Explore "The Life of Cesare Borgia" by Rafael Sabatini on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The second campaign of the Romagna had opened for Cesare as easily as had the first. So far his conquest had been achieved by little more than a processional display of his armed legions. Like another Joshua, he reduced cities by the mere blare of his trumpets. At last, however, he was to receive a check. Where grown men had fled cravenly at his approach, it remained for a child to resist him at Faenza, as a woman had resisted him at Forli.
His progress north from Pesaro was of necessity slow. He paused, as we have seen, at Rimini, and he paused again, and for a rather longer spell, at Forli, so that it was not until the second week of November that Astorre Manfredi--the boy of sixteen who was to hold Faenza--caught in the distance the flash of arms and the banners with the bull device borne by the host which the Duke of Valentinois led against him.