevento and Terracino. Having gained a complete co-operation in the consistory, by frightening into exile or removing by poison the more impracticable cardinals, and by overawing or corrupting the others, he, on the 7th of June, invested the Duke with these towns with due solemnity. Three days previously, Lucrezia had retired to the convent of S. Sisto, to prepare for the formal rupture of her marriage with Giovanni Sforza, whose murder would have anticipated the divorce, had not a hint from her enabled him to save his life by flight, _insalutato hospite_, as Machiavelli remarks.[260] On the 9th, Cardinal Valentino received his credentials as legate for the coronation of Frederick of Naples. On Thursday, the 15th, he set out on his mission, after spending the preceding afternoon at a casino of his mother, near S.