The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic.
Vol. 3.
by William H. Prescott.
PART SECOND. [CONTINUED.]
CHAPTER X.
ITALIAN WARS.--PARt.i.tION OF NAPLES.--GONSALVO OVERRUNS CALABRIA.
1498-1502.
Louis XII."s Designs on Italy.--Alarm of the Spanish Court.--Bold Conduct of its Minister at Rome.--Celebrated Part.i.tion of Naples.--Gonsalvo Sails against the Turks.--Success and Cruelties of the French.--Gonsalvo Invades Calabria.--He Punishes a Mutiny.--His Munificent Spirit.--He Captures Tarento.--Seizes the Duke of Calabria.
During the last four years of our narrative, in which the unsettled state of the kingdom and the progress of foreign discovery appeared to demand the whole attention of the sovereigns, a most important revolution was going forward in the affairs of Italy. The death of Charles the Eighth would seem to have dissolved the relations recently arisen between that country and the rest of Europe, and to have restored it to its ancient independence. It might naturally have been expected that France, under her new monarch, who had reached a mature age, rendered still more mature by the lessons he had received in the school of adversity, would feel the folly of reviving ambitious schemes, which had cost so dear and ended so disastrously. Italy, too, it might have been presumed, lacerated and still bleeding at every pore, would have learned the fatal consequence of invoking foreign aid in her domestic quarrels, and of throwing open the gates to a torrent, sure to sweep down friend and foe indiscriminately in its progress. But experience, alas! did not bring wisdom, and pa.s.sion triumphed as usual.
Louis the Twelfth, on ascending the throne, a.s.sumed the t.i.tles of Duke of Milan and King of Naples, thus unequivocally announcing his intention of a.s.serting his claims, derived through the Visconti family, to the former, and through the Angevin dynasty, to the latter state. His aspiring temper was stimulated rather than satisfied by the martial renown he had acquired in the Italian wars; and he was urged on by the great body of the French chivalry, who, disgusted with a life of inaction, longed for a field where they might win new laurels, and indulge in the joyous license of military adventure.
Unhappily, the court of France found ready instruments for its purpose in the profligate politicians of Italy. The Roman pontiff, in particular, Alexander the Sixth, whose criminal ambition a.s.sumes something respectable by contrast with the low vices in which he was habitually steeped, willingly lent himself to a monarch, who could so effectually serve his selfish schemes of building up the fortunes of his family. The ancient republic of Venice, departing from her usual sagacious policy, and yielding to her hatred of Lodovico Sforza, and to the l.u.s.t of territorial acquisition, consented to unite her arms with those of France against Milan, in consideration of a share (not the lion"s share) of the spoils of victory. Florence, and many other inferior powers, whether from fear or weakness, or the short-sighted hope of a.s.sistance in their petty international feuds, consented either to throw their weight into the same scale, or to remain neutral. [1]
Having thus secured himself from molestation in Italy, Louis the Twelfth entered into negotiations with such other European powers, as were most likely to interfere with his designs. The emperor Maximilian, whose relations with Milan would most naturally have demanded his interposition, was deeply entangled in a war with the Swiss. The neutrality of Spain was secured by the treaty of Marcoussis, August 5th, 1498, which settled all the existing differences with that country. And a treaty with Savoy in the following year guaranteed a free pa.s.sage through her mountain pa.s.ses to the French army into Italy. [2]
Having completed these arrangements, Louis lost no time in mustering his forces, which, descending like a torrent on the fair plains of Lombardy, effected the conquest of the entire duchy in little more than a fortnight; and, although the prize was s.n.a.t.c.hed for a moment from his grasp, yet French valor and Swiss perfidy soon restored it. The miserable Sforza, the dupe of arts which he had so long practised, was transported into France, where he lingered out the remainder of his days in doleful captivity. He had first called the _barbarians_ into Italy, and it was a righteous retribution which made him their earliest victim. [3]
By the conquest of Milan, France now took her place among the Italian powers. A preponderating weight was thus thrown into the scale, which disturbed the ancient political balance, and which, if the projects on Naples should be realized, would wholly annihilate it. These consequences, to which the Italian states seemed strangely insensible, had long been foreseen by the sagacious eye of Ferdinand the Catholic, who watched the movements of his powerful neighbor with the deepest anxiety. He had endeavored, before the invasion of Milan, to awaken the different governments in Italy to a sense of their danger, and to stir them up to some efficient combination against it. [4] Both he and the queen had beheld with disquietude the increasing corruptions of the papal court, and that shameless cupidity and l.u.s.t of power, which made it the convenient tool of the French monarch.
By their orders, Garcila.s.so de la Vega, the Spanish amba.s.sador, read a letter from his sovereigns in the presence of his Holiness, commenting on his scandalous immorality, his invasion of ecclesiastical rights appertaining to the Spanish crown, his schemes of selfish aggrandizement, and especially his avowed purpose of transferring his son Caesar Borgia, from a sacred to a secular dignity; a circ.u.mstance that must necessarily make him, from the manner in which it was to be conducted, the instrument of Louis the Twelfth. [5]
This unsavory rebuke, which probably lost nothing of its pungency from the tone in which it was delivered, so incensed the pope that he attempted to seize the paper and tear it in pieces, giving vent at the same time to the most indecent reproaches against the minister and his sovereigns.
Garcila.s.so coolly waited till the storm had subsided, and then replied undauntedly, "That he had uttered no more than became a loyal subject of Castile; that he should never shrink from declaring freely what his sovereigns commanded, or what he conceived to be for the good of Christendom; and, if his Holiness were displeased with it, he could dismiss him from his court, where he was convinced, indeed, his residence could be no longer useful." [6]
Ferdinand had no better fortune at Venice, where his negotiations were conducted by Lorenzo Suarez de la Vega, an adroit diplomatist, brother of Garcila.s.so. [7] These negotiations were resumed after the occupation of Milan by the French, when the minister availed himself of the jealousy occasioned by that event to excite a determined resistance to the proposed aggression on Naples. But the republic was too sorely pressed by the Turkish war,--which Sforza, in the hope of creating a diversion in his own favor, had brought on his country,--to allow leisure for other operations.
Nor did the Spanish court succeed any better at this crisis with the emperor Maximilian, whose magnificent pretensions were ridiculously contrasted with his limited authority, and still more limited revenues, so scanty, indeed, as to gain him the contemptuous epithet among the Italians of _pochi denari_, or "the Moneyless." He had conceived himself, indeed, greatly injured, both on the score of his imperial rights and his connection with Sforza, by the conquest of Milan; but, with the levity and cupidity essential to his character, he suffered himself, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Spanish court, to be bribed into a truce with King Louis, which gave the latter full scope for his meditated enterprise on Naples. [8]
Thus disembarra.s.sed of the most formidable means of annoyance, the French monarch went briskly forward with his preparations, the object of which he did not affect to conceal. Frederic, the unfortunate king of Naples, saw himself with dismay now menaced with the loss of empire, before he had time to taste the sweets of it. He knew not where to turn for refuge, in his desolate condition, from the impending storm. His treasury was drained, and his kingdom wasted, by the late war. His subjects, although attached to his person, were too familiar with revolutions to stake their lives or fortunes on the cast. His countrymen, the Italians, were in the interest of his enemy; and his nearest neighbor, the pope, had drawn from personal pique motives for the most deadly hostility. [9] He had as little reliance on the king of Spain, his natural ally and kinsman, who, he well knew, had always regarded the crown of Naples as his own rightful inheritance. He resolved, therefore, to apply at once to the French monarch; and he endeavored to propitiate him by the most humiliating concessions,--the offer of an annual tribute, and the surrender into his hands of some of the princ.i.p.al fortresses in the kingdom. Finding these advances coldly received, he invoked, in the extremity of his distress, the aid of the Turkish sultan, Bajazet, the terror of Christendom, requesting such supplies of troops as should enable him to make head against their common foe. This desperate step produced no other result than that of furnishing the enemies of the unhappy prince with a plausible ground of accusation against him, of which they did not fail to make good use. [10]
The Spanish government, in the mean time, made the most vivid remonstrances through its resident minister, or agents expressly accredited for the purpose, against the proposed expedition of Louis the Twelfth. It even went so far as to guarantee the faithful discharge of the tribute proffered by the king of Naples. [11] But the reckless ambition of the French monarch, overleaping the barriers of prudence, and indeed of common sense, disdained the fruits of conquest without the name.
Ferdinand now found himself apparently reduced to the alternative of abandoning the prize at once to the French king, or of making battle with him in defence of his royal kinsman. The first of these measures, which would bring a restless and powerful rival on the borders of the Sicilian dominions, was not to be thought of for a moment. The latter, which pledged him a second time to the support of pretensions hostile to his own, was scarcely more palatable. A third expedient suggested itself; the part.i.tion of the kingdom, as hinted in the negotiations with Charles the Eighth, [12] by which means the Spanish government, if it could not rescue the whole prize from the grasp of Louis, would at least divide it with him.
Instructions were accordingly given to Gralla, the minister at the court of Paris, to sound the government on this head, bringing it forward as his own private suggestion. Care was taken at the same time to secure a party in the French councils to the interests of Ferdinand. [13] The suggestions of the Spanish envoy received additional weight from the report of a considerable armament then equipping in the port of Malaga. Its ostensible purpose was to co-operate with the Venetians in the defence of their possessions in the Levant. Its main object, however, was to cover the coasts of Sicily in any event from the French, and to afford means for prompt action on any point where circ.u.mstances might require it. The fleet consisted of about sixty sail, large and small, and carried forces amounting to six hundred horse and four thousand foot, picked men, many of them drawn from the hardy regions of the north, which had been taxed least severely in the Moorish wars. [14]
The command of the whole was intrusted to the Great Captain, Gonsalvo of Cordova, who since his return home had fully sustained the high reputation, which his brilliant military talents had acquired for him abroad. Numerous volunteers, comprehending the n.o.blest of the young chivalry of Spain, pressed forward to serve under the banner of this accomplished and popular chieftain. Among them may be particularly noticed Diego de Mendoza, son of the grand cardinal, Pedro de la Paz, [15] Gonzalo Pizarro, father of the celebrated adventurer of Peru, and Diego de Paredes, whose personal prowess and feats of extravagant daring furnished many an incredible legend for chronicle and romance. With this gallant armament the Great Captain weighed anchor in the port of Malaga, in May, 1500, designing to touch at Sicily before proceeding against the Turks.
[16]
Meanwhile, the negotiations between France and Spain, respecting Naples, were brought to a close, by a treaty for the equal part.i.tion of that kingdom between the two powers, ratified at Granada, November 11th, 1500.
This extraordinary doc.u.ment, after enlarging on the unmixed evils flowing from war, and the obligation on all Christians to preserve inviolate the blessed peace bequeathed them by the Saviour, proceeds to state that no other prince, save the kings of France and Aragon, can pretend to a t.i.tle to the throne of Naples; and as King Frederic, its present occupant, has seen fit to endanger the safety of all Christendom, by bringing on it its bitterest enemy the Turks, the contracting parties, in order to rescue it from this imminent peril, and preserve inviolate the bond of peace, agree to take possession of his kingdom and divide it between them. It is then provided that the northern portion, comprehending the Terra di Lavoro and Abruzzo, be a.s.signed to France, with the t.i.tle of King of Naples and Jerusalem, and the southern, consisting of Apulia and Calabria, with the t.i.tle of Duke of those provinces, to Spain. The _dogana_, an important duty levied on the flocks of the Capitanate, was to be collected by the officers of the Spanish government, and divided equally with France.
Lastly, any inequality between the respective territories was to be so adjusted, that the revenues accruing to each of the parties should be precisely equal. The treaty was to be kept profoundly secret, until preparations were completed for the simultaneous occupation of the devoted territory by the combined powers. [17]
Such were the terms of this celebrated compact, by which two European potentates coolly carved out and divided between them the entire dominions of a third, who had given no cause for umbrage, and with whom they were both at that time in perfect peace and amity. Similar instances of political robbery (to call it by the coa.r.s.e name it merits) have occurred in later times; but never one founded on more flimsy pretexts, or veiled under a more detestable mask of hypocrisy. The princ.i.p.al odium of the transaction has attached to Ferdinand, as the kinsman of the unfortunate king of Naples. His conduct, however, admits of some palliatory considerations, that cannot be claimed for Louis.
The Aragonese nation always regarded the bequest of Ferdinand"s uncle, Alfonso the Fifth, in favor of his natural offspring as an unwarrantable and illegal act. The kingdom of Naples had been won by their own good swords, and, as such, was the rightful inheritance of their own princes.
Nothing but the domestic troubles of his dominions had prevented John the Second of Aragon, on the decease of his brother, from a.s.serting his claim by arms. His son, Ferdinand the Catholic, had hitherto acquiesced in the usurpation of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d branch of his house only from similar causes. On the accession of the present monarch, he had made some demonstrations of vindicating his pretensions to Naples, which, however, the intelligence he received from that kingdom induced him to defer to a more convenient season. [18] But it was deferring, not relinquishing, his purpose. In the mean time, he carefully avoided entering into such engagements, as should compel him to a different policy by connecting his own interests with those of Frederic; and with this view, no doubt, rejected the alliance, strongly solicited by the latter, of the duke of Calabria, heir apparent to the Neapolitan crown, with his third daughter, the infanta Maria.
Indeed, this disposition of Ferdinand, so far from being dissembled, was well understood by the court of Naples, as is acknowledged by its own historians. [19]
It may be thought, that the undisturbed succession of four princes to the throne of Naples, each of whom had received the solemn recognition of the people, might have healed any defects in their original t.i.tle, however glaring. But it may be remarked, in extenuation of both the French and Spanish claims, that the principles of monarchical succession were but imperfectly settled in that day; that oaths of allegiance were tendered too lightly by the Neapolitans, to carry the same weight as in other nations; and that the prescriptive right derived from possession, necessarily indeterminate, was greatly weakened in this case by the comparatively few years, not more than forty, during which the b.a.s.t.a.r.d line of Aragon had occupied the throne,--a period much shorter than that after which the house of York had in England, a few years before, successfully contested the validity of the Lancastrian t.i.tle. It should be added, that Ferdinand"s views appear to have perfectly corresponded with those of the Spanish nation at large; not one writer of the time, whom I have met with, intimating the slightest doubt of his t.i.tle to Naples, while not a few insist on it with unnecessary emphasis. [20] It is but fair to state, however, that foreigners, who contemplated the transaction with a more impartial eye, condemned it as inflicting a deep stain on the characters of both potentates. Indeed, something like an apprehension of this, in the parties themselves, may be inferred from their solicitude to deprecate public censure by masking their designs under a pretended zeal for religion.
Before the conferences respecting the treaty were brought to a close, the Spanish armada under Gonsalvo, after a long detention in Sicily, where it was reinforced by two thousand recruits, who had been serving as mercenaries in Italy, held its course for the Morea. The Turkish squadron, lying before Napoli di Romania, without waiting Gonsalvo"s approach, raised the siege, and retreated precipitately to Constantinople. The Spanish general, then uniting his forces with the Venetians, stationed at Corfu, proceeded at once against the fortified place of St. George, in Cephalonia, which the Turks had lately wrested from the republic. [21]
The town stood high on a rock, in an impregnable position, and was garrisoned by four hundred Turks, all veteran soldiers, prepared to die in its defence. We have not room for the details of this siege, in which both parties displayed unbounded courage and resources, and which was protracted nearly two months under all the privations of famine, and the inclemencies of a cold and stormy winter. [22]
At length, weary with this fatal procrastination, Gonsalvo and the Venetian admiral, Pesaro, resolved on a simultaneous attack on separate quarters of the town. The ramparts had been already shaken by the mining operations of Pedro Navarro, who, in the Italian wars, acquired such terrible celebrity in this department, till then little understood. The Venetian cannon, larger and better served than that of the Spaniards, had opened a practicable breach in the works, which the besieged repaired with such temporary defences as they could. The signal being given at the appointed hour, the two armies made a desperate a.s.sault on different quarters of the town, under cover of a murderous fire of artillery. The Turks sustained the attack with dauntless resolution, stopping up the breach with the bodies of their dead and dying comrades, and pouring down volleys of shot, arrows, burning oil and sulphur, and missiles of every kind, on the heads of the a.s.sailants. But the desperate energy, as well as numbers of the latter, proved too strong for them. Some forced the breach, others scaled the ramparts; and, after a short and deadly struggle within the walls, the brave garrison, four-fifths of whom with their commander had fallen, were overpowered, and the victorious banners of St. Jago and St. Mark were planted side by side triumphantly on the towers. [23]
The capture of this place, although accomplished at considerable loss, and after a most gallant resistance by a mere handful of men, was of great service to the Venetian cause; since it was the first cheek given to the arms of Bajazet, who had filched one place after another from the republic, menacing its whole colonial territory in the Levant. The promptness and efficiency of King Ferdinand"s succor to the Venetians gained him high reputation throughout Europe, and precisely of the kind which he most coveted, that of being the zealous defender of the faith; while it formed a favorable contrast to the cold supineness of the other powers of Christendom.
The capture of St. George restored to Venice the possession of Cephalonia; and the Great Captain, having accomplished this important object, returned in the beginning of the following year, 1501, to Sicily. Soon after his arrival there, an emba.s.sy waited on him from the Venetian senate, to express their grateful sense of his services; which they testified by enrolling his name on the golden book, as a n.o.bleman of Venice, and by a magnificent present of plate, curious silks and velvets, and a stud of beautiful Turkish horses. Gonsalvo courteously accepted the proffered honors, but distributed the whole of the costly largess, with the exception of a few pieces of plate, among his friends and soldiers. [24]
In the mean while, Louis the Twelfth having completed his preparations for the invasion of Naples, an army, consisting of one thousand lances and ten thousand Swiss and Gascon foot, crossed the Alps, and directed its march towards the south. At the same time a powerful armament, under Philip de Ravenstein, with six thousand five hundred additional troops on board, quitted Genoa for the Neapolitan capital. The command of the land forces was given to the Sire d"Aubigny, the same brave and experienced officer who had formerly coped with Gonsalvo in the campaigns of Calabria. [25]
No sooner had D"Aubigny crossed the papal borders, than the French and Spanish amba.s.sadors announced to Alexander the Sixth and the college of cardinals the existence of the treaty for the part.i.tion of the kingdom between the sovereigns, their masters, requesting his Holiness to confirm it, and grant them the invest.i.ture of their respective shares. In this very reasonable pet.i.tion his Holiness, well drilled in the part he was to play, acquiesced without difficulty; declaring himself moved thereto solely by his consideration of the pious intentions of the parties, and the unworthiness of King Frederic, whose treachery to the Christian commonwealth had forfeited all right (if he ever possessed any) to the crown of Naples. [26]
From the moment that the French forces had descended into Lombardy, the eyes of all Italy were turned with breathless expectation on Gonsalvo, and his army in Sicily. The bustling preparations of the French monarch had diffused the knowledge of his designs throughout Europe. Those of the king of Spain, on the contrary, remained enveloped in profound secrecy. Few doubted, that Ferdinand would step forward to shield his kinsman from the invasion which menaced him, and, it might be, his own dominions in Sicily; and they looked to the immediate junction of Gonsalvo with King Frederic, in order that their combined strength might overpower the enemy before he had gained a footing in the kingdom. Great was their astonishment, when the scales dropped from their eyes, and they beheld the movements of Spain in perfect accordance with those of France, and directed to crush their common victim between them. They could scarcely credit, says Guicciardini, that Louis the Twelfth could be so blind as to reject the proffered va.s.salage and substantial sovereignty of Naples, in order to share it with so artful and dangerous a rival as Ferdinand. [27]
The unfortunate Frederic, who had been advised for some time past of the unfriendly dispositions of the Spanish government, [28] saw no refuge from the dark tempest mustering against him on the opposite quarters of his kingdom. He collected such troops as he could, however, in order to make battle with the nearest enemy, before he should cross the threshold. On the 28th of June, the French army resumed its march. Before quitting Rome, a brawl arose between some French soldiers and Spaniards resident in the capital; each party a.s.serting the paramount right of its own sovereign to the crown of Naples. From words they soon came to blows, and many lives were lost before the fray could be quelled; a melancholy augury for the permanence of the concord so unrighteously established between the two governments. [29]
On the 8th of July, the French crossed the Neapolitan frontier. Frederic, who had taken post at St. Germano, found himself so weak, that he was compelled to give way on its approach, and retreat on his capital. The invaders went forward, occupying one place after another with little resistance till they came before Capua, where they received a temporary check. During a parley for the surrender of that place, they burst into the town, and, giving free scope to their fiendish pa.s.sions, butchered seven thousand citizens in the streets, and perpetrated outrages worse than death on their defenceless wives and daughters. It was on this occasion that Alexander the Sixth"s son, the infamous Caesar Borgia, selected forty of the most beautiful from the princ.i.p.al ladies of the place, and sent them back to Rome to swell the complement of his seraglio.
The dreadful doom of Capua intimidated further resistance, but inspired such detestation of the French throughout the country, as proved of infinite prejudice to their cause in their subsequent struggle with the Spaniards. [30]
King Frederic, shocked at bringing such calamities on his subjects, resigned his capital without a blow in its defence, and, retreating to the isle of Ischia, soon after embraced the counsel of the French admiral Ravenstein, to accept a safe-conduct into France, and throw himself on the generosity of Louis the Twelfth. The latter received him courteously, and a.s.signed him the duchy of Anjou with an ample revenue for his maintenance, which, to the credit of the French king, was continued after he had lost all hope of recovering the crown of Naples. [31] With this show of magnanimity, however, he kept a jealous eye on his royal guest; under pretence of paying him the greatest respect, he placed a guard over his person, and thus detained him in a sort of honorable captivity to the day of his death, which occurred soon after, in 1504.
Frederic was the last of the illegitimate branch of Aragon, who held the Neapolitan sceptre; a line of princes, who, whatever might be their characters in other respects, accorded that munificent patronage to letters which sheds a ray of glory over the roughest and most turbulent reign. It might have been expected, that an amiable and accomplished prince, like Frederic, would have done still more towards the moral development of his people, by healing the animosities which had so long festered in their bosoms. His gentle character, however, was ill suited to the evil times on which he had fallen; and it is not improbable, that he found greater contentment in the calm and cultivated retirement of his latter years, sweetened by the sympathies of friendship which adversity had proved, [32] than when placed on the dazzling heights which attract the admiration and envy of mankind. [33]
Early in March, Gonsalvo of Cordova had received his first official intelligence of the part.i.tion treaty, and of his own appointment to the post of lieutenant-general of Calabria and Apulia. He felt natural regret at being called to act against a prince, whose character he esteemed, and with whom he had once been placed in the most intimate and friendly relations. In the true spirit of chivalry, he returned to Frederic, before taking up arms against him, the duchy of St. Angel and the other large domains, with which that monarch had requited his services in the late war, requesting at the same time to be released from his obligations of homage and fealty. The generous monarch readily complied with the latter part of his request, but insisted on his retaining the grant, which he declared an inadequate compensation, after all, for the benefits the Great Captain had once rendered him. [34]
The levies a.s.sembled at Messina amounted to three hundred heavy-armed, three hundred light horse, and three thousand eight hundred infantry, together with a small body of Spanish veterans, which the Castilian amba.s.sador had collected in Italy. The number of the forces was inconsiderable, but they were in excellent condition, well disciplined, and seasoned to all the toils and difficulties of war. On the 5th of July, the Great Captain landed at Tropea, and commenced the conquest of Calabria, ordering the fleet to keep along the coast, in order to furnish whatever supplies he might need. The ground was familiar to him, and his progress was facilitated by the old relations he had formed there, as well as by the important posts which the Spanish government had retained in its hands, as an indemnification for the expenses of the late war.
Notwithstanding the opposition or coldness of the great Angevin lords who resided in this quarter, the entire occupation of the two Calabrias, with the exception of Tarento, was effected in less than a month. [35]
This city, remarkable in ancient times for its defence against Hannibal, was of the last importance. King Frederic had sent thither his eldest son, the duke of Calabria, a youth about fourteen years of age, under the care of Juan de Guevara, count of Potenza, with a strong body of troops, considering it the place of greatest security in his dominions.
Independently of the strength of its works, it was rendered nearly inaccessible by its natural position; having no communication with the main land except by two bridges, at opposite quarters of the town, commanded by strong towers, while its exposure to the sea made it easily open to supplies from abroad.
Gonsalvo saw that the only method of reducing the place must be by blockade. Disagreeable as the delay was, he prepared to lay regular siege to it, ordering the fleet to sail round the southern point of Calabria, and blockade the port of Tarento, while he threw up works on the land side, which commanded the pa.s.ses to the town, and cut off its communications with the neighboring country. The place, however, was well victualled, and the garrison prepared to maintain it to the last.[36]
Nothing tries more severely the patience and discipline of the soldier, than a life of sluggish inaction, unenlivened, as in the present instance, by any of the rencontres, or feats of arms, which keep up military excitement, and gratify the cupidity or ambition of the warrior. The Spanish troops, cooped up within their intrenchments, and disgusted with the languid monotony of their life, cast many a wistful glance to the stirring scenes of war in the centre of Italy, where Caesar Borgia held out magnificent promises of pay and plunder to all who embarked in his adventurous enterprises. He courted the aid, in particular, of the Spanish veterans, whose worth he well understood, for they had often served under his banner, in his feuds with the Italian princes. In consequence of these inducements, some of Gonsalvo"s men were found to desert every day; while those who remained were becoming hourly more discontented, from the large arrears due from the government; for Ferdinand, as already remarked, conducted his operations with a stinted economy, very different from the prompt and liberal expenditure of the queen, always competent to its object. [37]
A trivial incident, at this time, swelled the popular discontent into mutiny. The French fleet, after the capture of Naples, was ordered to the Levant to a.s.sist the Venetians against the Turks. Ravenstein, ambitious of eclipsing the exploits of the Great Captain, turned his arms against Mitilene, with the design of recovering it for the republic. He totally failed in the attack, and his fleet was soon after scattered by a tempest, and his own ship wrecked on the isle of Cerigo. He subsequently found his way, with several of his princ.i.p.al officers, to the sh.o.r.es of Calabria, where he landed in the most forlorn and desperate plight. Gonsalvo, touched with his misfortunes, no sooner learned his necessities, than he sent him abundant supplies of provisions, adding a service of plate, and a variety of elegant apparel for himself and followers; consulting his own munificent spirit in this, much more than the limited state of his finances. [38]