PART II. Gonsalvo sails against the Turks. July 15. forty, during which the bastard line of Aragon had occupied the throne, a period much shorter than that, after which the house of York had in England, a few years before, successfully contested the validity of the Lancastrian title. It should be added, that Ferdinand's views appear to have perfectly corresponded with those of the Spanish nation at large; not one writer of the time, whom I have met with, intimating the slightest doubt of his title to Naples, while not a few insist on it with unnecessary emphasis.20 It is but fair to state, however, that foreigners, who contemplated the transaction with a more impartial eye, condemned it as inflicting a deep stain on the characters of both potentates. Indeed, something like an apprehension of this, in the parties themselves, may be inferred from their solicitude to deprecate public censure by masking their designs under a pretended zeal for religion. Before the conferences respecting the treaty were brought to a close, the Spanish armada under 1500. Gonsalvo, after a brief detention in Sicily, where it was reinforced by two thousand recruits, who had been serving as mercenaries in Italy, held its course for the Morea. The Turkish squadron, lying before Napoli di Romania, without waiting Gonsalvo's approach, raised the siege, and retreated precipitately to Constantinople. The Spanish general, then uniting his forces with the Venetians, 20 See, in particular, the Doctor Salazar de Mendoza, who exhausts the subject, and the reader's patience, in discussing the multi farious grounds of the incontrovertible title of the house of Aragon to Naples. Monarquía, tom. i. lib. 3, cap. 12-15. X. stationed at Corfu, proceeded at once against the CHAPTER fortified place of St. George, in Cephalonia, which the Turks had lately wrested from the republic.21 The town stood high on a rock, in an impregnable position, and was garrisoned by four hundred Turks, all veteran soldiers, prepared to die in its defence. We have not room for the details of this siege, in which both parties displayed unbounded courage and resources, and which was protracted nearly two months under all the privations of famine, and the inclemencies of a cold and stormy winter.22 St. George. At length, weary with this fatal procrastination, Storming of Gonsalvo and the Venetian admiral, Pesaro, resolved on a simultaneous 'attack on separate quarters of the town. The ramparts had been already shaken by the mining operations of Pedro Navarro, who, in the Italian wars, acquired such terrible celebrity in this department, till then little understood. The Venetian cannon, larger and better served than that of the Spaniards, had opened a practicable breach in the works, which the besieged repaired with such temporary defences, as they could. The signal being given at the appointed hour, the two armies made a desperate assault on different quarters of the town, under cover of a murderous fire of artillery. The Turks sustained the attack with dauntless resolution, stopping up 21 Giovio, Vitæ Illust. Virorum, tom. i. p. 226.-Chrónica del Gran Capitan, cap. 9.-Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 4, cap. 19. VOL. III. 3 22 Giovio, Vitæ Illust. Virorum, ubi supra. - Chrónica del Gran Capitan, cap. 14. PART II. the breach with the bodies of their dead and dying comrades, and pouring down volleys of shot, arrows, burning oil and sulphur, and missiles of every kind, on the heads of the assailants. But the desperate energy, as well as numbers of the latter, proved too strong for them. Some forced the breach, others scaled the ramparts; and, after a short and deadly struggle within the walls, the brave garrison, four fifths of whom with their commander had 1501. fallen, were overpowered, and the victorious banners of St. Jago and St. Mark were planted side by side triumphantly on the towers.23 January. Honors paid to Gonsalvo. The capture of this place, although accomplished at considerable loss, and after a most gallant resistance by a mere handful of men, was of great service to the Venetian cause; since it was the first check given to the arms of Bajazet, who had filched one place after another from the republic, menacing its whole colonial territory in the Levant. The promptness and efficiency of King Ferdinand's succour to the Venetians gained him high reputation throughout Europe, and precisely of the kind which he most coveted, that of being the zealous defender of the faith; while it formed a favorable contrast to the cold supineness of the other powers of Christendom. The capture of St. George restored to Venice the possession of Cephalonia; and the Great Captain, having accomplished this important object, 23 Giovio, Vitæ Illust. Virorum, del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 4, cap. 25. Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 167. X. returned in the beginning of the following year, CHAPTER 1501, to Sicily. Soon after his arrival there, an embassy waited on him from the Venetian senate, to express their grateful sense of his services; which they testified by enrolling his name on the golden book, as a nobleman of Venice, and by a magnificent present of plate, curious silks and velvets, and a stud of beautiful Turkish horses. Gonsalvo courteously accepted the proffered honors, but distributed the whole of the costly largess, with the exception of a few pieces of plate, among his friends and soldiers.24 June 1. In the mean while, Louis the Twelfth having completed his preparations for the invasion of Naples, an army, consisting of one thousand lances and ten thousand Swiss and Gascon foot, crossed the 1501. Alps, and directed its march towards the south. At the same time a powerful armament, under Philip de Ravenstein, with six thousand five hundred additional troops on board, quitted Genoa for the Neapolitan capital. The command of the land forces was given to the Sire d'Aubigny, the same brave and experienced officer who had formerly coped with Gonsalvo in the campaigns of Calabria.25 No sooner had D'Aubigny crossed the papal borders, than the French and Spanish ambassadors announced to Alexander the Sixth and the college 24 Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 167.- Quintana, Españoles Célebres, tom. i. p. 246. Giovio, Vitæ Illust. Virorum, p. 228. Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 4. 25 Jean d'Auton, Histoire de Louys XII., (Paris, 1622,) part.1, The pope confirms the partition. PART II. Astonishment of Italy. of cardinals the existence of the treaty for the partition of the kingdom between the sovereigns, their masters, requesting his Holiness to confirm it, and grant them the investiture of their respective shares. In this very reasonable petition his Holiness, well drilled in the part he was to play, acquiesced without difficulty; declaring himself moved thereto solely by his consideration of the pious intentions of the parties, and the unworthiness of King Frederic, whose treachery to the Christian commonwealth had forfeited all right (if he ever possessed any) to the crown of Naples.26 From the moment that the French forces had descended into Lombardy, the eyes of all Italy were turned with breathless expectation on Gon salvo, and his army in Sicily. The bustling preparations of the French monarch had diffused the knowledge of his designs throughout Europe. Those of the king of Spain, on the contrary, remained enveloped in profound secrecy. Few doubted, that Ferdinand would step forward to shield his kinsman from the invasion which menaced him, and, it might be, his own dominions in Sicily; and they looked to the immediate junction of Gonsalvo with King Frederic, in order that their combined strength might overpower the enemy before he had gained a footing in the kingdom. Great was their astonishment, when the scales dropped from their eyes, and they beheld the movements of Spain in perfect accordance with those of France, and direct 26 Zurita, Hist. del Rey Her- Lanuza, Historias, tom. i. lib. 1, nando, tom. i. lib. 4, cap. 43.. cap. 14. |