ored their retreat; and the same pusillanimity which
the allies had shown at Fornovo prevented them from re-forming and
engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain. One hour before
daybreak on Tuesday morning the French broke up their camp and succeeded
in clearing the valley. That night they lodged at Fiorenzuola, the next
at Piacenza, and so on; till on the eighth day they arrived at Asti
without having been so much as incommoded by the army of the allies in
their rear.

Although the field of Fornovo was in reality so disgraceful to the
Italians, they reckoned it a victory upon the technical pretence that
the camp and baggage of the French had been seized. Illuminations and
rejoicings made the piazza of St. Mark in Venice gay, and Francesco da
Gonzaga had the glorious Madonna della Vittoria painted for him by
Mantegna, in commemoration of what ought only to have been remembered
with shame.

A fitting conclusion to this sketch, connecting its close with the
commencement, may be found in some remarks upon the manner of warfare
to which the Italians of the Renaissance had become accustomed, and
which proved so futile on the field of Fornovo. During the Middle Ages,
and in the days of the Communes, the whole male population of Italy had
fought light armed on foot. Merchant and artisan left the counting-house
and the workshop, took shield and pike, and sallied forth to attack the
barons in their castles, or to meet the emperor's troops upon the field.
It was with this national militia that the citizens of Florence freed
their _Contado_ of the nobles, and the burghers of Lombardy gained the
battle of Legnano. In course of time, by a process of change which it is
not very easy to trace, heavily armed cavalry began to take the place of
infantry in mediaeval warfare. Men-at-arms, as they were called, encased
from head to foot in iron, and mounted upon chargers no less solidly
caparisoned, drove the foot-soldiers before them at the points of their
long lances. Nowhere in Italy do they seem to have met with the fierce
resistance which the bears of the Swiss Oberland and the bulls of Uri
offered to the knights of Burgundy. No Tuscan Arnold von Winkelried
clasped a dozen lances to his bosom that the foeman's ranks might thus
be broken at the cost of his own life; nor did it occur to the Italian
burghers to meet the charge of the horsemen with squares protected by
bristling spears. They seem, on the contrary, to have abandone