in the beginning of the following year, 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]

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 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 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]