orses killed under him, then continued fighting on foot, and in the thick
of the battle he took the standard of the horsemen opposing him, and
covered himself with glory. The King, hearing afterwards of his gallant
deed, sent him a present of five hundred crowns. Charles could appreciate a
kindred spirit as he too fought with splendid courage on that eventful day.
The French camp, with all its rich treasures of armour, gorgeous clothing,
rare tapestries and plate, was looted; but Charles VIII. and the greater
part of his army, with all the artillery, made good their passage through
an overwhelming host of foes and raised the siege of Novara, where Lodovico
Sforza was besieging the Duke of Orleans.

The French King was soon to receive news of the defeat and destruction of
the small army he had left to hold Naples, and the death of the gallant
Viceroy, Gilbert de Montpensier. Such was the sad ending of the first of
those glorious and fatal expeditions to Italy, in which four kings wasted
in vain so much treasure and so many precious lives. Charles VIII. did not
long survive this bitter disappointment. He died at Amboise on 7th April
1498, at the age of twenty-eight. As he left no children he was succeeded
by his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, under the name of Louis XII. Louis XII.
was crowned on the 1st of July 1498.

If there was one trait of character which, more than any other,
distinguished Bayard the Good Knight, it was his absolute loyalty towards
the lord he served, and his undying gratitude for any kindness which he had
received. He never forgot those six happy months he had spent at the Court
of Savoy when he first went there to take up the profession of arms as a
young lad of thirteen. It was not by his own choice that he left the
service of his earliest master, who in a fit of generosity had presented
his favourite page to the King, in the hope that by so doing he would best
further the career of Bayard.

But Charles I., Duke of Savoy, did not live to see this, for he had died in
1490, and the Duchess, his widow, had left Chambery and retired to her
dower house in the pleasant town of Carignano, in Piedmont, about seventeen
miles to the south of Turin. This lady, Blanche Paleologus, had been a most
kind friend to young Bayard, and when she heard that he was stationed in
the neighbourhood, she invited him to visit her, and received him with the
utmost courtesy, treating him as if he were a member of her family. S