between himself and his retreat, and
Lodovico's should it be to bring him to his knees. Thus schemed Lodovico
to shiver, first Naples and then France, before hurling the latter back
across the Alps. A daring, bold, and yet simple plan of action. And what
a power in Italy should not Lodovico derive from its success!

Forthwith he got secretly to work upon it, sending his invitation to
Charles to come and make good his claim to Naples, offering the French
troops free passage through his territory.(1) And in the character
of his invitation he played upon the nature of malformed, ambitious
Charles, whose brain was stuffed with romance and chivalric
rhodomontades. The conquest of Naples was an easy affair, no more than
a step in the glorious enterprise that awaited the French king, for
from Naples he could cross to engage the Turk, and win back the Holy
Sepulchre, thus becoming a second Charles the Great.

1 See Corlo, Storia di Milano, and Lodovico's letter to Charles VIII,
quoted therein, lib. vii.

Thus Lodovico Maria the crafty, to dazzle Charles the romantic, and to
take the bull of impending invasion by the very horns.

We have seen the failure of the appeal to Spain against the Pope made
by the King of Naples. To that failure was now added the tightening of
Rome's relations with Milan by the marriage between Lucrezia Borgia and
Giovanni Sforza, and Ferrante--rumours of a French invasion, with
Naples for its objective being already in the air--realized that nothing
remained him but to make another attempt to conciliate the Pope's
Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner
better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more
urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible
purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and
making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the
Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy fail this time.

But on the terms now put forward, Alexander was willing to negotiate,
and so a peace was patched up between Naples and the Holy See, the
conditions of which were that Orsini should retain the fiefs for his
lifetime, but that they should revert to Holy Church on his death, and
that he should pay the Church for the life-lease of them the sum of
40,000 ducats, which already he had paid to Francesco Cibo; that the
peace should be consolidated by the marriage of the Pope's