of Charles influenced now by the insinuation
of Giuliano della Ravere, who, himself a witness of the pope's simony,
pressed the king to summon a council and depose the head of the Church,
and now by the secret support given him by the Bishops of Mans and St.
Malo. The end of it was that the king decided to form his own opinion
about the matter and settle nothing beforehand, and continued this
route, sending the ambassadors back to the pope, with the addition of
the Marechal de Gie, the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and Jean de Gannay,
first president of the Paris Parliament. They were ordered to say to the
pope--

(1) That the king wished above all things to be admitted into Rome
without resistance; that, an condition of a voluntary, frank, and loyal
admission, he would respect the authority of the Holy Father and the
privileges of the Church;

(2) That the king desired that D'jem should be given up to him, in order
that he might make use of him against the sultan when he should carry
the war into Macedonia or Turkey or the Holy Land;

(3) That the remaining conditions were so unimportant that they could be
brought forward at the first conference.

The ambassadors added that the French army was now only two days distant
from Rome, and that in the evening of the day after next Charles would
probably arrive in person to demand an answer from His Holiness.

It was useless to think of parleying with a prince who acted in such
expeditious fashion as this. Alexander accordingly warned Ferdinand
to quit Rome as soon as possible, in the interests of his own personal
safety. But Ferdinand refused to listen to a word, and declared that he
would not go out at one gate while Charles VIII came in at another.
His sojourn was not long. Two days later, about eleven o'clock in the
morning, a sentinel placed on a watch-tower at the top of the Castle S.
Angelo, whither the pope had retired, cried out that the vanguard of
the enemy was visible on the horizon. At once Alexander and the Duke
of Calabria went up an the terrace which tops the fortress, and assured
themselves with their own eyes that what the soldier said was true.
Then, and not till then, did the duke of Calabria mount an horseback,
and, to use his own words, went out at the gate of San Sebastiana, at
the same moment that the French vanguard halted five hundred feet from
the Gate of the People. This was on the 31st of December 1494.

At three in the afternoon the whole army ha