a common foe.  After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself in greatest peril, for he dreaded the assembly of a Council which might depose him from the throne he had bought by simony.  So strong was his terror that he had already sent ambassadors to the Sultan imploring him for aid against the Most Christian King, and had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of undertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his arms in opposition to the French.  But Bajazet was too far off to be of use; and Ferdinand was prudent.  It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their unassisted force.  This might have been done if Alfonso’s plan had been adhered to.  He designed sending a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, to Genoa, and holding with his own troops the passes of the Apennines to the North, while Piero de’ Medici undertook to guard the entrances to Tuscany on the side of Lunigiana.  The Duke of Calabria meanwhile was to raise Gian Galeazzo’s standard in Lombardy.  But that absolute agreement which is necessary in the execution of a scheme so bold and comprehensive was impossible in Italy.  The Pope insisted that attention should first be paid to the Colonnesi—­Prospero and Fabrizio being secret friends of France, and their castles offering a desirable booty.  Alfonso, therefore, determined to occupy the confines of the Roman territory on the side of the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, with the generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the Count of Pitigliano, into Lombardy.  They never advanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the Sforza, in conjunction with the French, held them at bay.  The fleet under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect the desired rising in Genoa.  The French, forewarned, had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of Dijon and the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan admiral fell back upon Leghorn.  The forces of the league were further enfeebled and divided by the necessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the Colonnesi in the neighborhood of Rome.  How utterly Piero de’ Medici by his folly and defection ruined what remained of the plan will be seen in the sequel.  This sluggishness in action and dismemberment of forces—­this total inability to strike a sudden blow—­sealed beforehand the success of Charles.  Alfonso, a tyrant afraid of his own subjects, Alexander, a Pope who had bought the tiara to the disgust of Christendom, Piero, conscious that his policy was disapproved by the Florentines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty despots, were not the men to save a nation.  Italy was conquered, not by the French king, but by the vices of her own leaders.  The whole history of Charles’s expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness triumphing over difficulties and dangers which only the discord of tyrants and the disorganization of peoples rendered harmless.  The Ate of the gods had descended upon Italy, as though to justify the common belief that the expedition of Charles was divinely sustained and guided.[2]