Pandolfo IV Malatesta (July 1475-June 1534) was an Italian condottiero and the lord of Rimini during the Italian Wars. Malatesta was infamous for his greed and violence, making him unpopular among the people of Rimini. After a failed uprising in 1498, the people of Rimini rose up with the assistance of Cesare Borgia's army in 1500 and ousted Malatesta from power.
Biography[]
Pandolfo IV Malatesta was the son of Roberto Malatesta, and he became Captain-General of the Republic of Venice on his father's death in 1482. In 1486, King Alfonso II of Naples made him a knight. In 1495, Malatesta was hired as a condottiero by the Republic of Venice, and he fought at the Battle of Fornovo before besieging the French garrison of Novara. His violence, murders, and rapes earned him the hatred of his subjects, and it required Venetian intervention to crush a revolt against his rule in Rimini. In 1500, Pope Alexander VI excommunicated him as Cesare Borgia conquered his territories in Romagna (Malatesta and Borgia had become rivals after Borgia kidnapped his daughter Dorotea), and he sold Rimini to the Papal States before heading to Venice. In 1509, he fought at the Battle of Agnadello, and he submitted to the Holy Roman Empire after the Venetian defeat there. He later besieged Padua, but this failed, and he was forced to return to Venice. He lived in poverty in Ferrara before dying in poverty in Rome in 1534.