From the moment that the French forces had descended into Lombardy, the
eyes of all Italy were turned with breathless expectation on Gonsalvo, 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 directed to crush their
common victim between them. They could scarcely credit, says Guicciardini,
that Louis the Twelfth could be so blind as to reject the proffered
vassalage and substantial sovereignty of Naples, in order to share it with
so artful and dangerous a rival as Ferdinand. [27]

The unfortunate Frederic, who had been advised for some time past of the
unfriendly dispositions of the Spanish government, [28] saw no refuge from
the dark tempest mustering against him on the opposite quarters of his
kingdom. He collected such troops as he could, however, in order to make
battle with the nearest enemy, before he should cross the threshold. On
the 28th of June, the French army resumed its march. Before quitting Rome,
a brawl arose between some French soldiers and Spaniards resident in the
capital; each party asserting the paramount right of its own sovereign to
the crown of Naples. From words they soon came to blows, and many lives
were lost before the fray could be quelled; a melancholy augury for the
permanence of the concord so unrighteously established between the two
governments. [29]