Charles might have held Italy in his grasp.  His forces, strengthened by the unexpected arrival of so many Switzers, and by a junction with the Duke of Orleans, would have been sufficient to overwhelm the army of the league, and to intimidate the faction of Ferdinand in Naples.  Yet so light-minded was Charles, and so impatient were his courtiers, that he now only cared for a quick return to France.  Reserving to himself the nominal right of using Genoa as a naval station, he resigned that town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed him in the tranquil possession of his Duchy.  On October 22 he left Turin, and entered his own dominions through the Alps of Dauphine.  Already his famous conquest of Italy was reckoned among the wonders of the past, and his sovereignty over Naples had become the shadow of a name.  He had obtained for himself nothing but momentary glory, while he imposed on France a perilous foreign policy, and on Italy the burden of bloody warfare in the future.

A little more than a year had elapsed between the first entry of Charles into Lombardy and his return to France.  Like many other brilliant episodes of history, this conquest, so showy and so ephemeral, was more important as a sign than as an actual event.  ‘His passage,’ says Guicciardini, ’was the cause not only of change in states, downfalls of kingdoms, desolations of whole districts, destructions of cities, barbarous butcheries; but also of new customs, new modes of conduct, new and bloody habits of war, diseases hitherto unknown.  The organization upon which the peace and harmony of Italy depended was so upset that, since that time, other foreign nations and barbarous armies have been able to trample her under foot and to ravage her at pleasure.’  The only error of Guicciardini is the assumption that the holiday excursion of Charles VIII. was in any deep sense the cause of these calamities.[1] In truth the French invasion opened a new era for the Italians, but only in the same sense as a pageant may form the prelude to a tragedy.  Every monarch of Europe, dazzled by the splendid display of Charles and forgetful of its insignificant results, began to look with greedy eyes upon the wealth of the peninsula.  The Swiss found in those rich provinces an inexhaustible field for depredation.  The Germans, under the pretense of religious zeal, gave a loose rein to their animal appetites in the metropolis of Christendom.  France and Spain engaged in a duel to the death for the possession of so fair a prey.  The French, maddened by mere cupidity, threw away those chances which the goodwill of the race at large afforded them.[2] Louis XII. lost himself in petty intrigues, by which he finally weakened his own cause to the profit of the Borgias and Austria.  Francis I. foamed his force away like a spent wave at Marignano and Pavia.  The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. Italy in the sixteenth century was destined to receive the impress of the Spanish spirit, and to bear the yoke of Austrian