As a matter of fact--and as a comparison of the above-cited dates will show--eighteen days had elapsed between Giovanni Borgia's leaving Cesare at Forli and his succumbing at Urbino--which in itself disposes of the matter.

It may be mentioned that this is a circumstance which those foolish or deliberately malicious calumniators either did not trouble to ascertain or else thought it wiser to slur over.

Although, had they been pressed, there was always the death of Djem to be cited and the fiction of the slow-working poison specially invented to meet and explain his case.
The preparations for the invasion of Pesaro were complete, and it was determined that on January 22 the army should march out of Forli; but on the night of the 21st a disturbance occurred.

The Swiss under the Bailie of Dijon became mutinous--they appear throughout to have been an ill-conditioned lot--and they clamoured now for higher pay if they were to go on to Pesaro, urging that already they had served the Duke of Valentinois as far as they had pledged themselves to the King of France.
Towards the third hour of the night the Bailie himself, with these mutineers at his heels, presented himself at the Nomaglie Palace to demand that the Countess Sforza-Riario should be delivered into his hands.

His claim was that she was his prisoner, since she had been arrested by a soldier of his own, and that her surrender was to France, to which he added--a thought inconsequently, it seems--that the French law forbade that women should be made prisoners.