intimated this still more unequivocally, by the supplies she had allowed her citizens to carry into Barleta during the late campaign, and by other indirect aid of a similar nature during the present; for all which she was one day to be called to a heavy reckoning by her enemies.

The disposition of the papal court towards the French monarch was still less favorable; and it took no pains to conceal this after his reverses in Naples. Soon after the defeat of Cerignola, it entered into correspondence with Gonsalvo de Cordova; and, although Alexander the Sixth refused to break openly with France and sign a treaty with the Spanish sovereigns, he pledged himself to do so on the reduction of Gaeta. In the mean time, he freely allowed the Great Captain to raise such levies as he could in Rome, before the very eyes of the French ambassador. So little had the immense concessions of Louis, including those of principle and honor, availed to secure the fidelity of this treacherous ally.

4

With the emperor Maximilian, notwithstanding repeated treaties, he was on scarcely better terms. That prince was connected with Spain by the matrimonial alliances of his family, and no less averse to France from personal feeling, which, with the majority of minds, operates more powerfully than motives of state policy. He had, moreover, always regarded the occupation of Milan by the latter as an infringement, in

4 Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 38, 48.- Bembo, Istoria Viniziana, tom. iii. lib. 6.—Daru, Hist. de Venise, tom. iii. p. 347.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. i. lib. 6, p. 311, ed. 1645.—Buonac corsi, Diario, pp. 77, 81.

some measure, of his imperial rights. The Spanish government, availing itself of these feelings, endeav ored through its minister, Don Juan Manuel, to stimulate Maximilian to the invasion of Lombardy. As the emperor, however, demanded, as usual, a liberal subsidy for carrying on the war, King Ferdinand, who was seldom incommoded by a superfluity of funds, preferred reserving them for his own enterprises, to hazarding them on the Quixotic schemes of his ally. But, although the negotiations were attended with no result, the amicable dispositions of the Austrian government were evinced by the permission given to its subjects to serve under the banners of Gonsalvo, where indeed, as we have already seen, they formed some of the best troops.

But, while Louis the Twelfth drew so little assistance from abroad, the heartiness with which the whole French people entered into his feelings at this crisis. made him nearly independent of it, and, in an incredibly short space of time, placed him in a condition for resuming operations on a far more formidable scale than before. The preceding failures in Italy he attributed in a great degree to an overweening confidence in the superiority of his own troops, and his neglect to support them with the necessary reinforcements and supplies. He now provided against this by remitting large sums to Rome, and establishing ample magazines of grain and military stores there, under the direction of commissaries, for the maintenance of the army. He equipped without loss of time a large armament at

5 Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 55.-Coxe, History of the House of Austria (London, 1807), vol. i. chap. 23.

Genoa, under the marquis of Saluzzo, for the relief of Gaeta, still blockaded by the Spaniards. He obtained a small supply of men from his Italian allies, and subsidized a corps of eight thousand Swiss, the strength of his infantry; while the remainder of his army, comprehending a fine body of cavalry and the most complete train of artillery, probably, in Europe, was drawn from his own dominions. Volunteers of the highest rank pressed forward to serve in an expedition to which they confidently looked for the vindication of the national honor. The command was intrusted to the maréchal de la Trémouille, esteemed the best general in France; and the whole amount of force, exclusive of that employed permanently in the fleet, is variously computed at from twenty to thirty thousand men.“

In the month of July the army was on its march across the broad plains of Lombardy, but, on reaching Parma, the appointed place of rendezvous for the Swiss and Italian mercenaries, was brought to a halt by tidings of an unlooked-for event, the death of Pope Alexander the Sixth. He expired on the 18th of August, 1503, at the age of seventy-two, the victim, there is very little doubt, of poison he had prepared for others; thus closing an infamous life by a death

• Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 78.-St. Gelais, Hist. de Louys XII., pp. 173, 174.—Varillas, Hist. de Louis XII., tom. i. pp. 386, 387.—Mémoires de la Trémoille, chap. 19, apud Petitot, Collection des Mémoires, tom. xiv.-Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xiv. anno 1503.Carta de Gonzalo, MS.-Historians, as usual, differ widely in their estimates of the French numbers. Guicciardini, whose moderate computation of 20,000 men is usually followed, does not take the trouble to reconcile his sum total with the various estimates given by him in detail, which considerably exceed that amount. Istoria, pp. 308, 309, 312.

equally infamous. He was a man of undoubted talent and uncommon energy of character. But his powers were perverted to the worst purposes, and his gross vices were unredeemed, if we are to credit the report of his most respectable contemporaries, by a single virtue. In him the papacy reached its lowest degradation. His pontificate, however, was not without its use; since that Providence which still educes good from evil made the scandal which it occasioned to the Christian world a principal spring of the glorious Reformation."

The death of this pontiff occasioned no particular disquietude at the Spanish court, where his immoral life had been viewed with undisguised reprobation, and made the subject of more than one pressing remonstrance, as we have already seen. His public course had been as little to its satisfaction; since, although a Spaniard by birth, being a native of Valencia, he had placed himself almost wholly at the disposal of Louis

7 Carta de Gonzalo, Del Real, Gaeta, 8 de Agosto, 1503, MS.— Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 81.-Bembo, Istoria Viniziana, lib. 6.—The little ceremony with which Alexander's remains were treated, while yet scarcely cold, is the best commentary on the general detestation in which he was held. Lorsque Alexandre," says the pope's maître des cérémonies," rendit le dernier soupir, il n'y avait dans sa chambre que l'évêque de Rieti, le dataire et quelques palefreniers. Cette chambre fut aussitôt pillée. La face du cadavre devint noire; la langue s'enfla au point qu'elle remplissait la bouche qui resta ouverte. La bière dans laquelle il fallait mettre le corps se trouva trop petite; on l'y enfonça à coups de poings. Les restes du pape insultés par ses domestiques furent portés dans l'église de St. Pierre, sans être accompagnés de prêtres ni de torches, et on les plaça en dedans de la grille du choeur pour les dérober aux outrages de la populace." Notice de Burchard, apud Brequigny, Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi (Paris, 1787-1818), tom. i. p. 120.

the Twelfth, in return for the countenance afforded by that monarch to the iniquitous schemes of his son, Cæsar Borgia.

The pope's death was attended with important consequences on the movements of the French. Louis's favorite minister, Cardinal D'Amboise, had long looked forward to this event as opening to him the succession to the tiara. He now hastened to Italy, therefore, with his master's approbation, proposing to enforce his pretensions by the presence of the French army, placed, as it would seem, with this view at his disposal.

The army, accordingly, was ordered to advance towards Rome and halt within a few miles of its gates. The conclave of cardinals, then convened to supply the vacancy in the pontificate, were filled with indignation at this attempt to overawe their election; and the citizens beheld with anxiety the encampment of this formidable force under their walls, anticipating some counteracting movement on the part of the Great Captain, which might involve their capital, already in a state of anarchy, in all the horrors of war. Gonsalvo, indeed, had sent forward a detachment of between two and three thousand men, under Mendoza and Fabrizio Colonna, who posted themselves in the neighborhood of the city, where they could observe the movements of the enemy.

8

At length Cardinal D'Amboise, yielding to public feeling and the representations of pretended friends,

• Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 82.-Machiavelli, Legazione prima a Roma, let. 1, 3, et al.-Bembo, Istoria Viniziana, tom. iii. lib. 6.— Ammirato, Istorie Fiorentine, tom. iii. lib. 28.—Zurita, Anales, tom. v lib. 5, cap. 47.