DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42863#0149
LORENZO SEIZES URBINO 127
the Pope refused to utter a single word, and the
poor Duchess returned to Urbino in despair.1
On the 27th of April, Francesco Maria was ex-
communicated and deprived of his states, and in
May, Lorenzo dei Medici invaded Urbino at the
head of 20,000 men. The Duke, with the help of
a brave Mantuan captain, Alessio Beccaguto, whom
his father-in-law had sent to his assistance, made a
vain attempt at resistance, but his own subjects
turned against him, and after throwing his guns
into the river, he retired to Pesaro. Here he em-
barked with the two Duchesses and all his most
valuable property, and travelled by sea to Mantua.
A violent tempest drove the ships in which the
unfortunate refugees sailed across the Adriatic, and,
according to one account, “some 700 miles to the
east, almost on to the Slavonian shores,” but at length
the fury of the gale abated, and on the Sth of June
they reached Pietola, where lodgings had been hur-
riedly prepared for them. Isabella herself was stay-
ing with her kinsman Luigi Gonzaga in his summer
palace of Borgoforte, on the Po, some miles south of
Mantua, and here the poor Duchesses came to visit her,
but the Marquis shrank from exciting the Pope’s dis-
pleasure by receiving the exiles under his own roof,
and they decided to remain at Pietola for the present.
“ To-day,” wrote Ippolito Calandra to his young
lord Federico Gonzaga, “ Isabella Lavagnola came
to Mantua, to send beds to Pietola for the Duke
and Duchesses of Urbino, who are expected there
to-night. Their little son, Signor Guidobaldo, has
already been lodged in Your Highness’s rooms in
the Corte for the last four days, and is the cleverest
1 Luzio e Renier, Mantova, p. 229.
the Pope refused to utter a single word, and the
poor Duchess returned to Urbino in despair.1
On the 27th of April, Francesco Maria was ex-
communicated and deprived of his states, and in
May, Lorenzo dei Medici invaded Urbino at the
head of 20,000 men. The Duke, with the help of
a brave Mantuan captain, Alessio Beccaguto, whom
his father-in-law had sent to his assistance, made a
vain attempt at resistance, but his own subjects
turned against him, and after throwing his guns
into the river, he retired to Pesaro. Here he em-
barked with the two Duchesses and all his most
valuable property, and travelled by sea to Mantua.
A violent tempest drove the ships in which the
unfortunate refugees sailed across the Adriatic, and,
according to one account, “some 700 miles to the
east, almost on to the Slavonian shores,” but at length
the fury of the gale abated, and on the Sth of June
they reached Pietola, where lodgings had been hur-
riedly prepared for them. Isabella herself was stay-
ing with her kinsman Luigi Gonzaga in his summer
palace of Borgoforte, on the Po, some miles south of
Mantua, and here the poor Duchesses came to visit her,
but the Marquis shrank from exciting the Pope’s dis-
pleasure by receiving the exiles under his own roof,
and they decided to remain at Pietola for the present.
“ To-day,” wrote Ippolito Calandra to his young
lord Federico Gonzaga, “ Isabella Lavagnola came
to Mantua, to send beds to Pietola for the Duke
and Duchesses of Urbino, who are expected there
to-night. Their little son, Signor Guidobaldo, has
already been lodged in Your Highness’s rooms in
the Corte for the last four days, and is the cleverest
1 Luzio e Renier, Mantova, p. 229.