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 NOTES TO THE SECOND BOOK OF THE COURTIER disposition and merry humour and seems to have deserved his title of "the Magnanimous." Note 270, page 147. The battle of Cerignola (a town in Apulia near Cannse, the scene of one of Hannibal's victories) was fought 28 April 1503, between the Spanish army under the "Great Captain" and the French forces of Louis XII, and resulted in the defeat of the latter with the loss of more than half their men. Note 271, page 147. Ugo di Cardona, a brother of the Giovanni already mentioned, was a Spanish soldier who fought under Cesare Borgia and the " Great Captain," and was killed by the hand of Francis I at the battle of Pavia in 1525. Note 272, page 147. This is a corruption of the name of St. Erasmus, a Syrian bishop who suffered martyrdom about 304, and became a favourite saint among the sailors on the Mediterranean. His name is given to certain electrical phenomena often seen at sea and on land also. Note 273, page 147. OTTAVIANO Ubaldini, (died 1498), was the son of a famous condottiere, Bernardino Ubaldini, and Aura di Montefeltro, a sister of Duke Federico. His father having died in 1437, he was bred at the court of Urbino and became the trusted counsellor of his uncle Federico, who left to him the guardianship of the young duke, Guidobaldo. To personal valour and address in statecraft he united (if we may trust the rhymed chronicle of Raphael's father) a knowledge of classic literature, and a taste for music and the other fine arts. He is known to have been a zealous cultivator of astrology. By some writers Duke Federico (the circumstances of whose birth were not free from mystery) was believed to have been an Ubaldini, and this Ottaviano was openly regarded as his brother. Note 274, page 147. Antonello da FORLI was a soldier of fortune who died before May 1488, and of whom little seems to be known apart from this anecdote. It is found also in two other books, where the witty Florentine is named as Cosimo de' Medici. Note 275, page 147. San Leo was a fortress perched on an almost inaccessi- ble crag eighteen miles north-west of Urbino. It is mentioned by Dante (Purgatorio, iv, 25) and also by Machiavelli (Art of W^ar, iv) as a place of great natural strength. When in the spring of 1502 Cesare Borgia disclosed his hostile designs against Duke Guidobaldo, the latter, knowing that he could not hold out at Urbino, retired to San Leo, but soon afterwards fled in the garb of a peasant, and the castle was surrendered. In the same year, however, it was recaptured by stratagem. In the spring of 1503 it was besieged by the adherents of Borgia, and bravely defended for six months by Ottaviano Fregoso and the castellan Lattanzio da Bergamo (referred to in the text), in the hope 376