ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
in the ascendant. All through these months of 
apparent idleness Caesar was collecting money and 
troops, and early in April he once more took the 
field at the head of a large army supplied with 
fresh guns and ammunition. This time the doom 
of Faenza was sealed. On the last day of April the 
exhausted garrison surrendered, and its brave leader, 
Astorre Manfredi, was taken prisoner to Rome and 
strangled by Caesar’s orders in Castell’ Sant’ Angelo. 
But we hear no more of Guidarello. He was 
not present at the last siege of Faenza, and no 
further letters from his hand reached the Podesta 
of Ravenna. A dark mystery overshadows the hero’s 
fate. All we know is that he was murdered one 
night at Imola by an assassin’s hand, and fell a victim 
to some foul conspiracy. This we learn from an 
elegy composed by a Venetian poet, Bernardino Catti, 
and published in the following year. “ Here,” sings 
the bard, “ lies the good knight Guidarello, the 
glory of warlike Mars and the boast of learned 
Minerva. Imola, with secret steel, took the life 
which Ravenna gave to be the pride of Italy.” And 
in another poem we read: “ Once Guidarello was 
the flower of Italy and of the whole world; 
born and bred on the ancient soil of Ravenna, 
he fell at Imola, treacherously murdered by the 
hand of a proud Roman.” Dr. Corrado Ricci, the 
246 
