Note 44 — Chapter IV · The City of Perugia

Even after the Perugians had ceased to fight among themselves, their unhappy churches and palaces were battered about. “That wind of the desert,” says Bonazzi, “that simoom of Pontifical dominion did not pass over our city in vain.” Paul III., in building his fortress, did infinite damage to the south of the old town; and the work of destruction, as far as the gems of painting go, was completed by Napoleon Bonaparte, whose raids among the masterpieces of Perugia were quite imperial in their extravagance.