Note 347 — LORENZO DI PIERO DE’ MEDICI (continued 3)

Count Girolamo Riario, nephew of the late Pope Sixtus, cruel and despotic, had been murdered by his subjects, and his wife Caterina, an illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Sforza, taken prisoner with her three sons. The castle of Ravaldino which commanded the town still held out, and the insurgents allowed her to go to the commandant on the pretence that she would induce him to surrender, leaving her children as hostages in their hands. Once inside the castle she defied the people, and when they threatened to kill her children replied, according to Guicciardini, “Are you not fools, cannot you see that I can have others?” Milanese troops were sent by Lodovico Sforza and the little boys were saved.