With the garrison beginning to surrender on the eastern front, the northern and western fronts were soon to follow suit. They had been under constant bombardment, yet they held strong, knowing that their comrades would do the same on the eastern front, but when they saw Luxenberg banners rise from key strategic locations, they lost hope.
"The eastern front has fallen!" Shouted one of the garrison soldiers, pointing to the Luxenberg flags.
"All is lost!" Cried another.
With a looming sense of despair infiltrating the ranks of the defenders, they would succumb to it and raise the white flag of surrender. The gates were opened, and columns of dark blue and green marched into the city.
By dusk, the Luxenberg and Green Visconte banners fluttered from all corners of the city. Lasalle, who stood at the base of a ruined arch, breathing the acrid air. Before him, the heart of the city still burned golden in the dying light—domes and towers defiant against the dark. He knew the worst was yet to come. The palace stood ahead, and beyond it, Lorenzo Visconte.
"Order the men to halt their advance, begin setting up camps and defensive barricades. We will have more of our men funnel into the city and attack the palace at first light," General Lasalle ordered.
And as night drew its cloak over the city, Roma's fires became stars of their own—bright, trembling, and terribly alive.
Night fell heavily upon Roma, thick with ash and the sour tang of powder. The wind had stilled, as though the city itself were holding its breath. In the northern, eastern and western quarters, the Luxenberg and Green Visconte camps flickered with the dull light of lanterns.
Soldiers tended wounds, dragged timbers into makeshift barricades, and buried their dead beneath half-collapsed walls. Somewhere, a violin wept—a thin, uncertain tune that faded each time a musket cracked in the distance.
General Lasalle stood before the blackened arch of a ruined chapel, his coat torn, his hands raw from hours of fighting. "They'll counterattack by dawn," he murmured to his friend, General Rapp. "They have no choice. A cornered city always finds teeth." He turned his eyes toward the distant palace, where faint lights still burned high in the windows. "Lorenzo will not flee. He'll make us come to him."
Inside that same palace, Lorenzo Visconte walked through rooms that smelled of smoke and wax. Maps and letters littered the tables, their ink smeared by sweat and haste. The city's heartbeat echoed through the marble floors—the clash of steel, the far cry of the wounded, the muttering of the dying. He stopped before a great mirror cracked by vibration, its reflection splitting his face in two.
"So it ends here," he whispered.
Outside, the bells began again—slow, hollow, funereal. In the streets below, the remaining Red Visconte soldiers gathered in the last defensible squares, forming ragged lines in the torchlight. Their discipline was gone, but their anger burned pure.
And as the first stars blinked above the smoke, the wind returned, carrying with it the scent of rain and the promise of another dawn—a dawn that neither side would meet unchanged.
Dawn crept grey and reluctant over Roma, its light dull against the smoke that still curled from the eastern ruins. The rain had come in the small hours—soft, steady, and strangely clean. It washed the blood from the cobbles, turned the ash to paste, and made the air taste of stone and iron.
From the camps, the Luxenberg drums began their slow summons once more. Soldiers formed ranks in the mist, coats darkened by rain, faces drawn but resolute. Muskets were checked, bayonets fixed, cannon rolled into new positions along the boulevards that now served as roads to the heart of the city.
The palace would be approached from three sides with a capable Luxenberg General leading the combined allied forces. General Lasalle would continue to command the soldiers mustered on the eastern front, with General Rapp serving as his adjutant.
From the western front, Marshal Lefebvre would lead the men. They were well rested since they marched into the city unopposed by cannon or musketfire. Approaching from the northern front would be the men under the command of General Hill.
The columns began to move, boots sucking at the wet earth, banners trailing like ghosts. The sound of their march—steady, deliberate—echoed off the hollow façades of burned houses.
Inside the Visconte Palace, Lorenzo stood upon the balcony once more. His cloak snapped in the wind as he watched the mist part to reveal the approaching hosts, vast and silent save for the drums.
"So be it," he whispered. "Let Roma witness the end of its own glory."
Below him, his remaining guards assembled on the marble steps, rifles gleaming in the dim light. They would join what was left of the garrison and fight to the last. The odds were astronomically against him.
With the garrison men holding the last defendable square, they were the last defence between the three advancing hosts and the palace. Each host would have to pass through that square to advance on the palace. Lorenzo and his guards began to fortify the palace entrance, making it another place to hold off the enemy and a safe haven for retreating allies.
The assault had become something solemn—a ritual as old as ambition. Through the thinning smoke, he could see the palace getting closer and closer, the red manticore of the Visconte banners fluttering in stubborn defiance.
The infantry surged ahead. Muskets flared in the square, the sound a rolling thunder that swallowed every prayer. The Red Visconte fought like men who no longer feared death—reloading in the open, shouting curses that vanished into the roar of fire. The cobble steps ran dark underfoot.
From the palace entrance, Lorenzo watched as his remaining garrison soldiers fought valiantly and defiantly; however, they were slaughtered. Outnumbered and facing attacks from different sides, they could not last long in the maelstrom of musketballs.
Lorenzo and his few hundred guards were now all that remained to defy the Luxenberg and Green Visconte capture of the city.