1498-1502.

Louis XII.'s Designs on Italy.--Alarm of the Spanish Court.--Bold Conduct
of its Minister at Rome.--Celebrated Partition of Naples.--Gonsalvo Sails
against the Turks.--Success and Cruelties of the French.--Gonsalvo Invades
Calabria.--He Punishes a Mutiny.--His Munificent Spirit.--He Captures
Tarento.--Seizes the Duke of Calabria.


During the last four years of our narrative, in which the unsettled state
of the kingdom and the progress of foreign discovery appeared to demand
the whole attention of the sovereigns, a most important revolution was
going forward in the affairs of Italy. The death of Charles the Eighth
would seem to have dissolved the relations recently arisen between that
country and the rest of Europe, and to have restored it to its ancient
independence. It might naturally have been expected that France, under her
new monarch, who had reached a mature age, rendered still more mature by
the lessons he had received in the school of adversity, would feel the
folly of reviving ambitious schemes, which had cost so dear and ended so
disastrously. Italy, too, it might have been presumed, lacerated and still
bleeding at every pore, would have learned the fatal consequence of
invoking foreign aid in her domestic quarrels, and of throwing open the
gates to a torrent, sure to sweep down friend and foe indiscriminately in
its progress. But experience, alas! did not bring wisdom, and passion
triumphed as usual.

Louis the Twelfth, on ascending the throne, assumed the titles of Duke of
Milan and King of Naples, thus unequivocally announcing his intention of
asserting his claims, derived through the Visconti family, to the former,
and through the Angevin dynasty, to the latter state. His aspiring temper