He reeled like a drunkard, sapped of strength, and then the end came quickly.

Blows unwarded showered upon him now.
He crashed down in all the glory of his rich armour, which those brigand-soldiers already coveted.

And thus he died--mercifully, maybe happily, for he had no time in which to taste the bitterness of death--that awful draught which he had forced upon so many.
Within a few moments of his falling, this man who had been a living force, whose word had carried law from the Campagna to the Bolognese, was so much naked, blood-smeared carrion--for those human vultures stripped him to the skin; his very shirt must they have.

And there, a stark, livid corpse, of no more account than any dog that died last Saturday, they left Cesare Borgia of France, Duke of Romagna and Valentinois, Prince of Andria, and Lord of a dozen Tyrannies.
The body was found there anon by those who so tardily rode after their leader, and his dismayed troopers bore those poor remains to Viana.
The king, arriving there that very day, horror-stricken at the news and sight that awaited him, ordered Cesare a magnificent funeral, and so he was laid to rest before the High Altar of Sainte Marie de Viane.
To rest?
May the soul of him rest at least, for men--Christian men--have refused to vouchsafe that privilege to his poor ashes.
Nearly two hundred years later--at the close of the seventeenth century, a priest of God and a bishop, one who preached a gospel of love and mercy so infinite that he dared believe by its lights no man to have been damned, came to disturb the dust of Cesare Borgia.

This Bishop of Calahorra--lineal descendant in soul of that Pharisee who exalted himself in God's House, thrilled with titillations of delicious horror at the desecrating presence of the base publican--had his pietist's eyes offended by the slab that marked Cesare Borgia's resting-place.( 1) 1 It bore the following legend: AQUI YACE EN POCA TIERRA AL QUE TODO LE TEMIA EL QUE LA PAZ Y LA GUERRA EN LA SUA MANO TENIA.
OH TU QUE VAS A BUSCAR COSAS DIGNAS DE LOAR SI TU LOAS LO MAS DIGNO AQUI PARE TU CAMINO NO CURES DE MAS ANDAR.
which, more or less literally may be Englished as follows: "Here in a little earth, lies one whom all did fear; one whose hands dispensed both peace and war.