The city of Naples was commanded by two strong fortresses still held by the French, which, being well victualled and supplied with ammunition, showed no disposition to surrender. The Great Captain determined, therefore, to reserve a small corps for their reduction, while he sent forward the main body of his army to besiege Gaeta. But the Spanish infantry refused to march until the heavy arrears, suffered to accumulate through the negligence of the government, were discharged; and Gonsalvo, afraid of awakening the mutinous spirit which he had once found it so difficult to quell, was obliged to content himself with sending forward his cavalry and German levies, and to permit the infantry to take up its quarters in the capital, under strict orders to respect the persons and property of the citizens.

He now lost no time in pressing the siege of the French fortresses, whose impregnable situation might have derided the efforts of the most formidable enemy in the ancient state of military science. But the reduction of these places was intrusted to Pedro Navarro, the celebrated engineer, whose improvements in the art of mining have gained him the popular reputation of being its inventor, and who displayed such unprecedented skill on this occasion as makes it a memorable epoch in the annals of war.

d'Italia, tom. xiv. p. 40.—Chrónica del Gran Capitan, cap. 81.-Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 18.

30 The Italians, in their admiration of Pedro Navarro, caused medals to be struck on which the invention of mines was ascribed to him. (Marini, apud Daru, Hist. de Venise, tom. iii. p. 351.) Although not actually the inventor, his glory was scarcely less, since he was the first

Under his directions, the small tower of St. Vincenzo having been first reduced by a furious cannonade, a mine was run under the outer defences of the great fortress called Castel Nuovo. On the 21st of May, the mine was sprung; a passage was opened over the prostrate ramparts, and the assailants, rushing in with Gonsalvo and Navarro at their head, before the garrison had time to secure the drawbridge, applied their ladders to the walls of the castle and succeeded in carrying the place by escalade, after a desperate struggle, in which the greater part of the French were slaughtered. An immense booty was found in the castle. The Angevin party had made it a place of deposit for their most valuable effects, gold, jewels, plate, and other treasures, which, together with its well-stored magazines of grain and ammunition, became the indiscriminate spoil of the victors. As some of these, however, complained of not getting their share of the plunder, Gonsalvo, giving full scope in the exultation of the moment to military license, called out, gayly, "Make amends for it, then, by what you can find in my quarters!" The words were not uttered to deaf ears. The mob of soldiery rushed to the splendid palace of the Angevin prince of Salerno, then occupied by the Great Captain, and in a moment its sumptuous furniture, paintings, and other costly decorations, together with the contents of its generous cellar, were seized and appropriated without ceremony by the invaders, who thus indemnified themselves at

who discovered the extensive and formidable uses to which they might be applied in the science of destruction. See Part I. chapter 13, note 23, of this History.

their general's expense for the remissness of the gov

ernment.

After some weeks of protracted operations, the remaining fortress, Castel d'Uovo, as it was called, opened its gates to Navarro; and a French fleet, coming into the harbor, had the mortification to find itself fired on from the walls of the place it was intended to relieve. Before this event, Gonsalvo, having obtained funds from Spain for paying off his men, quitted the capital and directed his march on Gaeta. The important results of his victories were now fully disclosed. D'Aubigny, with the wreck of the forces escaped from Seminara, had surrendered. The two Abruzzi, the Capitanate, all the Basilicate, except Venosa, still held by Louis d'Ars, and indeed every considerable place in the kingdom, had tendered its submission, with the exception of Gaeta. Summoning, therefore, to his aid Andrada, Navarro, and his other officers, the Great Captain resolved to concentrate all his strength on this point, designing to press the siege, and thus exterminate at a blow the feeble remains of the French power in Italy. The enterprise was attended with more difficulty than he had anticipated."

Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, tom. i. lib. 5, cap. 30, 31, 34, 35. -Giovio, Vitæ Illust. Virorum, fol. 255-257.-Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. lib. 19, cap. 15.—Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 183.— Guicciardini, Istoria, lib. 6, pp. 307-309.-Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 18. 19.-—Ammirato, Istorie Fiorentine, tom. iii. p. 271.-Summonte, Hist. di Napoli, tom. iii. p. 554.-Chrónica del Gran Capitan, cap. 84, 86, 87, 93, 95.-Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tom. xv. pp. 407-409.

CHAPTER XIII.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE.-UNSUCCESSFUL INVASION OF SPAIN.-TRUCE.

1503.

Ferdinand's Policy examined.-First Symptoms of Joanna's Insanity. -Isabella's Distress and Fortitude.-Efforts of France.-Siege of Salsas.-Isabella's Levies.-Ferdinand's Successes.-Reflections on the Campaign.

THE events noticed in the preceding chapter glided away as rapidly as the flitting phantoms of a dream. Scarcely had Louis the Twelfth received the unwelcome intelligence of Gonsalvo de Cordova's refusal to obey the mandate of the archduke Philip, before he was astounded with the tidings of the victory of Cerignola, the march on Naples, and the surrender of that capital, as well as of the greater part of the kingdom, following one another in breathless succession. It seemed as if the very means on which the French king had so confidently relied for calming the tempest had been the signal for awakening all its fury and bringing it on his devoted head. Mortified and incensed at being made the dupe of what he deemed a perfidious policy, he demanded an explanation of the archduke, who was still in France. The latter, vehemently pro testing his own innocence, felt, or affected to feel, so sensibly the ridiculous and, as it appeared, dishonor

able part played by him in the transaction, that he was thrown into a severe illness, which confined him to his bed for several days.' Without delay, he wrote to the Spanish court in terms of bitter expostulation, urging the immediate ratification of the treaty made pursuant to its orders, and an indemnification to France for its subsequent violation. Such is the account given by the French historians.

The Spanish writers, on the other hand, say that, before the news of Gonsalvo's successes reached Spain, King Ferdinand refused to confirm the treaty sent him by his son-in-law, until it had undergone certain material modifications. If the Spanish monarch hesitated to approve the treaty in the doubtful posture of his affairs, he was little likely to do so when he had the game entirely in his own hands."

He postponed an answer to Philip's application, willing probably to gain time for the Great Captain to strengthen himself firmly in his recent acquisitions. At length, after a considerable interval, he despatched an embassy to France, announcing his final determination never to ratify a treaty made in contempt of his orders and so clearly detrimental to his interests. endeavored, however, to gain further time by spinning out the negotiation, holding up for this purpose the

He

St. Gelais seems willing to accept Philip's statement, and to consider the whole affair of the negotiation as "one of Ferdinand's old tricks," "l'ancienne cautele de celuy qui en sçavoit bien faire d'autres." Hist. de Louys XII., p. 172.

* Idem, ubi supra.-Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. p. 410.-Gaillard, Rivalité, tom. iv. pp. 238, 239.—Zurita, Anales, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 23.-Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. lib. 19, cap. 15.- Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 233.