When the fatal news was known, the consternation and grief were profound.  At the age of twenty-three Gaston de Foix had in less than six months won the confidence and affection of the army, of the king, and of France.  It was one of those sudden and undisputed reputations which seem to mark out men for the highest destinies.  “I would fain,” said Louis XIL, when he heard of his death, “have no longer an inch of land in Italy, and be able at that price to bring back to life my nephew Gaston and all the gallants who perished with him.  God keep us from often gaining such victories!” “In the battle of Ravenna,” says Guicciardini, “fell at least ten thousand men, a third of them French, and two thirds their enemies; but in respect of chosen men and men of renown the loss of the victors was by much the greater, and the loss of Gaston de Foix alone surpassed all the others put together; with him went all the vigor and furious onset of the French army.”  La Palisse, a warrior valiant and honored, assumed the command of this victorious army; but under pressure of repeated attacks from the Spaniards, the Venetians, and the Swiss, he gave up first the Romagna, then Milanes, withdrew from place to place, and ended by falling back on Piedmont.  Julius II. won back all he had won and lost.  Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovic the Moor, after twelve years of exile in Germany, returned to Milan to resume possession of his father’s duchy.  By the end of June, 1512, less than three months after the victory of Ravenna, the domination of the French had disappeared from Italy.

[Illustration:  Gaston de Foix——­364]

Louis XII. had, indeed, something else to do besides crossing the Alps to go to the protection of such precarious conquests.  Into France itself war was about to make its way; it was his own kingdom and his own country that he had to defend.  In vain, after the death of Isabella of Castile, had he married his niece, Germaine de Foix, to Ferdinand the Catholic, whilst giving up to him all pretensions to the kingdom of Naples.  In 1512 Ferdinand invaded Navarre, took possession of the Spanish portion of that little kingdom, and thence threatened Gascony.  Henry VIII., King of England, sent him a fleet, which did not withdraw until after it had appeared before Bayonne and thrown the south-west of France into a state of alarm.  In the north, Henry VIII. continued his preparations for an expedition into France, obtained from his Parliament subsidies for that purpose, and concerted plans with Emperor Maximilian, who renounced his doubtful neutrality and engaged himself at last in the Holy League.  Louis XII. had in Germany an enemy as zealous almost as Julius II. was in Italy:  Maximilian’s daughter, Princess Marguerite of Austria, had never forgiven France or its king, whether he were called Charles VIII. or Louis XII., the treatment she had received from that court, when, after having been kept there and brought up for eight years to become