In the Medici Archive of the Florence State Archives, Elizabeth Lev tells us there is a letter from the Florentine ambassador Puccio Pucci. In it he warns that Caterina Sforza Countess of Forli would send her children, her allies, and her possessions to the grave, her soul to hell and her state to the Turk, before she would give up her knight Giacomo Feo. This position on her part was seen as a liability for many actors across Italy in 1495. The man himself came from no family, he had no interests backing him and no outside loyalties to anyone that the Countess did not control. Common culture of the time discerned that this was the kind of man no one else could trust.
In 1495 young Ottaviano Riario, Caterina's son turned sixteen and thus came of age to inherit his father's etstates. Antonio Ordelaffi is listed as the antagonist who set the Orciolo and Marcobelli families to revolt. That uprising was crushed says Lev, but Feo put the city of Forli on lock down and no one was allowed in or out except on Giacomo's approval.
A teenage Ottaviano was said to vent an impassioned plea at Giacomo for his minority position regarding the young husband of his mother and was slapped into silence by Feo. A plot was hatched by a guard captain within Forli. Giovanni Antonio Ghetti is listed as the trusted captain that set some retainers against Giacomo Feo. Ghetti's wife Rosa, was Caterina' favorite lady in waiting. Lev says this woman and her husband knew the dangerous devotion Caterina had for her knight. A family member to Ghetti, Domenico joined them with a couple priests. One of these, Antonio Pavagliotta needed money for his mistress and three children in order to join them. The other, Lev says, wanted to tender favor with the powerful Cardinal Riario.
Caterina, the children and Giacomo had gone on a picnic outside Forli on August 27, 1495. It was a nice day, they went on a hunt and then ate. On the way back, they were so happy with the day, they were singing. They crossed the bridge with Giacomo and Ottaviano behind the Countess and the youngest in a carriage. When Caterina crossed the gate, the trusted captain Ghetti stepped forward in front of Giacomo on horseback. They greeted merrily and Ghetti's allies closed in behind Giacomo Feo and stabbed him in the back. He fell into the arms of his assailants. Caterina instantly knew what was happening, jumped out of the carriage onto a horse and raced for the fortress. Young Ottaviano and Cesare rushed to the home of a nearby nobeleman, Paolo Denti.
Ghetti and the clerics went into the town's piazza calling out the names Caterina and Ottaviano, claiming to have destroyed the traitor Feo. They claimed to have liberated the town from the usurping tyrant. Caterina's chief of police came out to see the bloodied killers Ghetti and the clerics. He returned to the fortress Ravaldino only to come back again with a number of guards to arrest Ghetti and his conspirators. The culprits struggled free and escaped into the crowd and then the town. But then a reward was announced. One hundred ducats to whoever captured Ghetti or the conspirators, dead or alive. It only took a few days at most for them to be found and cut down.
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from pp 178-82 by Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de'Medici : 2011, USA, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company
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