Around these leaders, the lovers of liberal studies and of their country, began to form a party, which included such men as Valeriano Pierio, Vida, Bini, Blasio, Negri, Navagero and even Berni, who, when he saw that Pope Clement neglected the advice of patriots and clung to Spain, prophesied that the Pope and his shearers would share the ruin of Italy. This awaking to liberty and the increasing aversion of the Italians to the Imperial power, stimulated the Spanish governors to harsher measures. The desertion of their party by the duke of Milan furnished the conquerors with a specious pretext for desolating whole provinces and draining the blood of the people by taxation and subsidies. This unfortunate country saw at that moment a spectacle of unbridled barbarity without parallel in history. The Spanish soldiers were quartered in the houses of the Milanese, and the citizen was treated not as a host but as a prisoner. His feet were tied to a bed, or to a beam; or he was thrown into a cellar, where he would be tormented into surrendering money or lands; or to the gratification of a more vile cupidity. When the unfortunate victim died of grief or, impelled by rage and despair, drowned himself in a well or threw himself from a window, the _Bisogni_ immediately sought another house in which to renew the same barbarities. The Lombard provinces had not even the consolation of human pity. The duke of Urbino, commanding the armies of Venice and Rome, gave them no encouragement to hope. Indeed, he lacked the means for open war or even for skirmishing with the Spanish army. Germany poured down new soldiers. Shall we say soldiers? George Frandesperg marched at the head of fifteen thousand robbers, and swore to put a halter round the neck of the Pope and to pay his legions with the pillage of Italian cities. Nor were foreigners the only tormentors of the bleeding peninsula. In Rome the Orsini supported the Pope the Colonna were partisans of Cæsar. Cardinal Pompeo collected eight thousand peasants on the _Agro Romano_ and unleashed them against the Vatican. They made a general pillage and their leader compelled the _Sultan of Christianity_, as he styled the Pope, to break the league he had formed with Venice and France. Deeds were committed which history shrinks from recording. The Ultramontanes, not content with enslaving provinces, slaked their thirst in the blood of the people. The inhumanity of the Germans, the avarice of the Swiss--who even then made merchandise of their fealty--the rapacity of the Aragonese and the licentiousness of the Gauls reached and polluted everything in Italy.