Beyond the Po he was surprised by the Pontifical army under Ferrante Orsini, and there his force was cut to pieces.
My father himself escaped and with him some other gentlemen of Piacenza, notably one of the scions of the great house of Pallavicini, who took a wound in the leg which left him lame for life, so that ever after he was known as Pallavicini il Zopo.
They were all under the pope's ban, outlaws with a price upon the head of each, hunted and harried from State to State by the papal emissaries, so that my father never more dared set foot in Mondolfo, or, indeed, within the State of Piacenza, which had been rudely punished for the insubordination it had permitted to be reared upon its soil.
And Mondolfo went near to suffering confiscation.

Assuredly it would have suffered it but for the influence exerted on my mother's and my own behalf by her brother, the powerful Cardinal of San Paulo in Carcere, seconded by that guelphic cousin of my father's, Cosimo d'Anguissola, who, after me, was heir to Mondolfo, and had, therefore, good reason not to see it confiscated to the Holy See.
Thus it fell out that we were left in peace and not made to suffer from my father's rebellion.

For that, he himself should suffer when taken.
But taken he never was.

From time to time we had news of him.

Now he was in Venice, now in Milan, now in Naples; but never long in any place for his safety's sake.