nd clank of machinery, and the
great structure swung up and clattered into place. The duke remained
outside, saved by a too great eagerness on the part of those who worked
the winches, for had they waited but a second longer they must have
trapped him.

Cesare returned angry to Forli, and set a price upon Caterina's
head--20,000 ducats if taken alive, 10,000 if dead; and on the morrow he
opened fire. For a fortnight this was continued without visible result,
and daily the countess was to be seen upon the walls with her castellan,
directing the defences. But on January 12, Cesare's cannon having been
concentrated upon one point, a breach was opened at last. Instantly the
waiting citizens, who had been recruited for the purpose, made forward
with their faggots, heaping them up in the moat until a passage was
practicable. Over this went Cesare's soldiers to force an entrance.

A stubborn fight ensued within the ravelin, where the duke's men were
held in check by the defenders, and not until some four hundred corpses
choked that narrow space did the besieged give ground before them.

Like most of the Italian fortresses of the period, the castle of Forli
consisted of a citadel within a citadel. In the heart of the main
fabric--but cut off from it again by its own moat--arose the great tower
known as the Maschio. This was ever the last retreat of the besieged
when the fortress itself had been carried by assault, and, in the case
of the Maschio of the Citadel of Forli, so stout was its construction
that it was held to be practically invulnerable.

Had the countess's soldiers made their retreat in good order to this
tower, where all the munitions and provisions were stored, Cesare would
have found the siege but in the beginning; but in the confusion of that
grim hour, besieged and besiegers, Borgian and Riarian, swept forward
interlocked, a writhing, hacking, bleeding mob of men-at-arms. Thus
they flung themselves in a body across the bridge that spanned the inner
moat, and so into the Maschio, whilst the stream of Cesare's soldiers
that poured uninterruptedly across in the immediate wake of that
battling mass rendered it impossible for the defenders to take up the
bridge.

Within the tower the carnage went on, and the duke's men hacked
their way through what remained of the Forlivese until they had made
themselves masters of that inner stronghold whither Caterina had sought
her last refuge.

A Burgundian serving under t