Parma; and to follow it would have brought the French upon the walls of a strong city.  Charles could not do otherwise than descend upon the village of Fornovo, and cut his way thence in the teeth of the Italian army over stream and boulder between the gorges of throttling mountain.  The failure of the Italians to achieve what here upon the ground appears so simple, delivered Italy hand-bound to strangers.  Had they but succeeded in arresting Charles and destroying his forces at Fornovo, it is just possible that then—­even then, at the eleventh hour—­Italy might have gained the sense of national coherence, or at least have proved herself capable of holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay.  As it was, the battle of Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and Mantuan Madonnas of Victory, made her conscious of incompetence and convicted her of cowardice.  After Fornovo, her sons scarcely dared to hold their heads up in the field against invaders; and the battles fought upon her soil were duels among aliens for the prize of Italy.

In order to comprehend the battle of Fornovo in its bearings on Italian history, we must go back to the year 1492, and understand the conditions of the various States of Italy at that date.  On April 8 in that year, Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance could be expected.  On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded by the very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter’s chair, Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI.  It was felt at once that the old order of things had somehow ended, and that a new era, the destinies of which as yet remained incalculable, was opening for Italy.  The chief Italian powers, hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de’ Medici, were these—­the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence, the Papacy, and the kingdom of Naples.  Minor States, such as the Republics of Genoa and Siena, the Duchies of Urbino and Ferrara, the Marquisate of Mantua, the petty tyrannies of Romagna, and the wealthy city of Bologna, were sufficiently important to affect the balance of power, and to produce new combinations.  For the present purpose it is, however, enough to consider the five great Powers.

After the peace of Constance, which freed the Lombard Communes from Imperial interference in the year 1183, Milan, by her geographical position, rose rapidly to be the first city of North Italy.  Without narrating the changes by which she lost her freedom as a Commune, it is enough to state that, earliest of all Italian cities, Milan passed into the hands of a single family.  The Visconti managed to convert this flourishing commonwealth, with all its dependencies, into their private property, ruling it exclusively for their own profit, using its municipal institutions as the machinery of administration, and employing