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 Petrucci.
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 by the wily
Cesare, who trusted that time would sow among his rebel captains
suspicion and dissension. He next made overtures to the leaders
separately, and so far succeeded in his perfidious policy as to draw
Vitellezzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Paolo Orsini, and Francesco
Orsini, Duke of Gravina, into his nets at Sinigaglia. Under pretext of
fair conference and equitable settlement of disputed claims, he
possessed himself of their persons, and had them strangled--two upon
December 31, and two upon January 18, 1503. Of all Cesare's actions,
this was the most splendid for its successful combination of sagacity
and policy in the hour of peril, of persuasive diplomacy, and of
ruthless decision when the time to strike his blow arrived.