then, with four of his party, escaped into the
country, and evaded all pursuit. Five of his
friends, however, remained behind, who had been
unable or unwilling to fly, and upon these, three
of whom were Mantuans and two French,
misfortune fell; they had taken refuge in the palace
of the Porcellaghi, where they were discovered by
the sbirri, in consequence of one of the party
dropping his hat, and, being made prisoners,
were all of them hung next morning on the
pillars of the public prison. "It happened,"
remarks the chronicler, "that, on the following
night, the Podestà of the city suddenly died, and
the ignorant and gossiping crowd looked upon
his death as a judgment for having ignominiously
executed those brave soldiers, all of them young
and handsome, and of illustrious family."

His vengeance only thus half satisfied, Count
Sciarra Martinengo returned to France; but,
before his further adventures are told, another
version of the affair which has just been related
has to be given. Brantôme is the authority,
and, without naming the cause of quarrel, he
tells his story as follows:

"After having for a long time watched and
ridden about, not being able to catch his enemy
in the open country, for he had shut himself up
in the city of Brescia, Count Sciarra resolved
to go there to kill him; and being accompanied
by two good soldiers, as determined as himself,
he entered the city at mid-day, went to his
enemy's house, ascended to his chamber, killed
him suddenly, withdrew (it is not enough to
strike the blow, you must escape), went out by
the door he had entered in at, mounted, he and
his men, on their good horses, which were there
waiting, and was a league distant from the place
before the alarm was given. He was pursued,
as well by the officers of justice as by the
relations of the deceased, who were great noblemen;
but their pursuit was unsuccessful, for he
succeeded in reaching Piedmont, where he
entered into the service of King Henry, and
served the crown of France so faithfully that
as long as he lived he was ranked amongst the
most faithful servants it had ever numbered,
not only by foreigners, but by Frenchmen
themselves. "This," continues Brantôme, "was
not all. When we went to succour Malta, he
joined us for his own pleasure, as if he had been
a young man who had never yet seen war,
declaring that the happiest death a man could
die was for the honour and religion of God,
and that in this he wished to follow the example
of his great ancestor, the Count of Martinengo,
who also, for his own pleasure, went to the
defence of Rhodes….. Several of his"
(Sciarra's) "friends tried to dissuade him from
going to Malta, saying that he ran the risk of
meeting some of his enemies, friends of the
man whom he had killed, in some part of Italy.
I saw him, however, as resolute to undertake
the journey as if he had no enemy in the world,
saying always that if they killed him it would
cost some of them their lives. He went through
Piedmont like the rest of us, passed by Pavia,
not far from Brescia, and proceeded to Genoa to
embark, with a determination as animated as I
have ever witnessed. Finally, we all arrived
at Malta safe and sound, he fearing nothing.
On our return, he travelled by land as we did;
knew that in Rome there was a relation of his
man (son homme) undertook to kill him; but
yielded to the instances of his friends and
allowed him to escape. He then pursued his
journey to France, still by land, from city to
city; not, however, approaching the territory of
the Venetians, as he had not made his peace
with them, and was in danger there of his life,
for it would have been too great temerity so to
have tempted God and fortune."

With respect to the attempted vendetta, the
greater precision of Rossi, himself a Brescian,
renders his account the more probable; though
when Brantôme says he went in the company of
Count Sciarra to Malta (in 1551), the garrulous
Frenchman has a right to be believed. But
there are, indeed, several discrepancies in the
story of Count Sciarra's life, not only as they
are separately told by Rossi and Brantôme, but
in relation to some of its principal incidents,
which are not in accordance with the known
fact of history.

A remarkable duel fought by Count Sciarra
offers the first example. Rossi relates that,
after the count had made his escape into France,
he had a dispute one day with a noble soldier —
an adventurer in the wars— and it was agreed
that their quarrel should be decided on a narrow
wooden bridge, little more than four spans wide,
which crossed a running stream in the neighbourhood
of Paris. But, he adds, if the place chosen
for this duel was extravagant and capricious, not
less extraordinary and perilous was the choice
of weapons, which consisted only of two daggers
for each, and of dress, which was merely a
jerkin of violet-coloured silk. Sciarra, having
pierced his adversary with five deadly dagger
wounds, hurled him into the stream. Rossi
accounts for the peculiar fierceness of this duel
by suggestions that Sciarra felt it necessary to
appease the manes of his father by sacrificing
another life.

In recording the same adventure, Brantôme
lays the scene at Turin, accompanying it with
circumstances which give an air of credibility to
his narrative, though the ferocity which
distinguished the duels that were fought at that time,
in France especially, renders Rossi's version, by
no means improbable. Brantôme says: "Great
also was the courage he showed in a duel which
he fought in Piedmont, on the bridge over the
Po, with another Italian enemy, both of them
armed with a dagger in each hand. It is
true that their arms and shoulders were
defended by a great brassard, but it was all of
one piece and would not bend, so that it
annoyed and confined the arm and kept it quite
straight. This was the choice of his antagonist,
who had been wounded in the arm, like my late
uncle De la Chastaigneraye." (Brantôme alludes
here to the antagonist of Jarnac, in the memorable
duel fought at St. Germain en Laye, in
1548, which gave rise to the famous expression,