Sampiero was in Vico when the monk brought him forged letters, urgently requesting him to come to Rocca, where a rebellion, it was said, had broken out against the popular cause. Sampiero instantly despatched Vittolo with twenty horse to Cavro, and himself followed soon after. He was accompanied by his son Alfonso, Andrea de' Gentili, Antonio Pietro of Corte, and Battista da Pietra. Vittolo, in the meantime, instructed the brothers Ornano, and Giustiniani, that Sampiero would pass through the defile of Cavro; on receiving which intelligence, they immediately set out for the spot indicated with a considerable force of foot and horse, and formed the ambuscade. Sampiero and his little band were riding unsuspectingly through the pass, when they suddenly found themselves assailed on every side, and the defile swarming with armed men. He saw that his hour was come. Yielding now to those impulses of natural affection which he had once so signally disowned, he ordered his son Alfonso to leave him, to flee, and save himself for his country. The son obeyed, and escaped. Most of his friends had fallen bravely fighting by his side, when Sampiero rushed into the _mêlée_, to hew his way through if it were possible. The day was just dawning. The three Ornanos had kept their eyes constantly upon him, at first afraid to assail the terrible man; but at length, spurred on by revenge, they pressed in upon him, some Genoese soldiery at their back. Sampiero fought desperately. He had thrown himself upon Antonio Ornano, and wounded him with a pistol-shot in the throat. But his carbine missed fire; Vittolo, in loading it, had put in the bullet first. Sampiero's face was streaming with blood; freeing his eyes from it with his left, his right hand still grasped his sword, and kept all at bay, when Vittolo, from behind, shot him through the back, and he fell. The Ornanos now rushed in upon the dying man, and finished their work. They cut off Sampiero's head, and carried it to the Governor. It was on the 17th of January in the year 1567 that Sampiero fell. He had reached his sixty-ninth year, his vigour unimpaired by age or military toil. The stern grandeur of his soul, and his pure and heroic patriotism, have made his name immortal. He was great in the field, inexhaustible in council; owing all to his own extraordinary nature, without ancestry, he inherited nothing from fortune, which usually favours the _parvenu_, but from misfortune everything, and he yielded, like Viriathus, only to the assassin. He has shown, by his elevating example, what a noble man can do, when he remains unyieldingly true to a great passion.