f the kind Saturnian soil.
LA MAGIONE
On the road from Perugia to Cortona, the first stage ends at La
Magione, a high hill-village commanding the passage from the Umbrian
champaign to the lake of Thrasymene.
It has a grim square fortalice above it, now in ruins, and a stately
castle to the south-east, built about the time of Braccio. Here took
place that famous diet of Cesare Borgia's enemies, when the son of
Alexander VI. was threatening Bologna with his arms, and bidding fair
to make himself supreme tyrant of Italy in 1502. It was the policy of
Cesare to fortify himself by reducing the fiefs of the Church to
submission, and by rooting out the dynasties which had acquired a
sort of tyranny in Papal cities. The Varani of Camerino and the
Manfredi of Faenza had been already extirpated. There was only too
good reason to believe that the turn of the Vitelli at Citta di
Castello, of the Baglioni at Perugia, and of the Bentivogli at Bologna
would come next. Pandolfo Petrucci at Siena, surrounded on all sides
by Cesare's conquests, and specially menaced by the fortification of
Piombino, felt himself in danger. The great house of the Orsini, who
swayed a large part of the Patrimony of S. Peter's, and were closely
allied to the Vitelli, had even graver cause for anxiety. But such was
the system of Italian warfare, that nearly all these noble families
lived by the profession of arms, and most of them were in the pay of
Cesare. When, therefore, the conspirators met at La Magione, they were
plotting against a man whose money they had taken, and whom they had
hitherto aided in his career of fraud and spoliation.
The diet consisted of the Cardinal Orsini, an avowed antagonist of
Alexander VI.; his brother Paolo, the chieftain of the clan;
Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta di Castello; Gian-Paolo Baglioni,
made undisputed master of Perugia by the recent failure of his cousin
Grifonetto's treason; Oliverotto, who had just acquired the March of
Fermo by the murder of his uncle Giovanni da Fogliani; Ermes
Bentivoglio, the heir of Bologna; and Antonio da Venafro, the
secretary of Pandolfo Petrueci. These men vowed hostility on the basis
of common injuries and common fear against the Borgia. But they were
for the most part stained themselves with crime, and dared not trust
each other, and could not gain the confidence of any respectable power
in Italy except the exiled Duke of Urbino. Procrastination was the
first weapon used
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