for protection awarded to Cesare.  The Colonna faction meanwhile was to be crushed, and the Orsini to be flattered.  Cesare, by the help of his French allies and the Orsini captains, took possession of Imola and Faenza, and thence proceeded to overrun Romagna.  In this enterprise he succeeded to the full.  Romagna had been, from the earliest period of Italian history, a nest of petty tyrants who governed badly and who kept no peace in their dominions.  Therefore the towns were but languid in their opposition to Cesare, and were soon more than contented with a conqueror who introduced a good system for the administration of justice.  But now two difficulties arose.  The subjugation of Romagna had been effected by the help of the French and the Orsini.  Cesare as yet had formed no militia of his own, and his allies were becoming suspicious.  The Orsini had shown some slackness at Faenza; and when Cesare proceeded to make himself master of Urbino, and to place a foot in Tuscany by the capture of Piombino—­which conquests he completed during 1500 and 1501—­Louis began to be jealous of him.  The problem for the Duke was how to disembarrass himself of the two forces by which he had acquired a solid basis for his future principality.  His first move was to buy over the Cardinal d’Amboise, whose influence in the French Court was supreme and thus to keep his credit for awhile afloat with Louis.  His second was to neutralize the power of the Orsini, partly by pitting them against the Colonnesi, and partly by superseding them in their command as captains.  For the latter purpose he became his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna.  Thus he collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of mercenary troops.  At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their own strength was on the decline, determined if possible to check the career of this formidable tyrant by assassination.  The conspiracy known as the ‘Diet of La Magione’ was the consequence.  In this conjuration the Cardinal Orsini, Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house, together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta di Castello, the Baglione of Perugia, the Bentivoglio of Bologna, Antonio da Venasso from Siena, and Oliverotto da Fermo took each a part.  The result of their machinations against the common foe was that Cesare for a moment lost Urbino, and was nearly unseated in Romagna.  But the French helped him, and he stood firm.  Still it was impossible to believe that Louis XII. would suffer him to advance unchecked in his career of conquest; and as long as he continued between the French and the Orsini his position was of necessity insecure.  The former had to be cast off; the latter to be extirpated; and yet he had not force enough to play an open game.  ’He therefore,’ says Machiavelli, ’turned to craft, and displayed such skill in dissimulation