, to the pope alone
the choice of her sovereign properly belonged, and that in consequence to
attack the reigning sovereign was to attack the Church itself.

The result of the embassy, we see, was not very promising for Charles
VIII; so he resolved to rely on his ally Ludovico Sforza alone, and to
relegate all other questions to the fortunes of war.

A piece of news that reached him about this time strengthened him in this
resolution: this was the death of Ferdinand. The old king had caught a
severe cold and cough on his return from the hunting field, and in two
days he was at his last gasp. On the 25th of January, 1494, he passed
away, at the age of seventy, after a thirty-six years' reign, leaving the
throne to his elder son, Alfonso, who was immediately chosen as his
successor.

Ferdinand never belied his title of "the happy ruler." His death
occurred at the very moment when the fortune of his family was changing.

The new king, Alfonso, was not a novice in arms: he had already fought
successfully against Florence and Venice, and had driven the Turks out of
Otranto; besides, he had the name of being as cunning as his father in
the tortuous game of politics so much in vogue at the Italian courts. He
did not despair of counting among his allies the very enemy he was at war
with when Charles VIII first put forward his pretensions, we mean Bajazet
II. So he despatched to Bajazet one of his confidential ministers,
Camillo Pandone, to give the Turkish emperor to understand that the
expedition to Italy was to the King of France nothing but a blind for
approaching the scene of Mahomedan conquests, and that if Charles VIII
were once at the Adriatic it would only take him a day or two to get
across and attack Macedonia; from there he could easily go by land to
Constantinople. Consequently he suggested that Bajazet for the
maintenance of their common interests should supply six thousand horse
and six thousand infantry; he himself would furnish their pay so long as
they were in Italy. It was settled that Pandone should be joined at
Tarentum by Giorgia Bucciarda, Alexander VI's envoy, who was commissioned
by the pope to engage the Turks to help him against the Christians. But
while he was waiting for Bajazet's reply, which might involve a delay of
several months, Alfonso requested that a meeting might take place between
Piero dei Medici, the pope, and himself, to take counsel together about
important affairs. This meet