The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

4
HISTORY OF THE POPES.
measures against Ferrara, and therefore had recourse
to subterfuges. Without at first rousing any suspicion in
Alfonso's mind * the Pope instigated a sudden attack on
the Duke's capital by those whom he had banished from
Ferrara. However, the watchfulness of the Marquis of
Mantua frustrated the attempt.f
Fortune was more propitious to the Pope in the measures
taken by him against the petty tyrants of the Marches
of Ancona and Umbria, who had unlawfully usurped a
power exceeding that which had belonged to their predecessors.
The constant complaints of the people who
were oppressed by these unscrupulous and riotous
despots had for some time been calling for repressive
measures. In March, 1520, Leo considered that the right
moment had come for these to be taken ; and ere long
the tyrants of the Marches trembled before the energy
which he displayed against them.J Giovanni de' Medici
was commissioned to combine with the Bishop of Chiusi,
Niccolo Bonafede, the Governor of the Marches, to reduce
to subjection the Lord of Fermo, Lodovico Uffreducci, son
of the criminal Oliverotto, who had been treacherously put
to death by Cesare Borgia. Lodovico defended himself like
a valiant condottiere, but lost both lands and life in an
engagement at Monte Giorgio. Fermo then returned to
the immediate dominion of the Pope, and the surrounding
* This is related in a Despatch of Jan 14, 1520, from the Este
Ambassador at Rome, in Balan, VI., 25.
t GUICCIARDINI, XIII., 5; PiSTOFlLO in Atti Mod., III., 516;
Baumgarten, Karl V., I., 197 ; NiTTi, 270. Balan's attempt (VI.,
25) to prove that Leo X. was innocent of the attempt against Ferrara,
seems useless in the face of available sources of information. Cf.
Semper, Carpi, 14, who maintains that such breaches of peace were
allowed by the policy of the age. See also LuziO'S Review of Pastor's
" Leo X." in the Corriere della Sera, 1906, No. 282.
I Sanuto, XXIX., 395.