WAR WITH THE POPE.

Guise enters Italy.--Operations in the Abruzzi.--Siege of
Civitella.--Alva drives out the French.--Rome menaced by the
Spaniards.--Paul consents to Peace.--Paul's subsequent Career.

1557.

While the events recorded in the preceding pages were passing in Italy,
the French army, under the duke of Guise, had arrived on the borders of
Piedmont. That commander, on leaving Paris, found himself at the head of
a force consisting of twelve thousand infantry, of which five thousand
were Swiss, and the rest French, including a considerable number of
Gascons. His cavalry amounted to two thousand, and he was provided with
twelve pieces of artillery. In addition to this, Guise was attended by a
gallant body of French gentlemen, young for the most part, and eager to
win laurels under the renowned defender of Metz.

The French army met with no opposition in its passage through Piedmont.
The king of Spain had ordered the government of Milan to strengthen the
garrisons of the fortresses, but to oppose no resistance to the French,
unless the latter began hostilities.[155] Some of the duke's counsellors
would have persuaded him to do so. His father-in-law, the duke of
Ferrara, in particular, who had brought him a reinforcement of six
thousand troops, strongly pressed the French general to make sure of the
Milanese before penetrating to the south; otherwise he would leave a
dangerous enemy in his rear. The Italian urged, moreover, the importance
of such a step in giving confidence to the Angevine faction in Naples,
and in drawing over to France those states which hesitated as to their
policy, or which had but lately consented to an alliance with Spain.

France, at this time, exercised but little influence in the counsels of
the Italian powers. Genoa, after an ineffectual attempt at revolution,
was devoted to Spain. The cooeperation of Cosmo de'Medici, then lord of
Tuscany, had been secured by the cession of Sienna. The duke of Parma,
who had coquetted for some time with the French monarch, was won over to
Spain by the restoration of Placentia, of which he had been despoiled by
Charles the Fifth. His young son, Alexander Farnese, was sent as a
hostage, to be educated under Philip's eye, at the court of Madrid,--the
fruits of which training were to be gathered in the war of the
Netherlands, where he proved himself the most consummate captain of his
time. Venice, from her lonely watch-tower on the Adriatic, regarde