The indignation of the Venetians and of Alviano, the same general who had fought so gallantly under Gonsalvo at the Garigliano, hurried them into an engagement with the allies near La Motta (Oct. 7th), at two miles' distance from Vicenza. Cardona, loaded with booty and entangled among the mountain-passes, was assailed under every disadvantage. The German allies gave way before the impetuous charge of Alviano; but the Spanish infantry stood its ground unshaken, and by extraordinary discipline and valor succeeded in turning the fortunes of the day. More than four thousand of the enemy were left on the field; and a large number of prisoners, including many of rank, with all the bag. gage and artillery, fell into the hands of the victors."

Thus ended the campaign of 1513: the French driven again beyond the mountains; Venice cooped up within her sea-girt fastnesses, and compelled to enroll her artisans and common laborers in her defence,—but still strong in resources, above all in the patriotism and unconquerable spirit of her people."

3 Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. vi. lib. 11, pp. 101-138.-Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 523.-Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 30, cap. 21.-Fleurange, Mémoires, chap. 36, 37.—Also an original letter of King Ferdinand to Archbishop Deza, apud Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 242.-Alviano died a little more than a year after this defeat, at sixty years of age. He was so much beloved by the soldiery that they refused to be separated from his remains, which were borne at the head of the army for some weeks after his death. They were finally laid in the church of St. Stephen in Venice; and the senate, with more gratitude than is usually conceded to republics, settled an honorable pension on his family.

3 Daru, Hist. de Venise, tom. iii. pp. 615, 616.

Count Daru has supplied the desideratum, so long standing, of a full, authentic history of a state whose institutions were the admiration

of earlier times, and whose long stability and success make them de servedly an object of curiosity and interest to our own. The style of the work, at once lively and condensed, is not that best suited to historic writing, being of the piquant, epigrammatic kind much affected by French writers. The subject, too, of the revolutions of empire does not afford room for the dramatic interest attaching to works which admit of more extended biographical development. Abundant interest will be found, however, in the dexterity with which he has disentangled the tortuous politics of the republic; in the acute and always sensible reflections with which he clothes the dry skeleton of fact; and in the novel stores of information he has opened. The foreign policy of Venice excited too much interest among friends and enemies in the day of her glory, not to occupy the pens of the most intelligent writers. But no Italian chronicler, not even one intrusted with the office by the government itself, has been able to exhibit the interior workings of the complicated machinery so satisfactorily as M. Daru has done, with the aid of those voluminous state papers, which were as jealously guarded from inspection, until the downfall of the republic, as the records of the Spanish Inquisition.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CONQUEST OF NAVARRE.

1512-1513.

Sovereigns of Navarre.-Ferdinand demands a Passage.-Invasion and Conquest of Navarre.-Treaty of Orthès.-Ferdinand settles his Conquests.-His Conduct examined.-Gross Abuse of the Victory.

WHILE the Spaniards were thus winning barren laurels on the fields of Italy, King Ferdinand was making a most important acquisition of territory nearer home. The reader has already been made acquainted with the manner in which the bloody sceptre of Navarre passed from the hands of Eleanor, Ferdinand's sister, after a reign of a few brief days, into those of her grandson Phoebus. (1479.) A fatal destiny hung over the house of Foix; and the latter prince lived to enjoy his crown only four years, when he was succeeded by his sister Catharine. (1483.)

It was not to be supposed that Ferdinand and Isabella, so attentive to enlarge their empire to the full extent of the geographical limits which nature seemed to have assigned it, would lose the opportunity now presented of incorporating into it the hitherto independent kingdom of Navarre, by the marriage of their own heir with its sovereign. All their efforts, how

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ever, were frustrated by the queen mother Magdaleine, sister of Louis the Eleventh, who, sacrificing the interests of the nation to her prejudices, evaded the proposed match, under various pretexts, and in the end effected a union between her daughter and a French noble, Jean d'Albret, heir to considerable estates in the neighborhood of Navarre. This was a most fatal error. The independence of Navarre had hitherto been maintained less through its own strength than the weakness of its neighbors. But, now that the petty states around her had been absorbed into two great and powerful monarchies, it was not to be expected that so feeble a barrier would be longer respected, or that it would not be swept away in the first collision of those formidable forces. But, although the independence of the kingdom must be lost, the princes of Navarre might yet maintain their station by a union with the reigning family of France or Spain. By the present connection with a mere private individual they lost both the one and the other.'

Still, the most friendly relations subsisted between the Catholic king and his niece during the lifetime of Isabella. The sovereigns assisted her in taking pos session of her turbulent dominions, as well as in allaying the deadly feuds of the Beaumonts and Agramonts, with which they were rent asunder. They supported her with their arms in resisting her uncle Jean, viscount of Narbonne, who claimed the crown on the groundless pretext of its being limited to male heirs."

I See Part I. chapters 10, 12.

The

2 Histoire du Royaume de Navarre, pp. 567, 570.--Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. lib. 34, cap. 1.-Diccionario geográfico-histórico

alliance with Spain was drawn still closer by the avowed purpose of Louis the Twelfth to support his nephew, Gaston de Foix, in the claims of his deceased father.' The death of the young hero, however, at Ravenna, wholly changed the relations and feelings of the two countries. Navarre had nothing immediately to fear from France. She felt distrust of Spain on more than one account, especially for the protection afforded the Beaumontese exiles, at the head of whom was the young count of Lerin, Ferdinand's nephew."

France, too, standing alone, and at bay against the rest of Europe, found the alliance of the little state of Navarre of importance to her; especially at the present juncture, when the project of an expedition against Guienne, by the combined armies of Spain and England, naturally made Louis the Twelfth desirous to secure the good will of a prince who might be said to wear the keys of the Pyrenees, as the king of Sardinia did those of the Alps, at his girdle. With these amicable dispositions, the king and queen of Navarre despatched their plenipotentiaries to Blois, early in May, soon after the battle of Ravenna, with full powers to conclude a treaty of alliance and confederation with the French government.5

de España, por la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, 1802), tom. ii. p. 117.

3 Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. lib. 35, cap. 13.-Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 9, cap. 54.—Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tom. xv. p. 500.

4 Aleson, Annales de Navarra, ubi supra.

5 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, tom. iv. part. 1, p. 147.—See also the king's letter to Deza, dated Burgos, July 20th, 1512, apud Ber naldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 235.