On Sunday, in the month of March 1398, while the citizens were attending a sermon at S. Lorenzo, the Abbot arrived on horseback at the Guidalotti palace on Colle Landone, to collect his fellow-conspirators, and some twenty of them proceeded to Biordo's house on Porta Sole. Word was sent up to Michelotti that there was important news for him, and he, suspecting nothing, hurried down to meet the Abbot with a courteous greeting. The Abbot stepped forward, took his hand, and kissed Biordo, at which sign the rest of the conspirators fell upon their victim and stabbed him with their poisoned daggers, hitting him such grievous blows that soon he lay weltering in a pool of blood. The conspirators had first intended openly to announce the deed in the piazza, but their courage failed them and the Abbot merely muttered the news to the passers-by as he slunk away to S. Pietro with a few companions. Two of the braver of the assassins, however, stayed behind and, coming into the piazza, cried: "We have slain the tyrant." The citizens, who were at mass, rose with one accord from their devotions, to avenge the death of their beloved leader, and leaving the preacher to continue his sermon to an empty church, they hurried to arms. The Abbot meanwhile hastened from his monastery at S. Pietro to a still safer refuge at Casalina. As he fled he looked back upon the city whose hero he had murdered, and he saw the flames and smoke break out from the palace of those same Guidalotti he had hoped to benefit, whilst the news of the death of his old father and many of his family in the carnage of that day was brought to him as a sorry consolation for his crime. Biordo's blood was gathered together by the citizens and put into a little silver basin, and above it they placed the banner of Perugia with the white griffin upon a crimson field; and as one chronicler informs us, a heart of stone must have melted at the sight of it. Thus perished the first of that extraordinary series of men who took upon themselves the terrible task of governing single-handed the city of Perugia. Nearly all died by violence, but the violence done to Biordo was a cruel wrong. A short interval follows, and then the greatest name, perhaps, of all the city's chronicles comes up upon the scene, namely, that of Braccio Fortebraccio di Montone. * * * * * The Perugians suspected the ungracious part that the Pope had played in the murder of their leader, and the suspicion made them restless and dissatisfied. It was probably owing to this that they fell a prey to the cunning wiles of the Duke of Milan.