On the first day of his pontificate, the marchesa had had letters of, recommendation ready for Cossa to sign which urged all lords (spiritual and temporal) to aid the army of the Duke of Anjou in the liberation of Rome and. the Vatican. Gregory XII had by this time escaped the Vatican for the safe protection of Carlo Malatesta, at Rimini. Cossa informed the princes in these letters that he would entrust the duke with a prefecture to extend his facilities for the invasion of Naples, and the duke had set out from France to try again.
In his eagerness, he sailed on ahead with half of his fleet, leaving behind him six other galleys with his horses, arms; stores and the larger part of his troops and treasure. This deserted squadron was taken by the warships of Ladislas and the Genoese in a sea fight near the island of Meloria. Three of the French galleys went to the bottom, three were taken, and their valuable charges went to the Neapolitans. Only one ship, with 1500 men aboard, escaped and rejoined the duke at Piombino.
At Piombino, the wall-eyed duke, a compulsive talker with a bilateral emission lisp, received an embassy of condolence from Florence. He mounted a black horse, clad in black raiment and, accompanied by his troops who were also dressed in black, made his sorrowful way to Siena, where Cossa had given orders for his cordial reception. Greatly cheered by such courtesy, he exchanged all their black garments for red uniforms very pretty, and rode off to Bologna to see the pope, where he was met outside the city by cardinals and citizens.
Neither his pope nor the Florentines would help the duke with money but they both supplied troops.
‘It is no surprise to me that the Florentines would refuse to contribute money to my campaign,' the duke said spatteringly, `but you, the Holy Pontiff, called out for the liberation of Rome and the sacred Vatican and that is what I have come all this way to do.'
`You have come to crush Ladislas for ever,' Cossa said. `You have come to regain your, rightful inheritance` as the King of 'the Two Sicilies.,
'Well, yes. I suppose you're right. Oh, well, I can certainly use all the troops you can spare.'
The duke engaged the services of Sforza Attendolo as his general then forgot to pay him. The papal and ducal troops, together with 2500 men supplied by Florence, deprived by Christian tradition of Cossa's leadership because it had been three centuries since popes had led men into battle, marched off to Rome. What remained of the ducal fleet – seven large galleys and one small one – sailed off to Ostia, the port of Rome, under the command of Cossa's murderous uncle, Geronimo Cossa, now a papal admiral.
Early in January 1411, the ambassadors from Rome, together with the Duke of Anjou and his commander of condottieri, General Orsini, arrived in Bologna to escort Pope John XXIII therefrom to reign from the Vatican, an intention which had for so long been close to the heart of Giovanni di Bicci di Medici and his son.
Reigning from the Vatican can legitimize popes in a way that nothing else can. If only Rome weren't such a dog of a city. I didn't like Rome but Cossa detested it and it would make the marchesa feel less superior because of the old days when she had been nothing but a commoner and, in fact, was unpopular with everyone but Palo, and he wasn't to be allowed to go.
The cold rain had been incessant that winter in Bologna. The prices of grains and other, foods had risen to famine rates. It was an even harder winter in Rome, where a fox and five wolves had been killed inside the Viridarium, and where a shocking earthquake had been preceded by such a storm that the Romans thought their end had come. Cossa had kept getting reports like that and so decided to sit out the winter in Bologna. The marchesa was away on her tour of the daughters. By 1 April Cossa had placed Ugoccione di Contrari in command of the Bologna garrison and prepared reluctantly to leave Bologna for Rome. He was forty-three years old, but wine and the gout had made him the worse for wear.
The college of cardinals and the entire curia left Bologna with him because this time the papacy was returning to Rome permanently. The removals of the combined households of the papacy, the college and the curia was a spectacularly complex operation. The pope's own household contained 530 people. The household of each cardinal – and there were 11 cardinals travelling in the entourage – comprised about 210 people. The prelates, prebendaries and clerics who constituted the curia accounted for an aggregate household of 600 more. They were all guarded by detachments of 2000 soldiers, which made up a seven-mile long procession of 7000 people. In addition to these came the largest population of the holy hegira, 11,060 more people; not as decorative but equally impressive. There were cooks, provisioners, scullions, children, teachers, quartermasters, blacksmiths, armourers, wheelwrights, carpenters, labourers entertainers: jugglers, whores, actors, musicians, fixers, scribes, gardeners, lottery operators and astrologers; service personnel: accountants, couriers, butlers, housemaids; plus 209 of the nobility of the papal states who had permanently attached themselves to the papal court. All 18,000 of them swarmed across the hedgeless, sun-hammered countryside, accompanied by endless streams of pack-horses and carts slipping and stumbling beneath their monstrous burdens, which included plate, jewels, gold, sacred vessels and cloths, musical instruments, paintings; tools, weapons, breviaries and books, vestments, linen, pots, pans and cooking spits, an inestimable amount of clothing, and beds by the hundreds of dozens.
On 11 April, at the hour of vespers, they passed through the Porta Sancti Pancrati on the Via Aurelia at the entrance to Rome. The following day, Pope John XXIII rode through the Trastevere quarter, over the island bridge where the jewellers had their stalls, through the Fields of Flowers and across the St Peter's bridge, which led directly to the Vatican. His Holiness entered St Peter's church with the Duke of Anjou, the Marquess of Este and the cardinals, knelt at the high altar in observed reverence, then ordered that the sacred handkerchief of Santa Veronica be displayed to the Roman populace who had assembled at the basilica.
'My dear Decima,' Cossa wrote from the Vatican to the marchesa in Mainz. `Bologna is in, turmoil. Bernaba and Palo, Dr. Weiler and Father Fanfarone have remained there. Can you recall Corrado Caracciola, whom I once tried to persuade the college to elect as pope? If you cannot, do not chide yourself, for few can. His mother may have had a difficult time remembering him, and he was an only child. But he is sweet-natured, much like Filargi, and I wanted a safe place too stand him, so I made him my legate to Bologna. I had no sooner left when Carlo Malatesta, that tiresomely devout supporter of Gregory, entered the service of Ladislas with an army and at once notified – not dear old Caracciola – but the Bologna City Council,, that he would open hostilities against them. He advanced from Rimini, ravaging the land as he came, as far as San Giovanni in Persiceto, Caracciola tried feebly to persuade him to surrender, then he thought of using force, then – because his time had come and for no other reason – the dear old thing dropped dead. It could have been from the fresh air.
`So I must appoint another legate, probably Henricus Minultulus (a Neapolitan) but he can't get to Bologna in time to make any difference. Meantime, Bologna is a state without a ruler. Already conspirators, have elected Pietro Cassolini as leader and there was an uprising inside the walls on 11 May. Cassolini has made the whole thing into a holiday after that belly-pinching winter. He rode through the streets on a bare-backed horse yelling, "Hurray for the people and for Art!" and took the palace. The people followed him and they turned out the magistrates and the officials. Eight ancients and a gonfalonier of justice were elected. Envoys were sent to Venice for corn. All of it was a quarrel with the nobility, not with me or the Church. My captain – you remember Uguccione? – was allowed to remain. Bologna continues to pay its tribute to my curia. In fact this "commune" stipulated that the city continue to render "true and due obedience to Pope John". Then they made their peace with Malatesta and paid him two thousand florins.