; let the honor
thereof suffice you, and let us go with our lives, for by God's will are
we escaped." Bayard felt that the Spaniard spoke truly; he had but a
handful of men with him, and his own horse could not carry him any
longer: the Spaniards opened their ranks, and he passed through the
middle of them and let them go. "'Las!" says his Loyal Serviteur, "he
knew not that the good Duke of Nemours was dead, or that those yonder
were they who had slain him; he had died ten thousand deaths but he would
have avenged him, if he had known it."

When the fatal news was known, the consternation and grief were profound.
At the age of twenty-three Gaston de Foix had in less than six months won
the confidence and affection of the army, of the king, and of France. It
was one of those sudden and undisputed reputations which seem to mark out
men for the highest destinies. "I would fain," said Louis XIL, when he
heard of his death, "have no longer an inch of land in Italy, and be able
at that price to bring back to life my nephew Gaston and all the gallants
who perished with him. God keep us from often gaining such victories!"
"In the battle of Ravenna," says Guicciardini, "fell at least ten
thousand men, a third of them French, and two thirds their enemies; but
in respect of chosen men and men of renown the loss of the victors was by
much the greater, and the loss of Gaston de Foix alone surpassed all the
others put together; with him went all the vigor and furious onset of the
French army." La Palisse, a warrior valiant and honored, assumed the
command of this victorious army; but under pressure of repeated attacks
from the Spaniards, the Venetians, and the Swiss, he gave up first the
Romagna, then Milanes, withdrew from place to place, and ended by falling
back on Piedmont. Julius II. won back all he had won and lost.
Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovic the Moor, after twelve years of exile
in Germany, returned to Milan to resume possession of his father's duchy.
By the end of June, 1512, less than three months after the victory of
Ravenna, the domination of the French had disappeared from Italy.

[Illustration: Gaston de Foix----364]

Louis XII. had, indeed, something else to do besides crossing the Alps to
go to the protection of such precarious conquests. Into France itself
war was about to make its way; it was his own kingdom and his own country
that he had to defend. In vain, after the death of Isabella of Castile,