from Venice to Otranto, which is nine hundred miles complete. The Pope, indeed, has Ancona and some few other towns between them; but all must pay duties to the Venetians, or there is no passing through the Gulf; so that it was a great advantage to them to have those towns in their hands, and perhaps more than many people imagine, for they receive from them great quantities of corn and oil, which are two commodities very beneficial and necessary for them. At the town of Atella[472] above-mentioned, our troops began to mutiny, not only for provisions (which were beginning to fail), but for their pay, for there was already an arrear due to them for above eighteen months, and they had suffered very great hardships. The Swiss, too, were largely in arrear, but not altogether so much, for all the money the Lord de Montpensier could raise in that kingdom went to the payment of them, and yet they had above a year due to them. They had, however, plundered several little villages, and got a considerable booty. If the forty thousand ducats which had been so often promised had been sent in time, or had they known they would receive them at Florence, this mutiny had never happened; but now all that was done proceeded merely from despair. Several of the commanders have told me since, that if our men would have agreed to have ventured a battle, in all likelihood the victory would been theirs, or if they had lost it, it could not have been with the destruction of half so many as they lost by their base and dishonourable surrender. The Lords de Montpensier and Virgil Ursini would willingly have fought, and they died in prison, and not one of the articles of their treaty was observed to them. These two gentlemen accused the Lord de Percy (a young gentleman of Auvergne), of having been the occasion of their not fighting; and the truth is, the Lord de Percy was an ill-conditioned and mutinous knight.