Although the altered circumstances of Italy which humbled her pride had also arrested her convulsions, these untoward events, at the outset of his reign, proved to Guidobaldo that her few remaining principalities were far from secure. To strengthen his position became therefore a natural policy; and although neither the Emperor nor the Venetian Signory had lent a willing ear to his representations on the subject of Camerino, he sent to remind the former of his promise to give him a company of men-at-arms, whilst, with the Pope's permission, he accepted from the latter a two years' engagement. The terms of this condotta, which was dated in 1539, and continued in force until 1552, were one hundred men-at-arms and as many light cavalry, with 4000 ducats of _piatto_ or yearly pay, and an obligation to have in readiness ten of his father's veteran captains, whose monthly pay was fixed at 15 scudi in peace, and 25 in war. Four years later he was requested by the Republic to serve them in another capacity, by complimenting Charles V. in their name on his passage into Germany, on which occasion he was accompanied by the vile sycophant Pietro Aretino. In our fourteenth chapter, we had occasion to consider the change which military affairs underwent in Italy about the time of the first French invasion, and we have seen in Duke Federigo of Urbino one of the last condottieri of the old sort. But it was not until the fall of Rome and Florence had extinguished Italian independence, that military adventure was entirely abolished; and it is curious to find in his grandson Duke Francesco Maria I., not only the latest captain who gathered laurels under that system, but to see him joining with the Pope and the Medici to exterminate those armed hordes which survived its mercenary armaments, and which, like the restless spirits of a departed generation, troubled the repose of their degenerate sons.[50] Their occupation was indeed gone. Tamed by invaders whom they were powerless to resist, domestic broils no longer demanded their services. Their forays were become intolerable in a land where peace was the price of freedom. How far the earlier adoption of Machiavelli's plans of defence might have availed against ultramontane hosts were now a vain speculation; they were only destined for trial after the sacrifice had been consummated. The national militia suggested by him was not enrolled until there was no longer a nationality to defend--until it was needed but as an armed police under foreign control. [Footnote 50: RICOTTI, IV., p. 129, quoting Adriani Storie, lib. II.]