The best fortress in the world, he told her, was nothing without loyalty. No stronghold could withstand the force of a people’s hatred. Caterina had learned this, that the respect and love she believed her people to bear for her was no more than craven fear. The cruelties her vengeance had inflicted on Forli when her husbands had been murdered had never been forgotten, and when the moment came for the people to forgive her, that forgiveness was withheld, and the gates of Imola and Forli were opened to Valentino. She believed that her Sforza sword and her Sforza will were stronger than fortune, but she could not hold the Rocca. It burned because love and loyalty were nothing to her against her pride. Perhaps I should have warned him too, Machiavelli, that he would have dealings with Valentino, and that in the end princes lost the love of their people because they did not see us as people at all. So when everything else was taken from Caterina, her lovers and her children, her titles and her jewels, her home and her state, she laid me out for Valentino as casually as a gambler throwing down a card in a tavern.
