It was a condition of this league, that no step or engagement should be taken by any of the parties without the sanction of Guidobaldo, who a month before had strengthened his position by accepting service from the Venetians. The Signory engaged to protect him during life in his state, against all attacks, and to pay him annually 20,000 scudi, he maintaining for them a hundred men-at-arms, and a hundred and fifty light cavalry, besides placing at their disposal, for instant service, two thousand foot. These were forthwith sent to ravage the neighbourhood of Cesena, which remained faithful to Valentino, and thereafter, co-operating with other forces of the new league under Ottaviano Fregoso, they attacked in succession such citadels and castles as were held for the usurper. The star of Borgia seemed once more in the ascendant. Early in October Cesare, now able to bestride a mule, returned to Rome, attended by a hundred and fifty men-at-arms and a hundred halberdiers, where he patched up a reconciliation with the Orsini faction, then dominant. From motives which it would now be difficult to trace, the new Pontiff received him with favour, and named him captain-general of the Church. But in this crisis of his destiny he displayed no elevation of character. Disconcerted by the embarrassment of his position, perhaps by the admonitions of conscience, uncertain where to repose confidence or look for support, he quickly repented having trusted himself in the city, and longed to escape from its incensed populace and exasperated factions to the shelter of his strongholds in Romagna. Humbling himself before Gian-Giordano Orsini, the enemy of his race, he obtained a promise of his escort across the Campagna; but perceiving, ere he had cleared the gate, that he was in the hands of men by whom old grudges were not forgotten, he fled in panic to the Vatican. There he crouched beneath the doubtful favour of Pius, and the waning influence of the Spanish cardinals, who vainly sought to protect his property from pillage, and to expedite his escape in disguise, until the Holy See was again vacated by its short-lived occupant.[14] [Footnote 14: In the communal archives of Perugia, there is a brief addressed to the authorities of that town by Pius III., dated 17th of October, 1503, "before his coronation," but in fact the day preceding his death, which must have been obtained by the influence of Cesare, and which speaks a language very different from what his Holiness would probably have adopted had his life been spared. Its object was to prohibit certain "conventicles" which Gianpaolo Baglioni was reported to be holding in Perugia, for the purpose of plotting against the person of the Duke of Valenza and Romagna, and to desire that he be charged to avoid all courses tending to the prejudice of Borgia.]