challenge renowned champions
wherever he heard of them, and to meet them in the lists. Great part
of his life was spent in the field; and he fought in turn on nearly
all sides of the political questions then agitating Italy. In 1495
he was at the head of the Venetian and other Italian troops when they
beat the French under Charles VIII. at Taro, and made so little use
of their victory as to let their vanquished invaders escape from them
after all. Nevertheless, if the Gonzaga did not here show himself a
great general, he did great feats of personal valor, penetrating to
the midst of the French forces, wounding the king, and with his own
hand taking prisoner the great Bastard of Bourbon. Venice paid him
ten thousand ducats for gaining the victory, such as it was, and when
peace was made he went to visit the French king at Vercelli; and there
Charles gave his guest a present of two magnificent horses, which the
Gonzaga returned yet more splendidly in kind. About five years later
he was again at war with the French, and helped the Aragonese drive
them out of Naples. In 1506, Pope Julius II. made him leader of the
armies of the Church (for he had now quitted the Venetian service),
and he reduced the city of Bologna to obedience to the Holy See. In
1509 he joined the League of Cambray against Venice, and, being made
Imperial Captain-General, was taken prisoner by the Venetians. They
liberated him, however, the following year; and in 1513 we find him at
the head of the league against the French.

A curious anecdote of this Gonzaga's hospitality is also illustrative
of the anomalous life of those times, when good faith had as little
to do with the intercourse of nations as at present; but good fortune,
when she appeared in the world, liked to put on a romantic and
melodramatic guise. An ambassador from the Grand Turk on his way to
Rome was taken by an enemy of the Pope, despoiled of all his money,
and left planted, as the Italians expressively say, at Ancona.
This ambassador was come to concert with Alexander VI. the death of
Bajazet's brother, prisoner in the Pope's hands, and he bore the Pope
a present of 50,000 gold ducats. It was Gian Della Rovere who seized
and spoiled him, and sent the papers (letters of the Pope and Sultan)
to Charles VIII. of France, to whom Alexander had been obliged to give
the Grand Turk's brother. The magnificent Gonzaga hears of the Turk's
embarrassing mischance, sends and fetches him to Mantua,