So the Republic--sly and treacherous as any other Italian Government of the Cinquecento--instructed Soderini to temporize with the duke; to spend the days in amiable, inconclusive interviews and discussions of terms which the Signory did not mean to make.

Thus they counted upon gaining time, until the arrival of the French should put an end to the trouble caused by Vitelli, and to the need for any compromise.
But Cesare, though forced to submit, was not fooled by Soderini's smooth, evasive methods.

He too--having private sources of information in France--was advised of the French advance and of the imminence of danger to himself in consequence of the affairs of Florence.

And it occasioned him no surprise to see Soderini come on July 19 to take his leave of him, advised by the Signory that the French vanguard was at hand, and that, consequently, the negotiations might now with safety be abandoned.
To console him, he had news on the morrow of the conquest of Camerino.
The septuagenarian Giulio Cesare Varano had opposed to the Borgia forces a stout resistance, what time he sent his two sons Pietro and Gianmaria to Venice for help.

It was in the hope of this solicited assistance that he determined to defend his tyranny, and the war opened by a cavalry skirmish in which Venanzio Varano routed the Borgia horse under the command of the Duke of Gravina.