lawless, unscrupulous, employed it in banishing to Pavia the lawful duke, his own nephew, John Galeas Mario Sforza, of whom the Florentine ambassador said to Ludovic himself, “This young man seems to me a good young man and animated by good sentiments, but very deficient in wits.”  He was destined to die ere long, probably by poison.  The republic of Venice had at this period for its doge Augustin Barbarigo; and it was to the council of Ten that in respect of foreign affairs as well as of the home department the power really belonged.  Peter de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the father of the Muses, was feebly and stupidly, though with all the airs and pretensions of a despot, governing the republic of Florence.

Rome had for pope Alexander VI. (Poderigo Borgia), a prince who was covetous, licentious, and brazen-facedly fickle and disloyal in his policy, and who would be regarded as one of the most utterly demoralized men of the fifteenth century, only that he had for son a Caesar Borgia.  Finally, at Naples, in 1494, three months before the day on which Charles VIII, entered Italy, King Alphonso II. ascended the throne.  “No man,” says Commynes, “was ever more cruel than he, or more wicked, or more vicious and tainted, or more gluttonous; less dangerous, however, than his father, King Ferdinand, the which did take in and betray folks whilst giving them good cheer (kindly welcome), as hath been told to me by his relatives and friends, and who did never have any pity or compassion for his poor people.”  Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and ephemeral conquest.

The reception he met with at the outset of his enterprise could not but confirm him in his illusory hopes.  Whilst he was at Lyons, engaged in preparations for his departure, Duke Charles of Savoy, whose territories were the first he would have to cross, came to see him on a personal matter.  “Cousin, my good friend,” said the king to him, “I am delighted to see you at Lyons, for, if you had delayed your coming, I had intended to go myself to see you, with a very numerous company, in your own dominions, where it is likely such a visit could not but have caused you loss.”  “My lord,” answered the duke, “my only regret at your arrival in my dominions would be, that I should be unable to give you such welcome there as is due to so great a prince. . . .  However, whether here or elsewhere, I shall be always ready to beg that you will dispose of me and all that pertains to me just as of all that might belong to your own subjects.”  Duke Charles of Savoy had scarcely exaggerated; he was no longer living in September, 1494, when Charles VIII, demanded of his widow Blanche, regent in the name of her infant son, a free passage for the French army over her territory, and she not only granted his