In April, 1498, Charles VIII. died, and Louis XII. succeeded him on the throne of France.  Louis immediately made preparations for a new invasion of Italy.  In those miserable days of violence and blood, almost any prince was ready to embark in war under anybody’s banner, where there was the least prospect of personal aggrandizement.  The question of right or wrong, seemed seldom to enter any one’s mind.  Louis fixed his eyes upon the duchy of Milan as the richest and most available prize within his grasp.  Conscious that he would meet with much opposition, he looked around for allies.

“If you will aid me,” he said to Pope Alexander VI., “I will assist you in your war against the Duke of Romagna.  I will give your son, Caesar Borgia,[1] a pension of two thousand dollars a year, will confer upon him an important command in my army, and will procure for him a marriage with a princess of the royal house of Navarre.”

[Footnote 1:  Caesar Borgia, who has filled the world with the renown of his infamy, was the illegitimate son of Alexander VI., and of a Roman lady named Yanozza.]

The holy father could not resist this bribe, and eagerly joined the robber king in his foray.  To Venice Louis said—­

“If you will unite with me, I will assist you in annexing to your domains the city of Cremona, and the Ghiaradadda.”  Lured by such hopes of plunder, Venice was as eager as the pope to take a share in the piratic expedition.  Louis then sent to the court of Turin, and offered them large sums of money and increased territory, if they would allow him a free passage across the Alps.  Turin bowed obsequiously, and grasped at the easy bargain.  To Florence he said, “If you raise a hand to assist the Duke of Milan, I will crush you.  If you remain quiet, I will leave you unharmed.”  Florence, overawed, remained as meek as a lamb.  The diplomacy being thus successfully closed, an army of twenty-two thousand men was put in vigorous motion in July, 1499.  They crossed the Alps, fought a few battles, in which, with overpowering numbers, they easily conquered their opposers, and in twenty days were in possession of Milan.  The Duke Ludovico with difficulty escaped.  With a few followers he threaded the defiles of the Tyrolese mountains, and hastened to Innspruck, the capital of Tyrol, where Maximilian then was, to whom he conveyed the first tidings of his disaster.  Louis XII. followed after his triumphant army, and on the 6th of October made a triumphal entry into the captured city, and was inaugurated Duke of Milan.

Maximilian promised assistance, but could raise neither money nor men.  Ludovico, however, succeeded in hiring fifteen hundred Burgundian horsemen, and eight thousand Swiss mercenaries—­for in those ages of ignorance and crime all men were ready, for pay, to fight in any cause—­and emerging from the mountains upon the plains of Milan, found all his former subjects disgusted with the French, and eager to rally under his banners.  His army