A legendary history, which is simply the reflection of these
atrocities, arose out of the early days of the Baglioni. All the
members of this family from the beginning were reported to have died an
evil death twenty-seven on one occasion together; their houses were
said to have been once before levelled to the ground, and the streets
of Perugia paved with the bricks and more of the same kind. Under Paul
III the destruction of their palaces really took place.

For a time they seemed to have formed good resolutions, to have brought
their own party into power, and to have protected the public officials
against the arbitrary acts of the nobility. But the old curse broke out
again like a smoldering fire. In 1520 Gianpaolo was enticed to Rome
under Leo X, and there beheaded; one of his sons, Orazio, who ruled in
Perugia for a short time only, and by the most violent means, as the
partisan of the Duke of Urbino (himself threatened by the Pope), once
before repeated in his own family the horrors of the past. His uncle
and three cousins were murdered, whereupon the Duke sent him word that
enough had been done. His brother, Malatesta Baglione, the Florentine
general, has made himself immortal by the treason of 1530; and
Malatesta's son Ridolfo, the last of the house, attained, by the murder
of the legate and the public officers in the year 1534, a brief but
sanguinary authority. We shall meet again with the names of the rulers
of Rimini. Unscrupulousness, impiety, military skill, and high culture
have been seldom combined in one individual as in Sigismondo Malatesta
(d. 1467). But the accumulated crimes of such a family must at last
outweigh all talent, however great, and drag the tyrant into the abyss.
Pandolfo, Sigismondo's nephew, who has been mentioned already,
succeeded in holding his ground, for the sole reason that the Venetians
refused to abandon their Condottiere, whatever guilt he might be
chargeable with; when his subjects (1497), after ample provocation,