It was very hotly contested, but did not last long, with alternations of success and reverse on both sides.  The two principal commanders in the king’s army, Louis de la Tremoille and John James Trivulzio, sustained without recoiling the shock of troops far more numerous than their own.  “At the throat! at the throat!!” shouted La Tremoille, after the first onset, and his three hundred men-at-arms burst upon the enemy and broke their line.  In the midst of the melley, the French baggage was attacked by the Stradiots, a sort of light infantry composed of Greeks recruited and paid by the Venetians.  “Let them be,” said Trivulzio to his men; “their zeal for plunder will make them forget all, and we shall give the better account of them.”  At one moment, the king had advanced before the main body of his guard, without looking to see if they were close behind him, and was not more than a hundred paces from the Marquis of Mantua, who, seeing him scantily attended, bore down at the head of his cavalry.  “Not possible is it,” says Commynes, “to do more doughtily than was done on both sides.”  The king, being very hard pressed, defended himself fiercely against those who would have taken him; the bastard Matthew of Bourbon, his brother-in-arms and one of the bravest knights in the army, had thrown himself twenty paces in front of him to cover him, and had just been taken prisoner by the Marquis of Mantua in person, when a mass of the royal troops came to their aid, and released them from all peril.  Here it was that Peter du Terrail, the Chevalier de Bayard, who was barely twenty years of age, and destined to so glorious a renown, made his first essay in arms; he had two horses killed under him, and took a standard, which he presented to the king, who after the battle made him a present of five hundred crowns.

Charles VIII. remained master of the battle-field.  “There were still to be seen,” says Commynes, “outside their camp, a great number of men-at-arms, whose lances and heads only were visible, and likewise foot-soldiers.  The king put it to the council whether he ought to give chase to them or not; some were for marching against them; but the French were not of this opinion; they said that enough had been done, that it was late, and that it was time to get lodged.  Night was coming on; the host which had been in front of us withdrew into their camp, and we went to get lodged a quarter of a league from where the battle had been.  The king put up at a poorly-built farm-house, but he found there an infinite quantity of corn in sheaves, whereby the whole army profited.  Some other bits of houses there were hard by, which did for a few; and every one lodged as he could, without making any cantonment, I know well enough that I lay in a vineyard, at full length on the bare ground, without anything else and without cloak, for the king had borrowed mine in the morning.  Whoever had the wherewith made a meal, but few had, save a hunch of bread from