e out of Italy Charles VIII., who was withdrawing voluntarily; but to
make it an unmistakable retreat, he ought to have been defeated, his army
beaten, and himself perhaps a prisoner. With that view they attempted to
bar his passage and beat him on Italian ground: in that they failed;
Charles, remaining master of the battle-field, went on his way in
freedom, and covered with glory, he and his army. He certainly left
Italy, but he left it with the feeling of superiority in arms, and with
the intention of returning thither better informed and better supplied.
The Italian allies were triumphant, but without any ground of security or
any lustre; the expedition of Charles VIII. was plainly only the
beginning of the foreigner's ambitious projects, invasions and wars
against their own beautiful land. The King of France and his men of war
had not succeeded in conquering it, but they had been charmed with such
an abode; they had displayed in their campaign knightly qualities more
brilliant and more masterful than the studied duplicity and elegant
effeminacy of the Italians of the fifteenth century, and, after the
battle of Fornovo, they returned to France justly proud and foolishly
confident, notwithstanding the incompleteness of their success.

[Illustration: CASTLE OF AMBOISE----308]

Charles VIII. reigned for nearly three years longer after his return to
his kingdom; and for the first two of them he passed his time in
indolently dreaming of his plans for a fresh invasion of Italy, and in
frivolous abandonment to his pleasures and the entertainments at his
court, which he moved about from Lyons to Moulins, to Paris, to Tours,
and to Amboise. The news which came to him from Italy was worse and
worse every day. The Count de Montpensier, whom he had left at Naples,
could not hold his own there, and died a prisoner there on the 11th of
November, 1496, after having found himself driven from place to place by
Ferdinand II., who by degrees recovered possession of nearly all his
kingdom, merely, himself also, to die there on the 6th of October,
leaving for his uncle and successor, Frederick III., the honor of
recovering the last four places held by the French. Charles ordered a
fresh army of invasion to be formed, and the Duke of Orleans was singled
out to command it; but he evaded this commission. The young _dauphin_,
Charles Orlando, three years old, had just died, "a fine child and bold
of speech," says Commynes, "and one th