In his council he found loyal and able opponents.  “On the undertaking of this trip,” says Philip de Commynes, one of those present, “there was many a discussion, for it seemed to all folks of wisdom and experience very dangerous . . . all things necessary for so great a purpose were wanting; the king was very young, a poor creature, wilful and with but a small attendance of wise folk and good leaders; no ready money; neither tents, nor pavilions for wintering in Lombardy.  One thing good they had:  a lusty company full of young men of family, but little under control.”  The chiefest warrior of France at this time, Philip de Crevecoeur, Marshal d’Esquerdes, threw into the opposition the weight of his age and of his recognized ability.  “The greatness and tranquillity of the realm,” said he, “depend on possession of the Low Countries; that is the direction in which we must use all our exertions rather than against a state, the possession of which, so far from being advantageous to us, could not but weaken us.”  “Unhappily,” says the latest, learned historian of Charles VIII. [Histoire de Charles VIII., by the late M. de Cherrier, t. i. p. 393], “the veteran marshal died on the 22d of April, 1494, in a small town some few leagues from Lyons, and thenceforth all hope of checking the current became visionary. . . .  On the 8th of September, 1494, Charles VIII. started from Grenoble, crossed Mount Genevre, and went and slept at Oulx, which was territory of Piedmont.  In the evening a peasant who was accused of being a master of Vaudery [i.e. one of the Vaudois, a small population of reformers in the Alps, between Piedmont and Dauphiny] was brought before him; the king gave him audience, and then handed him over to the provost, who had him hanged on a tree.”  By such an act of severity, perpetrated in a foreign country and on the person of one who was not his own subject, did Charles VIII. distinguish his first entry into Italy.

[Illustration:  Charles VIII. crossing the Alps——­285]

It were out of place to follow out here in all its details a war which belongs to the history of Italy far more than to that of France; it will suffice to point out with precision the positions of the principal Italian states at this period, and the different shares of influence they exercised on the fate of the French expedition.

Six principal states, Piedmont, the kingdom of the Dukes of Savoy; the duchy of Milan; the republic of Venice; the republic of Florence; Rome and the pope; and the kingdom of Naples, co-existed in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century.  In August, 1494, when Charles VIII. started from Lyons on his Italian expedition, Piedmout was governed by Blanche of Montferrat, widow of Charles the ‘Warrior,’ Duke of Savoy, in the name of her son Charles John Amadeo, a child only six years old.  In the duchy of Milan the power was in the hands of Ludovic Sforza, called the Moor, who, being ambitious, faithless,