[1] ’La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis d’advis qu’elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit de rien, et y alla tout l’argent contant que le Roy peut finer de ses finances:  car comme j’ay dit, il n’estoit point pourveu ne de sens, ne d’argent, oy d’autre chose necessaire a telle entreprise, et si en vint bien a bout, moyennant la grace de Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi a cognoistre.’  De Comines, lib. vii.

    [2] Guicciardini calls him on this occasion ’fatale instrumento
    e allora e prima e poi de’ mali d’ Italia.’  Lib. i. cap. 3.

[3] I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p. 383), to which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all attached to the artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, carpenters, etc.  See Dennistoun, Dukes of Urbino, vol. i. p. 433, for a detailed list of Charles’s armaments by land and sea.

At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Ercole d’ Este.  The whole of that Milanese Court which Corio describes[1] followed in their train.  It was the policy of the Italian princes to entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in silken meshes the barbarian they dreaded.  What had happened already at Lyons, what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti.  The French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom.  At Asti he fell ill of the small-pox, but after a short time he recovered his health, and proceeded to Pavia.  Here a serious entanglement of interests arose.  Charles was bound by treaties and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife Beatrice d’ Este; the very object of his expedition was to dethrone Alfonso and to assume the crown of Naples; yet at Pavia he had to endure the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin[2] the young Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear the piteous pleadings of the beautiful Isabella of Aragon.  Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapable of resisting a woman’s tears, what was Charles to do, when this princess in distress, the wife of his first cousin, the victim of his friend Lodovico, the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and besought him to have mercy on her husband, on her brother, on herself?  The situation was indeed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the feeble young king.  For the moment Charles returned evasive answers to his petitioners; but the trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner had he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor resolved to remove the cause of further vacillation.  Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had his nephew poisoned.[3] When the news of Gian Galeazzo’s death reached the French camp, it spread terror and imbittered the mistrust which was already springing up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible Italians with whom they had to deal.

    [1] See above, p. 548.