For nearly another forty years the Malatesta kept their remnant lands: a petty principality, isolated among territories which had long forgotten all government but theirs. More than this they never achieved. The limit of their recovery was reached under Sixtus IV, when the agreements of 1463, requiring all territory to revert on the death of Sigismondo and his brother, were so far relaxed as to confirm them in the tenure of Rimini. Complete or ample rehabilitation was never contemplated, or even perhaps expected. However dissimilar the personal affinities or aims of different popes, their office imposed certain principles on all of them which did not allow the work of Pius II to be carelessly undone.

This was the lesson Sigismondo had to learn in the last few years of his life. He did not at first consider his new situation to be final or beyond hope. There were still followers, ‘Pandolfeschi’, in the cities recently lost, particularly Fano, and with them he was secretly in touch. At the same time he knew that retrieval would be won, if at all, less by violence or intrigue than by conciliation and calculated penitence. For this reason, in spite of the pope, he took service with Venice in the spring of 1464, to fight against the Turks in the Morea, a command refused by every other Italian captain, including Federigo d'Urbino. The campaign which followed, lasting two years, brought neither success nor profit.