[Illustration:  Battle of Agnadello——­334]

On the 14th of May, 1509, the French army and the Venetian army, of nearly equal strength, encountered near the village of Agnadello, in the province of Lodi, on the banks of the Adda.  Louis XII. commanded his in person, with Louis de la Tremoille and James Trivulzio for his principal lieutenants; the Venetians were under the orders of two generals, the Count of Petigliano and Barthelemy d’Alviano, both members of the Roman family of the Orsini, but not on good terms with one another.  The French had to cross the Adda to reach the enemy, who kept in his camp.  Trivulzio, seeing that the Venetians did not dispute their passage, cried out to the king, “To-day, sir, the victory is ours!” The French advance-guard engaged with the troops of Alviano.  When apprised of this fight, Louis, to whom word was at this same time brought that the enemy was already occupying the point towards which he was moving with the main body of the army, said briskly, “Forward, all the same; we will halt upon their bellies.”  The action became general and hot.  The king, sword in hand, hurried from one corps to another, under fire from the Venetian artillery, which struck several men near him.  He was urged to place himself under cover a little, so as to give his orders thence; but, “It is no odds,” said he; “they who are afraid have only to put themselves behind me.”  A body of Gascons showed signs of wavering:  “Lads,” shouted La Tremoille, “the king sees you.”  They dashed forward; and the Venetians were broken, in spite of the brave resistance of Alviano, who was taken and brought, all covered with blood, and with one eye out, into the presence of the king.  Louis said to him, courteously, “You shall have fair treatment and fair captivity; have fair patience.”  “So I will,” answered the condottiere; “if I had won the battle, I had been the most victorious man in the world; and, though I have lost it, still have I the great honor of having had against me a King of France in person.”  Louis, who had often heard talk of the warrior’s intrepid presence of mind, had a fancy for putting it to further proof, and, all the time chatting with him, gave secret orders to have the alarm sounded not far from them.  “What is this, pray, Sir Barthelemy?” asked the king:  “your folks are very difficult to please; is it that they want to begin again?” “Sir,” said Alviano, “if there is fighting still, it must be that the French are fighting one another; as for my folks, I assure you, on my life, they will not pay you a visit this fortnight.”  The Venetian army, in fact, withdrew with a precipitation which resembled a rout:  for, to rally it, its general, the Count of Petigliano, appointed for its gathering-point the ground beneath the walls of Brescia, forty miles from the field of battle.  “Few men-at-arms,” says Guicciardini, “were slain in this affair; the great loss fell upon the Venetians’ infantry, which lost, according to