e at
Milan. Victorious for him, the Confederates beat the French near Novara,
June 6, 1513; two thousand Swiss fell, it is true, but ten thousand of
the enemy. Still more murderous was the two-days' battle of Melegnano,
September 14, 1515, in which barely ten thousand Swiss fought against
fifty thousand French. They lost the battle-field, indeed, but not their
honor. They sadly retreated to Milan, with their field-pieces on their
backs, their wounded in the centre of their army. The enemy lost the
flower of their troops, and called this action the "Battle of the
Giants."

Then the King of France, Francis I, terrified by a victory which
resembled a defeat, made, in the next year, a perpetual peace with the
Confederates, and, by money and promises, persuaded some to furnish
him with troops; the others, that they would allow no enrolling by his
enemies. Thus the Confederates once more helped him against the Emperor
and Pope and against Milan, and the King concluded a friendly alliance
with them in 1521. During many years they shed their blood for him on the
battle-fields of Italy, without good result, without advantage, except
that the Confederacy stood godmother to his new-born son. Each canton
sent to Paris, for the _fete_, a deputy with a baptismal present of fifty
ducats. More agreeable to the King than this present was the promptitude
with which the Swiss sent sixteen thousand of their troops to his
assistance in Italy. However, as they had lost, April 20, 1522, three
thousand men near Bicocca; as of nearly fifteen thousand who entered
Lombardy, 1524, hardly four thousand came back; as, finally, in the
battle near Pajia, February 24, 1525, in which the King himself became
prisoner to the Emperor, the Swiss experienced a fresh loss of seven
thousand men, they by degrees lost all taste for Italian wars.

AMERIGO VESPUCCI IN AMERICA A.D. 1499

AMERIGO VESPUCCI

It was the claim of Amerigo Vespucci that he accompanied four expeditions
to the New World, and that he wrote a narrative of each voyage. According
to Amerigo, the first expedition sailed from Spain in 1497; the second,
of which his own account is here given, in 1499; both by order of
King Ferdinand. Grave doubt has been thrown upon the first of these
expeditions, the sole authority for which is Vespucci himself.

The name America was given to two continents in honor of this naval
astronomer on the authority of an account of his travels published in
15