1.  Campaign of Charles VIII. (1493).—­From grasping at province after province on their own border, however, the French kings were now to turn to wider dreams of conquest abroad.  Together with the county of Provence, Louis XI. had bought from King Rene all the claims of the house of Anjou.  Among these was included a claim to the kingdom of Naples.  Louis’s son, Charles VIII., a vain and shallow lad, was tempted by the possession of large treasures and a fine army to listen to the persuasions of an Italian intriguer, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and put forward these pretensions, thus beginning a war which lasted nearly as long as the Hundred Years’ War with England.  But it was a war of aggression instead of a war of self-defence.  Charles crossed the Alps in 1493, marched the whole length of Italy without opposition, and was crowned at Naples; while its royal family, an illegitimate offshoot from the Kings of Aragon, fled into Sicily, and called on Spain for help.  But the insolent exactions of the French soldiery caused the people to rise against them; and when Charles returned, he was beset at Fornovo by a great league of Italians, over whom he gained a complete victory.  Small and puny though he was, he fought like a lion, and seemed quite inspired by the ardour of combat.  The “French fury,” la furia Francese, became a proverb among the Italians.  Charles neglected, however, to send any supplies or reinforcements to the garrisons he had left behind him in Naples, and they all perished under want, sickness, and the sword of the Spaniards.  He was meditating another expedition, when he struck his head against the top of a doorway, and died in 1498.

2.  Campaign of Louis XII.—­His cousin, Louis XII., married his widow, and thus prevented Brittany from again parting from the crown.  Louis not only succeeded to the Angevin right to Naples, but through his grandmother he viewed himself as heir of Milan.  She was Valentina Visconti, wife to that Duke of Orleans who had been murdered by John the Fearless.  Louis himself never advanced further than to Milan, whose surrender made him master of Lombardy, which he held for the greater part of his reign.  But after a while the Spanish king, Ferdinand, agreed with him to throw over the cause of the unfortunate royal family of Naples, and divide that kingdom between them.  Louis XII. sent a brilliant army to take possession of his share, but the bounds of each portion had not been defined, and the French and Spanish troops began a war even while their kings were still treating with one another.  The individual French knights did brilliant exploits, for indeed it was the time of the chief blossom of fanciful chivalry, a knight of Dauphine, named Bayard, called the Fearless and Stainless Knight, and honoured by friend and foe; but the Spaniards were under Gonzalo de Cordova, called the Great Captain, and after the battles of Cerignola and the Garigliano drove the French out of the kingdom of Naples, though the war continued in Lombardy.