The Pontiff was taken at unawares, for, believing his enemy utterly crushed, he made light of such warnings as had reached him of a contemplated movement against the duchy; but now that the expedition was matured, he knew well the slight hold which the usurper had upon the affections of his nominal subjects. Nor was he more at ease as to the inclinations of his new allies in Lombardy, whose stipendiaries had thus suddenly turned their arms against him. His anxiety was in no way diminished by the representations of his confidential friend Bibbiena, who, actuated perhaps by some lurking kindness for the house of Urbino, urged him to abandon the Borgian policy he had in hand, until such persuasions were silenced by the threatened poignard of Lorenzo. Ere effectual precautions could be adopted in Romagna, Francesco Maria had rallied round him eight thousand infantry and fifteen hundred horse, most of them veterans, and with these he marched about the middle of January. Passing Rimini, where his rival lay "sorely perplexed and bewildered" (to use the phrase of Minio, the Venetian envoy), he advanced under every discouragement of an inclement season, his men wading through snow to the middle, and swimming frequent-swollen torrents. From the secrecy of his preparations and the poverty of his resources, his commissariat was altogether inadequate; but, on reaching his frontier, the refusal of Gradara to submit afforded his men an excuse for compensating their privations by its sack. His subjects had been prepared by emissaries for a general revolt. On the 1st of February, Count Carlo Gabrielli raised the cry of "Feltro! Feltro!" at Gubbio, and it was enthusiastically responded to through the smaller towns. On the 5th, the Duke was within a few miles of Urbino, then held by Bishop Vitelli, with a garrison of two thousand men, who, distrusting the inhabitants, summoned their militia to muster at S. Bernardino, and closed the gates as soon as the city had thus been cleared of its able-bodied men, refusing to readmit them on pain of instant death. The excluded citizens vented their indignation at this trick, in threats and abuse of the garrison from under the very walls, which at length provoked a sortie of four hundred infantry in order to disperse them. At this juncture, a squadron of one hundred cavalry, sent on by Francesco Maria under Benedetto Giraldi of Mondolfo, for the purpose of supporting the expected rising in his favour, arrived three miles below Urbino, and, whilst breathing their horses, heard that the enemy were abroad. Benedetto immediately left his little force in charge of his brother Annibale, and rode on with but five officers to reconnoitre. The adventure which followed, equally worthy of a bold knight-errant and a Christian soldier, must be told as in the Dialogue of his nephew Tranquillo. "Coming suddenly upon the detachment, about half a mile from the town, Benedetto exclaimed, 'Look there! as these are the