im the insignia of this office in the church of St. Peter's at Rome.

CHAPTER VII

Matters went forward as Alexander had wished, and before the end of the
year the pontifical army had, seized a great number of castles and
fortresses that belonged to the Orsini, who thought themselves already
lost when Charles VIII came to the rescue. They had addressed themselves
to him without much hope that he could be of real use to there, with his
want of armed troops and his preoccupation with his own affairs. He,
however, sent Carlo Orsini, son of Virginio, the prisoner, and Vitellozzo
Vitelli, brother of Camillo Vitelli, one of the three valiant Italian
condottieri who had joined him and fought for him at the crossing of the
Taro: These two captains, whose courage and skill were well known,
brought with them a considerable sum of money from the liberal coffers of
Charles VIII. Now, scarcely had they arrived at Citta di Castello, the
centre of their little sovereignty, and expressed their intention of
raising a band of soldiers, when men presented themselves from all sides
to fight under their banner; so they very soon assembled a small army,
and as they had been able during their stay among the French to study
those matters of military organisation in which France excelled, they now
applied the result of their learning to their own troops: the
improvements were mainly certain changes in the artillery which made
their manoeuvres easier, and the substitution for their ordinary weapons
of pikes similar in form to the Swiss pikes, but two feet longer. These
changes effected, Vitellozzo Vitelli spent three or four months in
exercising his men in the management of their new weapons; then, when he
thought them fit to make good use of these, and when he had collected
more or less help from the towns of Perugia, Todi, and Narni, where the
inhabitants trembled lest their turn should come after the Orsini's, as
the Orsini's had followed on the Colonnas', he marched towards
Braccianno, which was being besieged by the Duke of Urbino, who had been
lent to the pope by the Venetians, in virtue of the treaty quoted above.

The Venetian general, when he heard of Vitelli's approach, thought he
might as well spare him half his journey, and marched out to confront
him: the two armies met in the Soriano road, and the battle straightway
began. The pontifical army had a body of eight hundred Germans, on which
the Dukes of Urbino and Gandia ch