The incident occurred after the Orsi family killed Caterina Sforza’s husband and took her family as prisoners in the Italian city of Forlí, of which her husband was Count and Caterina was Countess.
One of the city’s fortresses refused to submit to the attackers and Sforza left her children with the captors and entered the fortress in what she claimed was an attempt to convince the last holdouts to surrender. Once inside, she stood on the fort’s walls and began to curse at the attackers. When they threatened to kill her children she exposed her genitals and claimed that she had what she needed to make more! An alternative version of the events are that Sforza claimed to be pregnant which would make her unborn child the rightful heir to the city.
The attackers were so shocked they didn’t touch the children, an action Sforza counted on. All she had to do was wait inside the fortress until reinforcements arrived and rescued the Countess and her entire family.
