l streets of the city, halting at the five knots
of the noblesse, where the gentlemen and their wives who had assembled
there detained him a long while, requesting him to be pleased to confer
with his own hand the order of knighthood on their sons, which he
willingly did. At last he reached the cathedral church of St.
Januarius, which had recently been rebuilt by Alphonso I. of Arragon,
after the earth-quake of 1456. The archbishop, at the head of his
clergy, came out to meet him, and conducted him to the front of the high
altar, where the head of St. Januarius was exhibited.

When all these solemnities had been accomplished to the great
satisfaction of the populace, bonfires were lighted up for three days;
the city was illuminated; and only a week afterwards, on the 20th of May,
1495, Charles VIII. started from Naples to return to France, with an
army, at the most, from twelve to fifteen thousand strong, leaving for
guardian of his new kingdom his cousin, Gilbert of Bourbon, Count de
Montpensier, a brave but indolent knight (who never rose, it was said,
until noon), with eight or ten thousand men, scattered for the most part
throughout the provinces.

During the months of April and May, thus wasted by Charles VIII., the
Italian league, and especially the Venetians and the Duke of Milan,
Ludovic the Moor, had vigorously pushed forward their preparations for
war, and had already collected an army more numerous than that with which
the King of France, in order to return home, would have to traverse the
whole of Italy. He took more than six weeks to traverse it, passing
three days at Rome, four at Siena, the same number at Pisa, and three at
Lucca, though he had declared that he would not halt anywhere. He evaded
entering Florence, where he had made promises which he could neither
retract nor fulfil. The Dominican Savonarola, "who had always preached
greatly in the king's favor," says Commynes, "and by his words had kept
the Florentines from turning against us," came to see him on his way at
Poggibonsi. "I asked him," said Commynes, "whether the king would be
able to cross without danger to his person, seeing the great muster that
was being made by the Venetians. He answered me that the king would have
trouble on the road, but that the honor would remain his, though he had
but a hundred men at his back; but, seeing that he had not done well for
the reformation of the Church, as he ought, and had suffered his men to