The four Italian cardinals still adhered to Pope Urban. They labored hard to mediate between the conflicting parties. Conferences were held at Zagarolo and other places; when the French cardinals had retired to Fondi, the Italians took up their quarters at Subiaco. The Cardinal of St. Peter's, worn out with age and trouble, withdrew to Rome, and soon after died. He left a testamentary document declaring the validity of the election of Urban. The French cardinals had declared the election void; they were debating the next step. Some suggested the appointment of a coadjutor. They were now sure of the support of the King of France, who would not easily surrender his influence over a pope at Avignon, and of the Queen of Naples, estranged by the pride of Urban, and secretly stimulated by the Cardinal Orsini, who had not forgiven his own loss of the tiara. Yet even now they seemed to shrink from the creation of an antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event. He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan, and the Orsini stood aloof; they seemed only to wait to be thrown off by Urban, to join the adverse faction. Urban at first declared his intention to create nine cardinals; he proceeded at once, and without warning, to create twenty-six.[65] By this step the French and Italian cardinals together were now but an insignificant minority. They were instantly one. All must be risked or all lost. On September 20th, at Fondi, Robert of Geneva was elected pope in the presence of all the cardinals (except St. Peter's) who had chosen, inaugurated, enthroned, and for a time obeyed Urban VI. The Italians refused to give their suffrages, but entered no protest. They retired into their castles and remained aloof from the schism. Orsini died before long at Tagliacozzo. The qualifications which, according to his partial biographer, recommended the Cardinal of Geneva, were rather those of a successor to John Hawkwood or to a duke of Milan, than of the apostles. Extraordinary activity of body and endurance of fatigue, courage which would hazard his life to put down the intrusive pope, sagacity and experience in the temporal affairs of the Church; high birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity, not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly taunted the mockery of this name, assumed by the captain of the Breton Free Companies--by the author, it was believed, of the massacre at Cesena.